Alexis Hieu Truong  0:05  
Hi and welcome to Uncommon Sense, the podcast from the Sociological Review Foundation, where we take everyday notions we tend to think we understand – like free speech, fat and burnout – and view them differently with a friendly expert guest. It's part of our mission to show the value of thinking sociologically and, yeah, once you start it's kind of hard to stop. So, I'm Alexis Hieu Truong in Gatineau city, right next to Ottawa in Canada.

George Kalivis  0:30  
And I'm George Kalivis in London in the UK, standing in today for Rosie. And I'm honoured to because in this episode we're going to be talking about inheritance. I don't know about you, but that is such a provocative word. Perhaps it leads you to reflect on personal experiences, hopes and fears, perhaps even big family feuds, or maybe it makes you think about policy stuff, taxation, redistribution and equity.

Alexis Hieu Truong  0:59  
And for our guest today that word leads in a different, other direction. So we're joined here by Delwar Hussain, an anthropologist based at the University of Edinburgh. This year Delwar was awarded a Wellcome Trust grant for his project titled: Just who do I leave my worldly possessions to, darling?: An Ethnographic Study of Queer Inheritance.

George Kalivis  1:20  
Delwar's project will look at how inheritance functions within queer communities, examining the emotional, political and social complexities that surround both inheritance and disinheritance. It will look at why such processes can become sites of trauma, anxiety and fear, but can also serve as foundations for queer survivance, joy and collective wellbeing. Delwar, hi. Thanks for joining us from Paris, I believe?

Delwar Hussain  1:48  
Hi Alexis and hi George.

George Kalivis  1:51  
So we're doing something a bit unusual today, catching up with someone at the very start of a project, rather than when it's all done, you know. So before we get into the details, tell us where this idea to look at queer inheritance came from. Was there a house in North London and some rather desirable items of clothing involved in all this, right?

Delwar Hussain  2:13  
That's right. So the project started life from a personal experience which, I think for lots of anthropologists or social scientists, is is not a particularly uncommon place to begin. A few years ago, a friend of mine and my partners' invited us to this house in Islington. It had belonged to her uncle, who had recently passed away. She had become the executor of the house, which meant she had to deal with sorting it out. It was going to be sold, and she asked us to come along to help her sort out some of his things and to possibly even take some of the things that he had had and that she couldn't really find a home for. He was a, he was a gay man who had lived an openly gay life, but lived at a time when homosexuality in the UK, or a long period of it, was in fact illegal. He travelled a lot, he was an antiques dealer and he had nice things around the house, but also, as she opened the wardrobe, there were clothes by Christian Dior and Balenciaga and shoes by Church's and Burberry and things like that. And she asked my partner and I to take whatever we want, things that might fit us. Unfortunately, very little fit me, but my partner, who was roughly the same size as him, managed to find coats and shoe, shoes, trousers, shirts, that kind of stuff. I did find a sweater that did fit me, was by Christian Dior, very much from the 80s, you could tell it was from the 80s, that I still wear. So, so what did that experience do? It made me think, well, firstly, by allowing us to have some of her uncle's things, we were being woven into, further woven, woven into social relations with our friend. Absolutely, friends give each other things, meaningful things, but it made me also think about other things, that she had somehow facilitated a relationship between her uncle and us. An older gay man who had passed away and younger gay men, and we had become enmeshed into his story, his life. And that precipitated a whole series of other questions. So I wondered, what were gay men, lesbians, trans people today? How are they preparing for their deaths in terms of inheritance? What are the, what are the processes that they're going through in that preparation?

Alexis Hieu Truong  4:55  
Okay, so like, I guess these would be like examples of queer inheritance, and I'm really, like, interested in hearing a bit more of, like, what you mean by queer inheritance. Is the inheritance more of a material thing, like property, pets and like, these kinds of things? Or would you also include life stories, wisdom, guidance in there?

Delwar Hussain  5:16  
Yeah, absolutely. So, as you've said, this is very much the kind of beginning of this project. But at this present moment, I understand inheritance in the kind of widest possible sense, and as I go on to do work on this project more I may find myself narrowing down or broadening out, or even maybe even redefining what inheritance might mean and be for queer people. And so at the moment, I understand it in two ways. One, as you say, in the tangible way, things that might be enshrined in the legal sense or wills. And part of the tangible thing is also things like books, clothes, jewellery and asking who specifically is, are these things going to and why are they going to them? And what are the stories around that? That's the kind of tangible element. And then there's the intangible stuff, the stories that are passed down, the anecdotes, the life histories of queer British people that are told within private realms of families. And when I say families, I mean both biological families and families we choose. Queer people have always had to invent their own systems of legacies. So, so what are those stories? And what are those stories of, of the legacies of people?

Alexis Hieu Truong  6:48  
Yes. So in your answer, we really get like, we see how this, this idea of inheritance connects to the relationships, right, that were woven in people's lives. And, and you observe that, that inheritance, like the right to bequeath one's estate to whomever one chooses is kind of at the heart of end of life wellbeing, like a cornerstone of a good, good death. So there's this temporality also and, like, I wonder if you could maybe elaborate on this idea of what inheritance has to do with like a good death?

Delwar Hussain  7:23  
Yeah, that's a really interesting question and very, it's an unsettled question because, at the basic level, there are several things that unite, unite all human beings, and the idea of the good death is something that unites all human beings. And what it means is the idea that a person can die in comfort and according to their personal wishes. And for some people, the idea, part of the good death is that they are supported by family members, both biological and families we choose, as well as things like having access to health care and all sorts of care in that moment of death. So if that's the idea of the good death, I'm interested in what the good death might mean for queer people. I think as yet, there aren't studies or thinking around what the good death might be for queer people, and how is it different to heterosexual people? And then following on from that, how does the right to give what I own in my life, whether it's the tangible or the intangible, to the next generation, or to people who survived me, how is that and why is that so important to queer people?

George Kalivis  8:48  
This also makes me think, and you, you kind of mention it there already about the legacies we leave behind and how we can be thinking about queer legacies, maybe, and how we also maybe teach each other things in a way that can become inheritance and legacy. But I know you're coming from an anthropological background Delwar, and I actually wanted to ask you, what is anthropological about this specific project? And I know you kind of already mentioned kinship, and kinship is a very anthropological thing in many ways, and also gifts come to mind, for example, as well, like Marcel Mauss' work of how, you know, we exchange objects over time to build relationships. So, yes, what's anthropological about this?

Delwar Hussain  9:33  
Well, yes, absolutely, it is kinship, and kinship and the gift. It is kinship in the sense of how do we relate to each other? How do we form connections with each other? How do we pass on legacies of our lives onto other generations, on people who survive us? And queer people have reinvented their kinship relationships because they've, they have had to. And so within that idea of kinship, something else that connects us are gifts. And those gifts can be again tangible or intangible things that are passed down between people. And the idea of the gift is very much about how we are connected as individuals, as communities, as societies, how we form alliances, how we form relationships, connections. So and at the heart of that is, maybe, this thing of inheritance. Maybe inheritance is a kind of bridge that connects the idea of kinship and gift giving. And so, yes, so these are fundamental, fundamental anthropological questions.

Alexis Hieu Truong  10:51  
I was wondering because, like, this idea of like gifts, so this, this reciprocity like over time and so on, right? And you were mentioning, again, like the relationships and it, when you were, when you were explaining your answer, right, right there,  it kind of also made me think about like the ways in which, in this particular setting, where maybe sometimes things were not able to be said before, the things we leave afterwards also contribute to building that relationship over time, even after once passing. So there's kind of, and I guess it's true for any type of inheritance, but maybe it has a kind of specific meaning or sense in the, in the context of queer inheritance, in the kind of social, political context of those deaths.

Delwar Hussain  11:41  
Absolutely, and I think the example I gave of where I came up with this project, of my friend's uncle, exemplifies that.  Which is that we, my partner and I, became embedded and enmeshed in the social relationship with somebody that we had never met. And it was a kind of gift, the gift of, at least in my case, this Christian Dior sweater. And when I do wear that jumper, I think about this man and his life and the freedoms that I have and my partner has. We get to live our lives in a way that he didn't, even though – and this is, of course, where intersectionality 101 comes into it – even though he was an upper class, white, English man who lived in a very nice house in London, he intersectionally speaking, he still faced prejudice and silences and unacceptance of who he is, who he was, because he was gay. So yes, that, that, that that jumper, when I wear it, always reminds me of that.

George Kalivis  12:51  
I'm thinking about how you mentioned intersectionality, and also I'm thinking about how we've been talking about inheritance in relation to death. And, you know, I'm thinking also about inheritance in relation to life in some ways too. And so I'm thinking specifically about my own background, in a way. So I originally come from Greece, where traditionally inheritance would often be done in a very gendered system of, you know, dowry system. So basically this meant that families who had one or more daughters would kind of, you know, attach property to them for their husbands when they get married. And of course, this is a very, you know, heteronormative, patriarchal, you know, context, you know, right in your face there, it reproduces this kind of heteronormative, patriarchal system basically. And, and, and also, just to say that, this can also be queer today. Like, you know, I have in my head examples from phrases of friends being, saying things like, oh, my only dowry is my underwear darling. Kind of basically saying, oh, if he marries me, he won't marry for my money, basically. And I know there have been, you know, strong dowry systems in the wider Balkans and in India, of course. And I was thinking how your first book was based on research on the India-Bangladesh border, and how your parents as well, I believe, came from Bangladesh to the UK. So I was wondering, is there anything within the communities you've studied or grown up in that strikes you regarding inheritance within death, but within life as well?

Delwar Hussain  14:34  
That's actually one of the kind of fundamental questions in the project, which is how do these issues of inheritance and disinheritance affect non-white British communities? And the kind of fear of disinheritance has always been something that has been used to control individuals, and I think that fear continues to this very day. And disinheritance might also mean that you are excluded not necessarily from the tangible things that I was talking about – property, money, that kind of stuff, you might have your own – but you will be disinherited from the legacies and the stories, that you'll be excluded from the family. So that's very much part of, one of, a fear that still exists. But also, I think, as we see the retrenchment of gay rights across the United States and also in other parts of Europe, this question of whether queer people can inherit from one another, those issues have also become very pertinent. So can a partner of a queer person, can they inherit? You know, these questions are very much live things now. You know, they're not things from the past. They're not necessarily things from other parts of the world that don't have gay equality or gay rights. These are very much at the heart of Western Europe today.

George Kalivis  16:18  
I think it's interesting to think of this also in terms of how it happens throughout life, as with gifts also for example, right, that we mentioned earlier, how queer people exchange or find ways to share inheritances with each other throughout life and through death, maybe. I don't know if that's relevant, but yeah.

Delwar Hussain  16:38  
Yeah, so actually, can I just tell you a little story here? So before 1967, before the legalisation of homosexuality in the UK, of course, there were queer people. And one of the things that I've been discovering is that it is in the wills that, in a funny way, paradoxical way could gay, gay men, lesbians, trans people express something that in life they weren't able to. So in their wills, they were able to pass on items, things, money, houses in some cases, to lovers, to partners that in life that they were, they could not reveal or expose as their partner. So there is this kind of weird paradoxical thing going on.

Alexis Hieu Truong  17:37  
Well maybe if I can bounce back on this question, right? So, like, when we see inheritance like in the media and stuff like that, or it's really often like about things, right, so material property. But inheritance can seem like a, so yes, it'd be a very private, right, privatised, even like conservative concept as it links up also to capitalism and the way we kind of accrue wealth within like family units and so on. What you were just talking about really points to how inheritance, sometimes in under certain conditions, can become a serious, radical political act, right, a sort of, like a form of activism, and people can make a real statement with what they choose to leave and to whom. This, this may be act of rebellion and of community building and so on. So could you, could you maybe expand more on this idea, especially like maybe during like the AIDS crisis in the 80s, for example?

Delwar Hussain  18:37  
So I think we have to avoid the idea that queer inheritance simply means the reinforcement of private wealth and property within either biological family units or within families we choose. I want to go beyond that, and the project asks what work beyond the reinforcement of private wealth does inheritance do within, for example, the public good? And so, yes, so you mentioned the HIV/AIDS crisis, this was a moment when inheritance was an inherently political act where people – men who had HIV and then, that went on to develop into AIDS – gave their estates to organisations that cared for other men who had HIV/AIDS. They also gave money to organisations that, so cared for but also that did research into what this disease was. And today, what I'm finding is that queer people are leaving legacies, estates, endowments to all sorts of organisations, you know, from the kind of donkey charity to libraries and things like that around the world. So part of, so I am deeply interested in the work that the inheritance of queer people is doing to a kind of wider public.

George Kalivis  20:25  
I mean, so following from this kind of inheritance that happens beyond the privatised ways you know, of at least the Western middle class family, as you say, I was wondering if we can link here to family abolitionism and those thinkers who would say that we need to, you know, all take care of each other beyond the immediate nuclear family or the realm of insular coupledom even. And I'm also kind of thinking about Jack Halberstam's work as well, who discusses queer alternatives to the bourgeois heteronormative family and kind of calls us to forget family as well altogether. So with these things in mind, I was wondering if queer inheritance could play a role in these kinds of transformations of caring for each other, away from heteronormativity, perhaps even moving away from the concept of family altogether. I don't know what you think about that.

Delwar Hussain  21:23  
It's, I'm torn between a kind of ideological standpoint about the kind of breakdown of the heteronormative family, and then, on the other hand, the reality of how queer people are, in fact, reproducing heteronormativity within their families. One of the things that I'm seeing is that queer people in, for a lot of queer people they are still very, I mean, these are histories of traumas, right coming out of histories of trauma, that they just want to be the same as straight people. And one of the things that they do is, for a lot of queer people, they are, in fact, leaving inheritance to their biological kin, despite, for many of them, histories of trauma, of maybe even being disinherited themselves. So, for example, a British Pakistani gay man who I've spoken to, he has an, he has been disinherited by his family in the sense that he has been cut off from it, but he intends to leave his house, you know, things that he owns to his nieces and nephews. So I find this to be, so there is this kind of, as you say, this kind of theoretical idea of the, kind of breakdown of the, of the kind of nuclear family, but queer people are very much part of the kind of reproducing and reinforcing the idea of the, of the nuclear family. And we can see that through inheritance, I think, does that make sense?

Alexis Hieu Truong  23:23  
Yeah, yeah. It makes a lot of sense. And I feel that it really adds a layer of complexity and interest, like importance to that project, in the sense that we shouldn't assume that every act like of inheritance will be like radical political change or something like that, right? But that even under the conditions on which it kind of is not super like radical change or progressive and so on, and it reproduces certain things like heteronormative family practices and so on, even in those situations it gives us something important to think about in terms of the meaning of those practices, how it relates to the power relations and so on. Because, like you were saying, like that there's, there's a desire to be, to do in a similar way but that's maybe just because those powerful, like the heteronormative family, for example, just is consuming so much resources, like symbolically and materially and so on, right? It's kind of like it tells us a lot, even in its reproduction, it tells us a lot about the power relations that queer inheritance allows us to, to interrogate. And so, I guess a question that emerges from that would be like, in your project, how do you, do you feel you'll be approaching this?

Delwar Hussain  24:56  
I think, just to, just adding to what you had just said, that it is something about the enduring legacy of the what we're saying is the heteronormative family, but within that is also the biological element of it, the enduring legacy of that and how queer people are, yes, we are still products of our biological families, even though we have other units and models.

George Kalivis  25:26  
We should reiterate that you're just at the start of this whole project, of course, and I'm interested in how you could also study inheritance from the perspective of the one who receives: the recipient. What does it mean to receive an item? Are you interested in that side of things, and also the fact that maybe sometimes people don't want to inherit things like objects can weigh us down, as well as stories, and in different contexts I'm also thinking about queer migrations and queer diasporas.

Delwar Hussain  25:56  
Yeah, very much so. There's also this kind of a burden of responsibility that sometimes comes with inheritance, in that what is it that I'm expected to now feel or do or be as a result of receiving something? So, especially for within the unit of families we choose, what is, what is the effect of receiving something from somebody who is not your biological kin? That is a question I'd like to ask.

Alexis Hieu Truong  26:34  
Yeah, and like, this act of receiving, I feel like it really opens the question of, like, even as a society's like, what do we leave, right? So there's this word, there's this discussion, like, of inheritance with, for example, like climate change and so on, right? So the world that's left behind that the younger generations inherit, right? So, so what do we, what, what do you do with that, if it's, if it's been, yeah, not taken well care of and so on, right? It tangles people into responsibilities and consequences and so on. So, I feel that there's a lot to think about.

George Kalivis  27:11  
And I'm also just thinking about how this is a generational thing as well, maybe, of how sometimes younger people might inherit from previous generations who do not understand, understand life in the same way, or do not experience life in the same way. For instance, I'm also thinking about, you know, housing insecurity, about how, you know, in London, for instance, one has to move, if one rents, has to move house very often. So you cannot, literally, have many things with you, which is very different to what, you know, previous generations have experienced. And so these kinds of,  you know, inheritance there might also signify different understandings of life.

Alice Bloch  28:02  
Hi, I'm Alice. I produce Uncommon Sense. Thanks for listening to our conversation with the anthropologist Delwar Hussain, who's at the very start of his research into queer inheritance. It's a conversation that connects to our show on the maternal and maternal legacies of knowledge just now with Babalwa Magoqwana that came just before this one, as well as actually also our show with Alva Gotby on love and reproduction, and also our next one that's coming up on gifts, and specifically dormant gifts and how people deal with them, with Sophie Woodward in January. So do head to our archive online to discover those along with so much more. And the Sociological Review Foundation, as you may know by now, is a charity. It's dedicated to advancing and celebrating the sociological imagination. If you'd like to directly support the making of Uncommon Sense, please do head to donorbox.org/uncommon-sense, where you can learn more and make a one off or repeat contribution. Every bit is gratefully received. Otherwise, do check out our lesson plans on the individual episode pages for each show. Season four ones are coming soon, and there's so much more over at thesociologicalreview.org and on our social media channels. Thanks for listening. We'll see you soon.

Alexis Hieu Truong  29:19  
Delwar, this is where we turn to ask who has given you some uncommon sense. So we've, we celebrated everyone here from like Sylvia Wynter to Marilyn Strathern. We've also had people like Shamus Khan celebrate their own students, right? But today you want to talk about Kath Weston, whose book Families We Choose has been mentioned, but only in passing so far on this show.

George Kalivis  29:42  
So Delwar, who is Kath Weston and how did you first encounter her work?

Delwar Hussain  29:48  
So Kath Weston is an anthropologist of queer lives in the 21st century, and in the 1990s published a book called Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship which emerges out of research that Kath Weston had done in San Francisco in the 1980s exploring the lives of lesbian and gay men and how they form kinship beyond the heterosexual nuclear family. And this research and the, the questions that she asks emerges in the backdrop of the HIV/AIDS crisis, of politically enforced familial estrangement, mainstream assumptions about what real kin might be or fictitious kin. And so Kath Weston asks what is essentially a queer family, and comes up with this term called families we choose which are essentially family units made up of non-biological members, ostensibly queer – so gay, lesbian, trans – and how these families are political, they are creative, and at the heart of them it is about care and respect.

Alexis Hieu Truong  31:15  
And like it's one of those books that has really like travelled beyond academia. Why do you think that is? Like, is it about how it's written, what it says, or kind of both?

Delwar Hussain  31:27  
I think it's travelled because it recognises something, which is that a family or kinship is not something that you're born into but it is something that you can build, and where there – and that, of course, at the heart of it is about queer people, but it also speaks to non-queer people. How many of us are part of relationships and units that mean and provide everything that the biological family also provides. For a lot of people, these are not either/or questions. It is not either you're part of a biological kinship group or you're not. We are very much embedded and enmeshed within both of these sorts of units. And so I said, and so yes, at the heart of it, the book and the work is talking about queer people. But I think the reason why it has travelled as widely as it has and it has become part of everyday concepts is because it speaks to communities beyond queer people.

George Kalivis  32:35  
Yes, and I mean the term chosen family is increasingly everywhere around us, as you say, within queer contexts but also beyond for sure. And I think Weston's point on how, for example, straight family terminologies and cultures can be appropriated in radical queer ways, also kind of sets a base for understanding queer kinship as something that we do like, as Judith Butler and others have also argued about, and that maybe the know-how of doing queer kingship can also become something we inherit. But just sticking a bit more with this notion of choice in terms of the families which we choose, the degree to which a person gets to choose is very much linked to their particular amount of privilege, yes, something that Weston herself is of course also aware of.

Delwar Hussain  33:23  
I think we can take this kind of question of privilege down the path of class, and not everyone has a house in Islington and a wardrobe full of designer clothes that they can pass on to strangers. And I think it's important in this project not to invisibilise this thing of privilege and class, as though all queer people have either access to that kind of world or emerge out of that kind of world, or even are politically interested in reinforcing that sort of world. So, and what I mean by that is I want to know what do working class families we choose look like? You know, what are the processes of inheritance, I think George you said something about, you know, in London young people, for example, in London young people do not have houses that they either will inherit or will ever pass on, because of the cost of living and the cost of rent and, you know, home ownership is going down in the UK. So, what is it that they are passing on? You know, in terms of the tangible things, but also, what are the intangible stories and the values and anecdotes and experiences that are being passed on? So, yes, so this thing of privilege, yes, very much at the heart of this project, all queer people are not equal.

Alexis Hieu Truong  35:01  
And opening this like more broadly, what are you reading now in terms of queer theory and literature, and what would you recommend for listeners? Yeah, maybe something in relation to Weston's legacy or something that you're reading as you prepare for this project?

Delwar Hussain  35:21  
Yeah, that's a great question. So I'm rereading Kath Weston's book about queer families and the kind of creative elements of constructing families we choose. But alongside that, I'm coming across really interesting new stuff. There was a relatively recent special edition of Current Anthropology edited by Laurence Ralph called Anthropology and Inheritance. And that special edition, all the articles in that special edition complicates further the notion of inheritance. So there's the article by João Biehl, who looks at the history of German migration to Brazil and the kind of ideas, cultural ideas, that they brought along with them and how this is passed on and the legacies of that. There's the work of Adam T. Smith, who is looking at the Armenian Genocide and how silence is an, is something that is, is a kind of inherited trait that is passed on. And then there's Tim, Tim Ingold, who's at Aberdeen. And again, in a way, it's interesting the juxtaposition of Kath Weston's work and Tim Ingold's work here, what Tim Ingold in this article is arguing is that he questions the notion of biological inheritance. We think biological inheritance is something that really cannot be challenged. But what he says is that knowledge does not descend from generation to generation in a kind of unquestioned way, but it is regrown and recreated in each generation and, and interesting how that point and Kath, Kath Weston's work speak to each other. Also, there are a new generation of kinship scholars, people like my colleague Resto Cruz at Edinburgh who, within the world of kinship studies, is, is kind of rethinking issues of inheritance there. But I think he's mostly interested in traditional inheritance within families, heterosexual families.

George Kalivis  37:51  
That's all very interesting. I mean, you know, as we have said many times, it's the beginning of the project and we won't hold you to any of it. You know, we know how much projects change so much from start to finish.

Delwar Hussain  38:04  
Which is what I tell dissertation students every year!

George Kalivis  38:08  
Delwar, thank you so much for joining us.

Delwar Hussain  38:11  
Thanks so much, Alexis and George. It's been very helpful for me to think through these questions for myself.

Alexis Hieu Truong  38:21  
We'll be back next month with more Uncommon Sense, as ever brought to you by the Sociological Review Foundation, a charity where we believe that sociology is for everyone and that getting it out there beyond academia matters.

George Kalivis  38:33  
Do check out our show notes and also our brand new lesson plans linked to Uncommon Sense. You can find those on the individual episode pages on this podcast over at thesociologicalreview.org.

Alexis Hieu Truong  38:45  
Our producer was Alice Bloch. Our sound engineer was Dave Crackles. Thanks for listening. Bye,

George Kalivis  38:51 
Bye!