Burmese Kinship Revisited: Substance and ‘Biology’ in the World of Rebirth

Notions of kinship within systems of rebirth challenge the dominant Euro-American view of kinship as fundamentally biology-centred. By reading across the domains of religion and kinship in Burma, this article will show that what substance is, as well as does, is not self-evident, and thereby reorient the analysis of substance. Furthermore, it will show that it is in the movement of spiritual essences, rather than biogenetic items, that the continuity of each living being’s existence is sought in Burma. Thus, kinship relations are shaped, not necessarily by biology, but by religious and spiritual views of existence.