ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the various ways that non-biological family boundaries are constructed. Building upon the wisdom of a community leader who explained to the author that Garifuna communities were rooted in family, the author explores some examples of how families have been created. Highlighting Black feminist conceptualizations of Black women’s standpoint, the author ultimately locates herself in two kinds of family. First, she is claiming a Black feminist multidisciplinary family, exemplified by Black feminist anthropologists engaging Black Brazilian women and their communities. Second, she is claiming a boundary crossing familial connection with the Black indigenous Garifuna women at the center of her research. In that way, she invokes the notion of family to challenge conventional disciplinary and national boundaries. Ultimately, the chapter concludes with an analysis of how the TBF framework highlights important nuances in how family is constructed, transdisciplinarily and transnationally. It is recommended that IR scholars consider centering the family in more research.
