[Xmca-l] Re: kinship

Sun Jan 7 16:07:38 PST 2018

Apologies if this is another trip round the mulberry bush (or the
maypole?), but this is a conversation that has, as one might imagine, been
quite a big deal in anthropology. Here's a quick and brief summary.

Initially, "kinship" in anthropology was defined as the way that it has
traditionally been defined in European cultures - as based on blood. (other
forms are kinship, e.g., adoption, were seen as derivative of the central
trope of blood relation).

Then along came a fellow by the name of David Schneider (I attached a
picture, cf. David and Martin's pictures of Malinowski). Although Schneider
couldn't write his way out of a paper bag, he conducted field work on the
Micronesian island of Yap and published a few books on the subject that
forever changed the way that anthropologists' think about kinship.
Essentially, he challenged this blood-based notion of kinship by showing
how Yapese kinship formation is not blood-based (although blood based
relationships are still recognized, they do not hold the same sense that a
blood-based notion of "family" does).

Following Schneider, the field of kinship studies spent a bit of time in a
relativistic malaise, shifting between those who stuck to the old view of
kinship and those who refused to use the concept at all.

Then along came work that would eventually become what has come to be known
as "new kinship studies". This approach sought to recover the concept of
"kinship" without the concept of "kinship-as-blood". In the view of new
kinship studies, "kinship" is understood, as Rupert Stasch has put it, as
"intersubjective belonging" or "mutuality of being" (mentioned in the
Sahlins essay that is attached).

New kinship studies have also turned their gaze back onto kinship in
European/Western/American culture (and indeed, Schneider's other big book
was titled American Kinship). These folks have noted that even in these
cultures, previously thought to be entirely blood-based, one can find lots
of slippage from a simple model of blood-based kinship. Janet Carsten is a
key figure in this regard and she looks at, among other things, how
technologies have changed kinship formation (think test-tube babies and
sperm extraction from deceased persons - fun stuff!).

One of the best summaries of the new kinship studies is Marshall Sahlin's
essay What Kinship is? I have attached it here as it has a wonderful
collection of examples of how kinship is formed in various places around
the globe.

I guess the more interesting question for this group is: what does this
have to do with Vygotsky/XMCA?

-greg
[image: Inline image 1]

On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 4:28 PM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:

> By your definition or theirs, Michael?
>
> Martin
>
>
>
> > On Jan 7, 2018, at 6:23 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth <
> wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > but plants form families, too
> >
> > the familiar is linked to family apparently in languages that have
> adopted
> > the term from Latin, but not languages as Polish or Russian
> >
> > Michael
> >
> >
> > Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------------
> > Applied Cognitive Science
> > MacLaurin Building A567
> > University of Victoria
> > Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
> > http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>
> >
> > New book: *The Mathematics of Mathematics
> > <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
> directions-in-mathematics-and-science-education/the-
> mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
> >
> > On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 2:49 PM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net>
> wrote:
> >
> >> So James,
> >>
> >> Could a childless couple in China be called a family?
> >>
> >> Or would they need to have a pig?  :)
> >>
> >> To all: In English we don’t call a childless couple a family, do we?
> >>
> >> 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 5:45 PM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Just to add an etymological aspect that you might be interested to know
> >>> (this is because Chines is logographical).
> >>>
> >>> According to the Chinese Oracle, family 家 has two parts: the upper
> >>> part 宀 refers
> >>> to "room"; the lower part 豕 refers to "pig". In the ancient times,
> people
> >>> raised pigs in their houses, so having pigs in a house was a hallmark
> of
> >>> living. In modern Chinese, family also indicates "relationship", e.g.
> >> 亲如一家
> >>> as close as a family.
> >>>
> >>> James
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> *_____________________________________*
> >>>
> >>> *James Ma*  *https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
> >>> <https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>   *
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 7 January 2018 at 21:30, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> In Chinese and in Korean, the word "family" is related to housing
> rather
> >>>> than to kinship. In European languages it is the other way around.
> This
> >>>> does suggest something semantic, no?
> >>>>
> >>>> 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 Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 6:22 AM, Greg Thompson <
> >> greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Martin,
> >>>>> Well that is a difficult question to answer without knowing what you
> >> mean
> >>>>> by "family"?
> >>>>> What in the world do you mean by "family"?
> >>>>> -greg
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 12:59 PM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> I am struggling with the way ‘family’ and ‘kinship’ have been
> defined,
> >>>> or
> >>>>>> not defined, in psychology and anthropology. One question that has
> >>>>> occurred
> >>>>>> to me is whether a word equivalent to ‘family’ exists in every
> >>>> language.
> >>>>>> When I Google this, Google responds ‘Ask Siri’…  :(
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Anyone have an idea?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Martin
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> 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
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_
> >> source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
> >>> Virus-free.
> >>> www.avast.com
> >>> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_
> >> source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
> >>> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
> >>
> >>
>
>

-- 
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
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