[Xmca-l] Re: kinship

[HENRY SHONERD]

Great discussion! 

I’ve been watching episodes with my wife of “The Crown” and int’s interesting to view the chat discussion on kinship throught the lens of the royal family during the latter half of the 20th century. Beth Fernholt a little while ago cited an article in the NYTimes on estrangement, which certainly would apply to the happenings on "The Crown”. You probably learn as much about the meaning of familly by observing when a family isn’t acting like a family, and when the parts of a family disagree on how a family SHOULD act. Also, prototype theory (Eleanor Rosch): What do people agree on as the prototypical family?  I don’t mean a checklist of attributes. Rather, which is the kind of critter you would identify as more dog-like: a chihuaha or a German shepherd. This would vary across culture and time. Might one apply to the meaning of “family”?

My understanding of the term “cognate” is that it pairs two words in different languages with similar meaning and (phonological) form. From google I get: “...having the same linguistic derivation as another; from the same original word or root (e.g., English is, German ist, Latin est, from Indo-European esti ). So, that strictly speaking Chinese and English have no cognates? And even if they do, “family” in English would not likely have a cognate in Chinese, nor the other way round. 
I guess the more general point is the importance of the historical when talking about meaning and form in language, especially on the cHat. 

Henry



> On Jan 8, 2018, at 2:12 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Martin:
> 
> In Chinese (all Chinese, because all Chinese is based on the common written
> language James was speaking of), a couple without children is a "jia". If
> you are single, "jia" refers to your parents. If you are married, your
> spouse is your "jia" whether or not you have children. When my
> mother-in-law was alive, and my wife and I went home for Spring Festival,
> it was always "hui jia". Now that she is dead, my wife says "hui guo" (i.e.
> "return to our country" rather than "return to our family") because "jia"
> refers to me.
> 
> Korean is exactly the same, because the word for "family" is taken from
> Chinese. But even in pure Korean, there is a clear connection with housing
> (so for example when I humbly refer to my wife in pure, non-Chinese
> inflected, Korean I say "uri jibsaram", literally, "the person in our
> house").
> 
> Whorf would probably turn your question around: are there ANY languages
> besides Standard Average European that DO have a cognate for
> English "family"? The answer in the two articles that Greg sent (Bloch and
> Sahlins) seems to be no. On the other hand, both Chinese and Korean do have
> the English distinction between "house" and "home", although it is not
> grammaticized as it is in English (there is no equivalent for the
> grammatical distinction between "in the house" and "at home" because
> Chinese has neither prepositions nor articles).
> 
> 
> 
> David Kellogg
> 
> Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
> Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
> Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
> 
> Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
> 
> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 1:43 AM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Greg,
>> 
>> The question I initially posted was really very simple: is there a
>> language that does not have a cognate to the English word ‘family’? (I
>> think ‘cognate’ is the correct term; what I mean is a word that would
>> generally be translated as ‘family.’)
>> 
>> Now I’ve learned that Chinese (Mandarin?) has a word that might be best
>> translated as ‘household.’ I find that interesting.
>> 
>> The underlying interest? Yes, I’m trying to make sense of the
>> anthropological literature on kinship, and also the psychological
>> literature on ‘contexts of children’s development.’ In both disciplines
>> there seems to be a tendency to assume a definition of family along the
>> lines of child plus biological parents. That’s what I take Malinowski to
>> have been proposing. There are psychologists today who still assume such a
>> definition.
>> 
>> But of course it doesn’t work! There are families where the kids are
>> adopted. There are married couples where the man, for example, has a secret
>> illegitimate child, so they do not form a family. There are single parent
>> families. There are families in which a same-sex couple has a child who is
>> not biologically related to them. There are families who had a surrogate
>> mother. There are now families where the child has 3 biological parents
>> (one provided mitochondrial dna). Note that in several of these kinds of
>> family, there is no ‘blood’ (or genes) shared among the members.
>> 
>> So I started to wonder if there are societies that have nothing that they
>> call family!
>> 
>> But I am also trying to figure out where anthropology is today. For
>> example, is a distinction still drawn between family, clan, and tribe? If
>> so, how are these defined? Sahlins moves between family and clan, for
>> instance. I understand that his proposal is that kinship is at root mutual
>> relations of being, the way people participate in each other’s existence.
>> In that sense, you and I are kin, based on our relationship through xmca.
>> But I don’t think that we are family. So what distinguishes the mutual
>> relations of being that constitute a family?
>> 
>> These are the things I’m confused about. I am rapidly coming once again to
>> the conclusion that understanding nothing of the matter.  :)
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
>> "I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr. Lowie or discuss
>> matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware that my
>> partner does not understand anything in the matter, and I end usually with
>> the feeling that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 7, 2018, at 9:55 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Martin,
>>> 
>>> Yes, I agree that Sahlins didn't offer much in the way of cross-cultural
>>> cognates of "family". But I'm still a little at a loss for why you are so
>>> interested in this English word (e.g., why not "kin"? why not the
>> preferred
>>> word in some other culture that extends to a different set of
>>> relationships). Without a good working definition of what you mean by
>>> "family". Do the other examples that people have given "count" as
>> "family",
>>> e.g., sports teams, brothers-in-arms? Or are you taking the approach that
>>> family=father(biological?)+mother(again, biological, and what about a
>>> second father? or a second mother?)+child(biological? and today, would a
>>> dog do in place of a child - e.g., a couple at the park with their dog
>> who
>>> refer to their grouping as a "family"?).
>>> 
>>> I guess I'm not sure where you are going with this interest in "family"
>>> (and what has it got to do with the kinship relations of this here
>> family?).
>>> 
>>> -greg
>>> 
>>> On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 5:33 PM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Yes, I’ve been reading Sahlins. Very interesting take on kinship, along
>>>> the lines of the ‘ontological turn’ in cultural anthropology. Greg can
>>>> explain that..  :)
>>>> 
>>>> But does Sahlins define family?  (No!)
>>>> 
>>>> Martin
>>>> 
>>>> "I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr. Lowie or discuss
>>>> matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware that my
>>>> partner does not understand anything in the matter, and I end usually
>> with
>>>> the feeling that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 7, 2018, at 7:07 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> <image.png><Sahlins, Marshall - What is Kinship.pdf>
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>>> Assistant Professor
>>> Department of Anthropology
>>> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>>> Brigham Young University
>>> Provo, UT 84602
>>> WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
>>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>> 
>>