Towards the social analysis of twinship

pp. 150-168

in: Elizabeth A. Stewart, Exploring twins, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003

Abstract

The principal argument presented here may be simply stated: twin-ship is an irreducibly social phenomenon. (It must be emphasized that this is not to argue that it is an exclusively social phenomenon, although there are those who argue that all human phenomena are inescapably 'socially constructed".) My purpose here is to explore the ways in which the different perspectives considered in the previous chapter can illuminate twinship as a social phenomenon.¹