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Kinship Systems (kinship + system)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences66%

Selected Abstracts

Kinship systems and language choice among academics in Shillong, Northeast India

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 2 2001
Anne Hvenekilde
In Shillong, the capital of the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, Indo-Aryan languages from the plains meet the Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic minority languages of the hills, and the result is a degree of multilingualism that is high even by Indian standards. English is widely used by academic groups everywhere in India, but structured interviews with all 17 faculty members of two departments at North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong reveal special reasons why some parents now choose to use English with their children rather than their own mother tongue. Caste imposes fewer barriers in this part of India than elsewhere, and marriages across ethnic groups are common, but con ?icting kinship practices can bring complications. If a woman from a matrilineal group marries a man from a patrilineal group, both families will, according to their traditions, consider the children to belong to their kinship group. Using English with their children, rather than choosing the language of just one set of grand-parents, can be a way of avoiding potential con?ict. Thus, in addition to the use of English in higher education, increasing geographic mobility, and the general prestige of English, the con?icting demands of different kinship systems needs to be considered among the factors contributing to the spread of English at the cost of local languages in Northeast India. [source]

Age at first reproduction and economic change in the context of differing kinship ecologies

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 4 2009
Donna L. Leonetti
Kinship systems which tend to be based on ecologies of subsistence also assign differential power, privilege, and control to human connections that present pathways for manipulation of resource access and transfer. They can be used in this way to channel resource concentrations in women and hence their reproductive value. Thus, strategic female life course trade-offs and their timing are likely to be responsive to changing preferences for qualities in women as economic conditions change. Female life histories are studied in two ethnic groups with differing kinship systems in NE India where the competitive market economy is now being felt by most households. Patrilineal Bengali (599 women) practice patrilocal residence with village exogamy and matrilineal Khasi (656 women) follow matrilocal residence with village endogamy, both also normatively preferring three-generation extended households. These households have helpful senior women and significantly greater income. Age at first reproduction (AFR), achieved adult growth (height) and educational level (greater than 6 years or less) are examined in reproductive women, ages 16,50. In both groups, women residing normatively are older at AFR and taller than women residing nonnormatively. More education is also associated with senior women. Thus, normative residence may place a woman in the best reproductive location, and those with higher reproductive and productive potential are often chosen as households face competitive market conditions. In both groups residing in favorable reproductive locations is associated with a faster pace of fertility among women, as well as lower offspring mortality among Khasi, to compensate for a later start. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Changing the subject , about cousin marriage, among other things,

THE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 4 2008
Adam Kuper
The original sin of anthropology was to divide the world into civilized and savage. The social systems of all those other peoples supposedly rested upon a foundation of blood relationships. Anthropologists therefore became at once the experts on the primitive and on kinship. In the 1970s Western kinship systems began to undergo radical change. Simultaneously, the old orthodoxies about kinship crumbled in anthropology. Young ethnographers generally lost interest in the topic. Kinship systems have nevertheless not gone away, out there in the world. But to understand them we must first abandon the opposition between the modern and the traditional, the West and the Rest. Résumé Le péché originel de l'anthropologie fut de diviser le monde en « civilisé » et « sauvage », en partant du principe que les systèmes sociaux des autres reposaient sur des fondations constituées par les liens du sang. Les anthropologues devinrent ainsi à la fois les experts des primitifs et de la parenté. Dans les années 1970, les systèmes de parenté occidentaux ont amorcé des changements radicaux. Dans le même temps, les vieilles orthodoxies anthropologiques relatives à la parenté ont commencéà s'effriter, et les jeunes ethnographes se sont pour la plupart désintéressés du sujet. Les systèmes de parenté n'ont pas disparu pour autant dans le monde mais il faut, pour les comprendre, renoncer d'abord à l'opposition entre modernité et tradition, entre l'Occident et le reste du monde. [source]

Perspectives on American Kinship in the Later 1990s

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 3 2000
Colleen L. Johnson
This paper reviews the current status of kinship research in the United States and identifies factors that might account for the declining interest in the subject among family researchers. The analysis uses both structural and cultural factors to illustrate how they can determine the diversity in kinship functioning that ranges from those family systems where kinship relationships flourish and those where they play a small part in family life. The structural and demographic variables determine the numbers and availability of kin, whereas the cultural variables determine the norms that establish the motivation to sustain kinship bonds. To illustrate how these factors operate among subgroups in the United States, I analyze three types of kinship systems: the lineal emphasis in White families of the very old; the collateral emphasis in the families of their Black counterparts; and the egocentric emphasis of White suburban families that are undergoing marital change. [source]

Age at first reproduction and economic change in the context of differing kinship ecologies

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 4 2009
Donna L. Leonetti
Kinship systems which tend to be based on ecologies of subsistence also assign differential power, privilege, and control to human connections that present pathways for manipulation of resource access and transfer. They can be used in this way to channel resource concentrations in women and hence their reproductive value. Thus, strategic female life course trade-offs and their timing are likely to be responsive to changing preferences for qualities in women as economic conditions change. Female life histories are studied in two ethnic groups with differing kinship systems in NE India where the competitive market economy is now being felt by most households. Patrilineal Bengali (599 women) practice patrilocal residence with village exogamy and matrilineal Khasi (656 women) follow matrilocal residence with village endogamy, both also normatively preferring three-generation extended households. These households have helpful senior women and significantly greater income. Age at first reproduction (AFR), achieved adult growth (height) and educational level (greater than 6 years or less) are examined in reproductive women, ages 16,50. In both groups, women residing normatively are older at AFR and taller than women residing nonnormatively. More education is also associated with senior women. Thus, normative residence may place a woman in the best reproductive location, and those with higher reproductive and productive potential are often chosen as households face competitive market conditions. In both groups residing in favorable reproductive locations is associated with a faster pace of fertility among women, as well as lower offspring mortality among Khasi, to compensate for a later start. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Changing the subject , about cousin marriage, among other things,

THE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 4 2008
Adam Kuper
The original sin of anthropology was to divide the world into civilized and savage. The social systems of all those other peoples supposedly rested upon a foundation of blood relationships. Anthropologists therefore became at once the experts on the primitive and on kinship. In the 1970s Western kinship systems began to undergo radical change. Simultaneously, the old orthodoxies about kinship crumbled in anthropology. Young ethnographers generally lost interest in the topic. Kinship systems have nevertheless not gone away, out there in the world. But to understand them we must first abandon the opposition between the modern and the traditional, the West and the Rest. Résumé Le péché originel de l'anthropologie fut de diviser le monde en « civilisé » et « sauvage », en partant du principe que les systèmes sociaux des autres reposaient sur des fondations constituées par les liens du sang. Les anthropologues devinrent ainsi à la fois les experts des primitifs et de la parenté. Dans les années 1970, les systèmes de parenté occidentaux ont amorcé des changements radicaux. Dans le même temps, les vieilles orthodoxies anthropologiques relatives à la parenté ont commencéà s'effriter, et les jeunes ethnographes se sont pour la plupart désintéressés du sujet. Les systèmes de parenté n'ont pas disparu pour autant dans le monde mais il faut, pour les comprendre, renoncer d'abord à l'opposition entre modernité et tradition, entre l'Occident et le reste du monde. [source]