This issue takes the family "figure" of the sister as its starting point for the analysis of social practices and transformation processes between the 15th and 20th Century. Its articles feature perspectives from legal, emotional and knowledge frameworks. They question the position of sisters during the transfer events of domination and ownership, their function within racially structured social orders and modern epistemologies, thereby addressing the role that emotions play for sisterly rivalry within familial rankings. At the same time, the issue investigates an understanding of sisterliness which blocks out rivalries and power relations and only minimally undermines the notions of a binary gender order based upon the linear relationship concept (father-mother-child chains).