[Xmca-l] Re: kinship

[Martin Packer]

> a couple without children is a “jia"

And a couple with children?

(And a couple with a pig?  tehe)

Martin




> On Jan 8, 2018, at 4:12 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto: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 <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
>> 
>> 



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)