Kinship and Corruption in Contemporary Nigeria

This article explores the social reproduction of 'corruption' in Nigeria, using ethnographic data collected in the Igbo-speaking southeast. The author argues that corruption must be understood in the context of everyday instances of patronage as they occur in networks of kin, community, and interpersonal association. Kinship relationships, and other social ties rooted in similar moral obligations and affective attachments, enable Igbos to navigate Nigeria's clientelistic political economy. They also serve to perpetuate an ethic of appropriate redistribution that fuels corruption. The article analyzes a deep-seated ambivalence that is created as the reciprocal obligations of kinship articulate with structures of power and inequality that characterize contemporary Nigeria. Rather than withering away as Nigeria modernizes, the instrumental importance of kinship and community of origin may be greater than ever.     

Brothers,friends, and enemies: averting intimacy on Facebook in western India

Anthropological studies of the internet have traced the emergence of new forms of intimacy in various arenas of life, including friendship. Drawing upon an ethnography of Facebook and its use among young lower-middle-class men in Pune, Maharashtra, western India, the article investigates the discourse of friendship young men deploy on the platform. Although moulded in the image of their intimate friendships, their interactions with one another on-screen function to perform the ties of kinship. The distinctions young men draw between Facebook and their friendships off-screen reveal the particular forms male friendships take, the egalitarian ideal they contain, the privacy they require, and the care taken to foster them. Through examining the tensions between local articulations of intimacy and the publicity Facebook affords, I show how possibilities for online friendship, rather than being propelled by their freedom from external social conditions, are limited by the constraints of kinship.     

Occult return,divine grace,and saabui: practising transnational kinship in postsocialist Guinea

In the Republic of Guinea, where transnational migration has become a critical path to prestige among young urbanites, migrant success abroad is intimately connected to the cultivation of kin ties at home. For performing artists, who were the darlings of Guinea's Socialist Revolution (1958‐84), the experience of migration is uniquely linked to the fall of the socialist state and to the precarity of urban life in contemporary Africa. This article describes how Guinean artists manage distance and uncertainty through three practices: occult aggression, grace‐seeking, and patronage (saabui), which together illustrate the contours and limitations of kinship's efficacy in transnational space. By exploring transnational kinship as an intersubjective and productive practice that can extend beyond obligation or solidarity and into the realm of magic, this article proposes new ways of conceptualizing what it means for migrants to maintain significant connections across national borders.     

Kinship resources for the elderly.

As population ageing strains social insurance systems, cohorts whose own fertility was low will be reaching elderly status, leaving close biological kin in short supply. However, there is a countervailing trend, inasmuch as burgeoning divorce, remarriage and family blending have expanded the numbers and varieties of step-kin and other non-standard kinship ties. Methods of computer microsimulation in conjunction with richer sample surveys can help us to foresee the contours of kin numbers and kinship relations in the future. Prime areas include the likely frequency of kin-deprived elderly, the overlap with economic deprivation and the interaction between kin frequency and intensity of contact. Step-ties may be weaker but nonetheless critical in raising the probability of at least one compatible member with whom one can choose to maintain contact and rely on. Kinship networks extended through half- and step-links, by stretching across racial and economic lines, may promote social cohesion.     

For an anthropology of the demoralized: state pay,mock‐labour,and unfreedom in a Serbian firm

Recently, the leitmotif of much anthropological writing became that of the virtue of precarity: the belief that people continue to exercise their ethical imagination in the most trying circumstances. While refreshingly non‐deterministic, the Foucauldian approach to freedom that guides this vision neglects those situations in which people see their ability to be moral as irreparable, and structurally compromised. Such is the case of a Serbian firm selling spare car parts, where policies of financing unprofitable employment gradually involved workers in everyday, ritualized performances of productivity for the state – what I call mock‐labour. Unable either to meaningfully fulfil or to renounce the ethos of work, workers remain in an affective blend of nonchalance and failure, experiencing mock‐labour as both a source of material security and an abandonment of their creative capacities – a mocking of moral self. I call for a reconciliation of the anthropologies of ethics and precarity through the notion of demoralization, as a state in which the deficits of structural agency and the limits of reflective freedom overlap.     

Kinship and a counter-hegemonic social order: former revolutionaries in southern Oman

Critical reinterpretations of kinship studies questioned earlier ideas that kinship relations reflect and reproduce a dominant social order. ‘New’ kinship studies have nevertheless shown how even non-traditional family forms can reproduce traditional ideas about relatedness, values, and social hierarchies. Promising grounds for resisting ongoing tendencies to link kinship with conservative social reproduction arise from better understanding the circumstances under which kinship relations reproduce a counter-hegemonic social order. Kinship practices of former militants of a defeated revolutionary liberation movement in Dhufar, Oman, make visible veterans’ networks and relations which transgress dominant tribal, ethnic, racial, and gendered hierarchies. These practices show how, even in inauspicious circumstances of political defeat and marginalization, kinship relations can reproduce a counter-hegemonic social order – as well as a social afterlife of defeated revolution.     

Does kin structure explain the occurrence of workers in a lower termite?

Kinship plays a fundamental role in the origin of social life. It is also predicted to affect numerous details within animal societies, yet recent studies revealed equivocal results. We tested the influence of relatedness for the occurrence of workers in the termite Cryptotermes secundus. Here individuals are developmentally flexible to remain workers or to become dispersing sexuals that found new colonies. Furthermore, colony relatedness naturally increases with inbreeding and decreases when neighboring colonies fuse. Similar to recent studies on social Hymenoptera, our experimental change in relatedness gave equivocal results. Reducing relatedness within colonies did not have an effect, but individuals in inbred colonies were less likely to disperse and more likely to remain workers as predicted by kinship arguments. Several explanations for the interpretation of these equivocal results are provided.     

Influence of young black spruce plantations on moose winter distribution

Logging in the boreal forest may benefit moose by increasing food availability. However, the influence of tree plantations on moose behavior, especially on moose spatial ecology, is poorly understood. We assessed the impacts of black spruce plantations on moose winter distribution at a landscape scale in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region (Québec, Canada). We used winter aerial surveys to examine relationships among plantation characteristics and other habitat variables known to affect moose distribution. The total area of plantations positively influenced moose abundance, but highly aggregated plantations resulted in fewer moose. Moose abundance was also positively associated with food availability and the density of edges between stands providing cover and stands offering high food availability, but moose abundance was negatively associated with road density. Although plantation characteristics were less influential than habitat variables related to foraging and predator avoidance, we demonstrate that the area of black spruce plantations and their configuration should be considered in moose management. We conclude that an integrated management strategy is needed to find a balance between overdeveloped road networks (needed to join homogeneously distributed plantations) and agglomerated plantations in order to mitigate impacts on moose winter distribution. © 2012 The Wildlife Society.     

非人灵长类的亲缘选择

亲缘选择是动物进化的重要研究领域之一,非人灵长类因具有丰富的社会网络,是亲缘选择研究领域的重要类群。动物进行亲缘选择的前提是亲缘识别,并常通过社会行为的亲缘偏向表现。因此,本文从非人灵长类的亲缘识别机制和亲缘关系对其社会行为的影响两方面进行了综述:熟悉性和表现型匹配是目前普遍认同的非人灵长类亲缘识别机制,同时这两种机制并不相互排斥,它们可能共同在灵长类的亲缘识别中起作用;在非人灵长类中,亲缘关系是影响社会行为模式的主导因子,它影响着多种灵长类个体的友好行为、攻击行为和性行为的选择,同时亲缘偏向行为在不同物种中表现不尽相同,说明亲缘选择理论可以部分解释灵长类的行为,但存在一定的局限性。本文分析了两种亲缘识别机制的异同以及在实际研究中利用亲缘选择理论解释非人灵长
类社会行为的局限及可能原因。目前,对非人灵长类社会中的亲缘选择研究正逐步深入,其中分子遗传学技术的应用是重要的推动力量。同时,依然存在诸如汉密尔顿规则参数估计和新大陆猴的亲缘选择研究案例的难点,有待研究者进一步探究。     

Kinship Between Judith Butler and Anthropology? A Review Essay

This essay critically evaluates Judith Butler's recent writings on kinship. In this work, Butler challenges the universalist assumptions of psychoanalysis, hoping to lay the analytical groundwork for imagining new forms of familial relationship. Butler examines the way that anthropology and psychoanalysis have constructed the incest taboo as necessitating heteronormative forms of kinship. Butler's critique of kinship, which draws on her theories of subjection, belies her own attachment to a vision of social life occupied primarily by normative institutions, in particular the state. I suggest that new forms of kinship must be understood on their own terms, whether or not they are accorded legitimacy in law or accepted by psychoanalysis. Anthropology's ethnographic practice can emendate an account of subjection and recognition that obsessively looks to institutions and norms even as it criticizes them.     

Flexible kinship: shaping transnational families among the Chinese in Tahiti

This article examines the practices of ‘flexible kinship’ used by Chinese migrants in colonial Tahiti. ‘Flexible kinship’ draws attention to the strategic uses that are made of kinship in the context of migration and diaspora: the adjustments to cultural, political, and legal borders that lead to changes in family forms and in the relations between kin. Using a multi‐generational perspective, I examine how families were shaped by successive changes and reversals in legal‐political and economic events and conjunctures over the long twentieth century. I argue for the importance of addressing transnational border‐crossing practices that involve not just a spatial extension of networks but also legal strategies within the host locality. I further show that if it is true that the Confucian hierarchical order has conditioned transnational practices of flexible kinship, then this hierarchy has not only bent to the circumstances, it has to a great extent been weakened. Finally, I argue that the history of familial adjustments has shaped a habitus that maximizes economic and legal security, especially among women.     

Declining Odds: Kinship, Women's Employment, and Political Economy in Rural Mexico

Some women in San Cosme Mazatecochco, a rural community in central Mexico, whose families have more diverse networks and a slight economic advantage, use the community's flexible kinship system to get more secure employment. But their ability to do so is limited by the larger political economy. As the Mexican economy deteriorates for working-class Mexicans and the class system becomes more closed, more women participate in the labor force and more women have marginal employment, [political economy, kinship, women, class, Mexico]     

The Foundation of Kinship

Men's hunting has dominated the discourse on energy capture and flow in the past decade or so. We turn to women's roles as critical to household formation, pair-bonding, and intergenerational bonds. Their pivotal contributions in food processing and distribution likely promoted kinship, both genetic and affinal, and appear to be the foundation from which households evolved. With conscious recognition of household social units, variable cultural constructions of human kinship systems that were sensitive to environmental and technological conditions could emerge. Kinship dramatically altered the organization of resource access for our species, creating what we term "kinship ecologies." We present simple mathematical models to show how hunting leads to dependence on women's contributions, bonds men to women, and bonds generations together. Kinship, as it organized transfers of food and labor energy centered on women, also became integrated with the biological evolution of human reproduction and life history.     

Kinship and similarity in residency status structure female social networks in black‐and‐white colobus monkeys (colobus vellerosus)

Kinship shapes female social networks in many primate populations in which females remain in their natal group to breed. In contrast, it is unclear to which extent kinship affects the social networks in populations with female dispersal. Female Colobus vellerosus show routine facultative dispersal (i.e., some females remain philopatric and others disperse). This dispersal pattern allowed us to evaluate if facultative dispersed females form social networks shaped by an attraction to kin, to social partners with a high resource holding potential, or to similar social partners in terms of maturational stage, dominance rank, and residency status. During 2008 and 2009, we collected behavioral data via focal and ad libitum sampling of 61 females residing in eight groups at Boabeng‐Fiema, Ghana. We determined kinship based on partial pedigrees and genotypes at 17 short tandem repeat loci. Kinship influenced coalition and affiliation networks in three groups consisting of long‐term resident females with access to a relatively high number of female kin. In contrast, similar residency status was more important than kinship in structuring the affiliation network in one of two groups that contained recent female immigrants. In populations with female dispersal, the occurrence of kin structured social networks may not only depend on the kin composition of groups but also on how long the female kin have resided together. We found no consistent support for females biasing affiliation toward partners with high resource holding potential, possibly due to low levels of contest competition and small inter‐individual differences in resource holding potential. Am J Phys Anthropol 153:365–376, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Sugarcane and Eucalyptus plantation equally limit the movement of two forest‐dependent understory bird species

Habitat fragmentation results in landscape configuration, which affects the species that inhabit it. As a consequence, natural habitat is replaced by different anthropogenic plantation types (e.g. pasture, agriculture, forestry plantations and urban areas). Anthropogenic plantations are important for biodiversity maintenance because some species or functional groups can use it as a complementary habitat. However, depending on plantation permeability, it can act as a barrier to the movement of organisms between habitat patches, such as forest fragments, reducing functional connectivity for many species. Anthropogenic plantations are becoming the most common land use and cover type in the Anthropocene and biodiversity conservation in fragmented landscapes requires information on how different plantation types affect the capacity of the species to move through the landscape. In this study, we evaluated the influence of the type and structure of plantations on the movement of two forest‐dependent understory bird species – plain antvireo (Dysithamnus mentalis) and flavescent warbler (Myiothlyps flaveola) – within a highly fragmented landscape of Atlantic Forest hotspot. Knowing that forestry plantation is assumed to be more permeable to dependent forest bird species than open ones, we selected six study areas containing a forest fragment and surrounding plantation: three with sugarcane plantation and three with Eucalyptus sp. plantation. We used playback calls to stimulate the birds to leave forest fragments and traverse the plantations. Control trials were also carried out inside the forest fragments to compare the distances crossed. We observed that individuals moved longer distances inside forest than between plantation types, which demonstrate that plantations do constrict the movements of both species. The two plantation types equally impeded the movements of the species, suggesting the opposite of the general assumption that forestry plantations are more permeable. Our results indicate that, for generalist species, plantation type does not matter, but its presence negatively impacts movement of these bird species. We highlight that plantations have negative influences on the movements of common bird species, and discuss why this is important when setting conservation priorities.     

Abundance and composition of forest-dwelling anurans in cashew plantations in a tropical semi-evergreen forest landscape

Plantation crops in tropical human-modified landscapes provide alternative habitats to biodiversity outside protected areas. The Western Ghats of India are home to a mosaic of closely spaced habitats, including forests and agroecosystems. Cashew is a widely grown plantation crop in the northern Western Ghats and is known to provide economic and societal benefits. However, its role as a supplementary habitat for anurans is not well understood. We assessed the factors that influence understorey anuran composition and abundance in cashew plantations, forest edges, and forest interiors in Tillari Conservation Reserve, Maharashtra. Species composition of cashew plantations differed significantly from forests and was positively influenced by understorey and canopy cover. Cashew plantations had a near equal abundance of anurans as that of forest edges and interiors, which could be due to the preponderance of habitat generalists. Understorey positively influenced anuran abundance while ambient temperature had a negative influence. Reduced understorey and low canopy cover represent habitat modifications that occur in cashew plantations. Such structural changes could lead to reduced environmental refuges for anurans, thereby exposing them to large variations in temperature and moisture. Cashew plantations in Tillari Conservation Reserve serve as supplementary habitats for anurans. That said, cashew cultivation practices and markets must be understood before biodiversity-friendly plantation practices are proposed.     

Roles of fragmented and logged forests for bird communities in industrial Acacia mangium plantations in Indonesia

Industrial timber plantations severely impact biodiversity in Southeast Asia. Forest fragments survive within plantations, but their conservation value in highly deforested landscapes in Southeast Asia is poorly understood. In this study, we compared bird assemblages in acacia plantations and fragmented forests in South Sumatra to evaluate each habitat’s potential conservation value. To clarify the impact of habitat change, we also analyzed the response of feeding guild composition. Five habitat types were studied: large logged forest (LLF), burnt logged forest (BLF), remnant logged forest (RLF), 4-year-old acacia plantation (AP4), and 1-year-old acacia plantation (AP1). Estimated species richness (Chao 2) was highest in LLF then AP4 and BLF, while AP1 and RLF had lower estimated species richness. Community composition was roughly divided into two groups by non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination: acacia plantation and logged forest. Sallying substrate-gleaning insectivores, such as drongos, broadbills, and some flycatchers, were restricted to LLF, whereas acacia plantation hosted many terrestrial frugivores, such as doves. Although fragmented forests in our study site lacked several common tropical forest species, these fragments provide an important habitat for some sallying and terrestrial insectivores. A network of small riparian remnant forests could be a complementary habitat for some species, while the conservation value of burnt forest might be low. In conclusion, the highly fragmented forests in plantations are suboptimal habitats for birds but are still very important, because large primary forest blocks have been nearly lost in the surrounding landscape.     

Surfies versus Westies: Kinship,Mateship and Sexuality in the Cronulla Riot

In the predominantly affluent and Anglo Sutherland Shire in southern suburban Sydney, neighbourhood and extended kinship ties continue to exert powerful forces shaping local identities. During the riot of 11 December 2005 these identities were brought into relief by being pitted against the Lebanese immigrant youth who have been spatially and morally separated from Anglo‐Australians. I argue that the strong homosociality exhibited in several different contexts by young Anglo‐Australian men (the barbecue area, a sports team's ‘gang bang’, the violent defence of a neighbourhood controlled beach) and young Lebanese Australian men (paternal cousin and fraternal solidarities, an infamous series of gang rapes, their response to the White riot at Cronulla) are forms of separation that produce particular kinds of male sexual, class and ethnic subjects. I propose that a study of the role of kinship and cohort relationships in Anglo‐Australian and Lebanese‐Australian male groups should include the nature of incestophobia as an essential component of the precipitating fantasies leading to the riot and the subsequent retaliation.     

Conservation opportunities in commercial plantations: The case of mammals

Enhancing the structural complexity of commercial plantations could enrich the presence of mammals within them. We tested this hypothesis through a meta-analysis in order to determine whether more complex plantations, with a dense understory, can sustain more mammal diversity and if mammals respond differently pending on its taxonomic affiliation, body size, and diet group. We recorded 71 cases of forest–plantation comparisons, and 10 cases of plantation–plantation comparisons. Both richness and abundance of native mammals were lower in plantations than in native forests, although there was no significant difference in body size, dietary group, and taxonomic affiliation between those two habitats. Complex plantations showed higher richness and abundance of native mammals, independently of the plantation type. Taxonomic affiliation, body size and diet did not significantly differ between complex and simple plantations. Structural complexity of commercial plantations may increase mammal diversity, hence, enriching the auxiliary value of forestry plantations for biological conservation. Therefore, forest plantation management ought to pursue the enhancement of structural complexity.     

Afforestation effects on vegetation structure and diversity of grasslands in southern Brazil: The first years

We evaluated the effects of afforestation on the composition and structure of southern Brazilian subtropical grasslands directly beneath tree plantations, in pastures, and in permanent protection areas near watercourses. Cover of plants was registered in 120 plots of 1 m² in grasslands located at two distances from small watercourses in pasture and eucalypt plantation areas within a livestock ranching landscape. Livestock density is reduced in plantation areas. Species composition beneath tree plantations was significantly different from both pasture and nearby permanent protection areas. Permanent protection areas near plantations were also compositionally different from pastures. Eucalypt plantation was the environment type where ruderals were most abundant. Growth form cover distribution in pasture areas showed a consistent pattern, with graminous herbs being the most common growth form followed by prostrate herbs, prostrate subshrubs, and standing subshrubs. In plantation areas, the dominance of the graminoid herb growth form increased markedly, as well as standing herbs. These increases occurred mainly at the expense of prostrate herbs and subshrubs, which were significantly reduced. Plot-level species density was significantly affected by distance from watercourse and, more importantly, was significantly influenced by the interaction between management regime and distance to watercourse. It was reduced in eucalypt plantations relative to permanent protected areas. Current management of eucalypt plantations in southern Brazil produce unsuitable conditions for grassland species to thrive within plantations. Livestock densities <1.0 animal unit ha^?1 in eucalypt plantations undermines the ability of surrounding permanent protection areas to act as ecological networks for biodiversity conservation.