ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews in the current debates on contemporary international adoption with a close look at anthropological research on Western adoptive families, to better understand the socio-cultural and geopolitical context of transnational adoptions today. It outlines the structure of this master plot of international adoption, dividing it into the three moments of the Aristotelian plot and arguing that in these narrations the adoption is told relating to the biological process of having a child—that is, mirroring the processes of conceiving, expecting, and delivering a child. The chapter analyzes the narrative voice and "focalization" to explain how the points of view employed enables the performance of kinship justifying international adoption in times when the practice is becoming increasingly contested. Most researchers in adoption studies point out the international humanitarian campaign for fostering children who were abandoned after the Korean War —children born to Korean mothers and fathered by American soldiers—as the starting moment for transnational adoption (Oh).
