A Phylogenetic Comparative Study of Bantu Kinship Terminology Finds Limited Support for Its Co-Evolution with Social Organisation

The classification of kin into structured groups is a diverse phenomenon which is ubiquitous in human culture. For populations which are organized into large agropastoral groupings of sedentary residence but not governed within the context of a centralised state, such as our study sample of 83 historical Bantu-speaking groups of sub-Saharan Africa, cultural kinship norms guide all aspects of everyday life and social organization. Such rules operate in part through the use of differing terminological referential systems of familial organization. Although the cross-cultural study of kinship terminology was foundational in Anthropology, few modern studies have made use of statistical advances to further our sparse understanding of the structuring and diversification of terminological systems of kinship over time. In this study we use Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods of phylogenetic comparison to investigate the evolution of Bantu kinship terminology and reconstruct the ancestral state and diversification of cousin terminology in this family of sub-Saharan ethnolinguistic groups. Using a phylogenetic tree of Bantu languages, we then test the prominent hypothesis that structured variation in systems of cousin terminology has co-evolved alongside adaptive change in patterns of descent organization, as well as rules of residence. We find limited support for this hypothesis, and argue that the shaping of systems of kinship terminology is a multifactorial process, concluding with possible avenues of future research.     

The Criterion of Polarity

I wish to show that the criterion of polarity is inconsistent with Murdock's conceptual frame for the analysis of kinship terminology. The ignoring or recognition of polarity is a consequence of the ignoring or recognition of the other criteria. However, the criterion of polarity is not merely an unnecessary addition; it might also lead to wrong conclusions. The main error is that Murdock tries to define polarity, only being relevant on the relational level, on the Egocentered level, where kinship terminology is normally analyzed. [kinship terminology]     

A Relational Analysis of American Kinship Terminology

As an alternative to traditional semantic analysis using class-product logic ("Componential analysis"), it is proposed that the possibilities of analysis in terms of relative products be explored in appropriate lexical-taxonomic domains, particularly kinship. In such analyses the order of components is intrinsic to meaning. The process is illustrated by an analysis of American kinship terminology.     

THE MEANINGS OF KINSHIP AMONG THE ESE EJJA OF NORTHERN BOLIVIA

This article focuses on the construction of relatedness among an Amazonian people of northern Bolivia. In analysing the Ese Ejja's kinship terminology and practices, it engages with the widespread stress on the processual nature of relatedness encountered in Amazonian studies. The article shows that, for the Ese Ejja, kinship relations are made through shared practices, although in some important respects kinship is considered to be given at birth. Given kinship is considered fixed, whereas processual kinship is open to contestation. The article argues that processual and given aspects of kinship must be considered together in order to account for local understandings of relatedness. The data presented invite further investigation into Amazonian ideas about the sharing of substance through filiation. This has important implications for the understanding of the conceptualization of cross- and parallel cousins. The article also suggests that in Amazonia otherness is not always given, as has been extensively argued, and that, in the context of Ese Ejja kinship relations, it is created through marriage and it is constantly made and undone.     

The Comanche Kinship System in Historical Perspective1

Abstract

An historical study of the Comanche kinship system throws new light on processes of kinship change. The Comanche are an unique group which underwent a long neriod of acculturation with little or no change in its system of kinship termirnology. Before the turn of the 18th century the Conanche were closely associated with the Northern Shoshoni of the Great Basin. In earlier times the Comanche, like the Northern Shoshoni, had a culture similar to the Westerr; Shoshoni groups of later periods, Toward the end of the 18th century both the Comanche and the Northern Shoshoni acquired the horse; this event produced numerous changes in Comanche culture, Later, when the Comanche migrated to the Southern Plains, further changes took place in their social organization.

In spite of these changes, the Comanche system of kinship terminology rermained remarkably stable. Both in pre-Plains and pre-horse times the Comanche had a balanced division of labor, bilocal residence, bilateral groups of kin, bilateral descent, and Hawaiian nomenclature. After their acquisition of the horse and their migration to the Plains, the bicentered division of labor became natricentered; and bilocal residence changed to natrilocal, But Comanche descent remained bilateral and ownership, private and individualized. This suggests that the stability of the descent and ownershin systems made for stability in kinshio terminology.     

Hocus Pocus and Extensionism in Central Malaya: Notes on Semai Kinship Terminology

This paper presents componential definitions of two sets of Semai kinship terminology gathered in two Semai settlements. A comparison of these definitions with each other and with Semai rules about proper terminology usage brings several inconsistencies to light. These inconsistencies seem to suggest that a modified componential analysis conforms to the cognitive categories of the Semai if the extensionist hypothesis that terms have both primary and derived meanings is taken into account. [Semai, componential analysis, extensionist hypothesis, Malayan aborigines, Austroasiatic].     

The kinship system of the Aghriā: a case study of peasants in Middle India

The kinship system of the Aghriā offers new data on Middle Indian kinship and in particular on a dominant peasant caste, immigrated into 'tribal' northwestern Orissa. Their kinship system shows an elaborate terminology as well as an impressive autonomy of the different levels of kinship. The categories, for example, do not correspond to the ideal and practice of cross-cousin marriage, which itself seems to be in the process of change.  

Résumé

Le système de parenté des Aghriā fournit de nouvelles données sur la notion de parenté en Inde centrale, et en particulier chez une caste de paysans dominants qui ont immigré dans le Nord-ouest « tribal >> de l'Orissa. Le système de parenté s'accompagne d'une terminologie élaborée ainsi que d'une autonomie impressionnante des différents niveaux de parenté. Les catégories ne correspondent pas, par exemple, à l'idéal ni à la pratique des mariages entre cousins, qui semblent eux-mêmes en train d'évoluer.     

India and the Muslim Punjab: a unified approach to South Asian kinship

The comparison of kinship of different South Asian regions with the Muslim Punjab reveals basic invariants, thus denying a fundamental division between the Dravidian South and the Indo-Aryan North, though concepts of kinship reveal themselves in different media: Muslim Punjabi kinship is expressed primarily in gift exchange, but exhibits characteristics commonly associated with the South Indian terminology. The present article argues for an approach which takes meaning embedded in the 'act' or 'person' as non-separable from 'culture', and grasps kinship as structuring the dynamic relation between self and other, regarded as ontological categories.  

Résumé

La comparaison de la parenté entre les différentes régions du sud de l'Asie et le Pendjab musulman révèle des constantes fondamentales et remet ainsi en question la division de principe entre le Sud dravidien et le Nord indo-aryen, bien que les concepts de parenté trouvent des expressions différentes : dans le Pendjab musulman, la parenté s'exprime principalement à travers l'échange de dons mais présente des caractéristiques habituellement associées à la terminologie du sud de l'Inde. Le présent article plaide en faveur d'une approche considérant la signification de « l'acte >> ou de la « personne >> en tant qu'entité indissociable de la « culture >>, et aborde la parenté comme un moyen de structurer la relation dynamique entre soi-même et l'autre, considérés comme des catégories ontologiques.     

Introduction: Reclaiming Paradigms Lost

This introduction is a critical response to claims made about the demise and revival of the sub‐discipline of kinship studies. Contemporary calls to a reclaimed and revitalised area rest, ironically, on a misplaced concentration on the preoccupations of dominant cultures, one of the grounds used to discard kinship in the past. It is argued that many of the issues debated up to the 1970s in the domain of kinship involve more general problems such as arguments about structure and process, gender and biology and the way in which indigenous categories are to be apprehended and accommodated in a genuinely comparative discipline. The case is also made that kinship's demise is largely an Anglocentric phenomenon and that the continuing importance of many of the issues debated in the past, such as the relationship between people and land and its local ideological representations and global consequences, make knowledge of kinship's more exotic manifestations vital to contemporary graduates. The final section introduces the papers in the volume, each of which addresses, in a contemporary and critical way, an area that was important to previous kinship debates and remains of interest in the present.     

Why Do the Karo Batak Prefer Women with Big Feet?

Men may find women with small feet relative to body size more attractive because foot size reliably indexes nubility—i.e., age and parity. I collected judgments of attractiveness in response to drawings of women with varying foot sizes from a sample of 159 Karo Batak respondents from North Sumatra, Indonesia, as part of a collaborative project on foot size and attractiveness. The data revealed a contrarian preference among the Karo Batak for women with big feet. The judgments were compared with the results of an existing cross-cultural study that found a preference for women with small feet in aggregate, but a mix of small- and large-foot preferences in the societies taken individually. Using contingency table analysis, I found that ecology and less exposure to Western media were associated with a preference for women with big feet; patriarchal values were not. The findings suggest that human mating preferences may arise in response to local ecological conditions, and may persist and spread via cultural transmission. This has implications for the concept of universality espoused in some versions of evolutionary psychology.     

KINSHIP MATTERS: WOMEN's LAND CLAIMS IN THE SANTAL PARGANAS, JHARKHAND

This article discusses the strengthening of kinship ties amongst the Santal community in a village in Jharkhand state in India. The context of progressive marginalization from the state and markets has resulted in the Santals asserting their adivasi identity by recourse to customary institutions as well as rigidifying patrilineal rules of inheritance. While this leads generally to an erosion of women's rights to inherit land, under certain circumstances women are supported by kin elders when they bring grievances to the legal courts. Women's relationship to their kinship group thus seems ambiguous: kinship can simultaneously be not only a source of deprivation and suppression but also a way of staking claims to resources, especially in the face of the inadequacies of formal state mechanisms.     

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.     

Mitotic Frequency Determinations and Micro-Photometric Feulgen Dye Measurements in Root Tips

Treating a Feulgen stained (10 min. acetic-alcohol fixation, 8 min. hydrolysis) onion root tip with 5% aqueous pectinase for 6 hours causes it to disintegrate on shaking in 1 ml. water into a suspension of stained cells, either individual or in small groups. Vicia faba and pea root tips require 15 minutes hydrolysis and 12 hours pectinase treatment. Absence of cell destruction allows absolute cell-number determination by Brown and Rickless' counting chamber technic. By centrif uging the cells down, resuspending them in 2 drops of a Karo syrup-phosphate buffer mixture (2 parts Karo to 1 part 0.5M, pH7 buffer) and mounting a small drop of the now concentrated suspension, a semipermanent slide containing a concentration of well-spread, randomized cells suitable for rapid mitotic frequency determination is obtained. Scoring about 1,000 cells as to nuclear stage gives a representative, workable statistical sample and takes only 20-30 minutes if interphases are recorded on a mechanical tally. Permanent slides can be prepared by carrying the intact, stained, pectinase-treated root through a water wash, 70%, 95%, and absolute alcohol, shaking and performing the centrifuge procedure with Diaphane in place of the Karo mixture. Although the pectinase treatment appears to introduce some error, the Diaphane mounts are adequate for conventional microphotometric Feulgen dye (DNA equivalent) determinations. The three dimensional character of the cells is retained in all preparations.     

Testing isonymy with paternal and maternal lineages in the early Québec population: the impact of polyphyletism and demographic differentials

Isonymy is an ingenious and useful approach to studying kinship in human populations. However, it relies on assumptions that are difficult to verify. In this study, we provided a way to assess, in the early Québec population, the impact of factors such as polyphyletism, unbalanced sex-ratio among founders, and age differentials between spouses. All data were taken from the Population Register of Early Québec, which contains births, marriages, and deaths (>712,000) recorded in parish registers from the beginning of colonization (in 1608) to 1800. More specifically, using the 70,869 marriages recorded during that period, we compared kinship estimates given by genealogies, surnames, and paternal and maternal lineages. We also calculated a fifth coefficient of kinship by combining paternal and maternal lineage, thus providing a new way to test the isonymy method. The results show a good agreement between genealogical and isonymous estimates. However, this good correspondence is due to counterbalancing biases. Some of the implications of our results are discussed in the context of colonial America.     

Synergistic effects of kinship, sex and rank in the behavioural interactions of captive stump-tailed macaques

In almost all non-human primate species kinship, sex and rank bias the patterning of interactions among subjects, seemingly in a way that favours the individual's fitness. A number of studies have been done in order to study separately the effects of these variables, concluding that an adequate model of interactions cannot be developed assuming preponderance of a single variable. The 'willingness' of one animal to interact with another can be explained as the result of assessing the possible outcomes (proximate and/or ultimate) of the interaction. The interrelationship of variables such as kinship, sex and rank, among others, provides the actors with a basis for deciding their rates of social interactions. The following study was done to assess whether kinship, rank and sex exerted independent, additive effects in the within-group distributions of eight social behaviour categories of captive groups of stump-tailed macaques. We found that the three variables synergistically affected the patterning of all behavioural categories. This suggests that the pay-offs of social interactions do not vary linearly, being intrinsically correlated with the actors' attributes so that uncertainty in the choice of a potential partner is minimized.     

Conceiving relatedness: non-substantial relations among the Kamea of Papua New Guinea

This article considers the implications of imagining kinship as a non-embodied relation. In recent years, it has become commonplace to argue that relatedness is a gradually acquired state that can be built over time and by non-sexual means. In this view, relationships of consanguinity are not given at birth but are created through purposeful acts of feeding and caring. Here, I address a question that has been less commonly asked by anthropologists: need kinship always be imagined as entailing an embodied connection? Is there a way of thinking about cross-generational relationships that does not ground them in bodily connectedness, or, at the very least, one that imagines contexts in which they are not embodied as a substantial link between people? Drawing upon data collected among Kamea of Papua New Guinea, I describe a world in which the parent-child tie is conceptualized as one that is inherently non-embodied.     

Nobody likes to sleep alone: aspiring to kinship futures in post-Soviet Cuba

In post-Soviet Cuba, instead of the political future envisioned by Revolutionary authorities, poor residents of Havana aspire to create kinship futures where there is no need to ‘sleep alone’. Here, the idea of ‘sleeping together’ represents a trustworthy social bond that shelters a person from loneliness over time. For these habaneros, sexual love between men and women cannot be trusted, since it is often plagued by suspicions of material interest. By contrast, they view parent-child connections as a way to secure a cared-for future for themselves. Nevertheless, as Cuban socialism undergoes transformations, gendered inequalities create obstacles for many people's aspirations for parenthood. This article explores the contrast between sexual and filial love in Cubans’ efforts to create kinship futures for themselves, thereby adding to our understandings of poor people's life projects.     

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.