[Xmca-l] Re: kinship

[David Kellogg]

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
>
>