Whatever Happened to the Mother? A New Look at the Old Problem of the Mother's Brother in Three New Guinea Societies: Gimi,Daribi, and Iatmul

Kinship systems cannot be analysed as straightforward translations of the ‘facts of nature’ when those facts are limited to the production of a child by a heterosexual couple. Based upon analyses of three New Guinea societies (Gimi, Daribi, and Iatmul), I suggest that kinship systems take account – often by denying – certain ‘facts’ of human reproduction when those facts are extended beyond coitus and parturition to include both the very long period of infantile dependence upon one significant caregiver (always the mother in the societies in question and nearly universally) and the subsequent requirement for the child to be extracted from a dyadic maternal universe. Separation from mother is as critical to the survival and development of the individual as is the original prolonged and intense attachment to her. The question, then, is not whether indigenous peoples accurately understand coitus and conception – they do – but rather the ways in which they manipulate that knowledge in rules and rites of kinship in order to manage the growth and development of a child long after parturition. Rules of kinship and social relations neither ignore nor exist apart from theories of procreation as many anthropologists now claim. Rather, it is precisely because theories of procreation indicate and idealise the flow of bodily substance during coitus and pregnancy that they serve as organisational premises for social relations. The fact that kinship is a symbolic construction does not mean that it is wholly ideological nor, like a language, free to vary in ways that are arbitrary and unconnected to the ‘facts of life’ as Westerners understand them. Even when interlocutors openly deny such understanding and knowledge, especially of the male role in coitus and conception, evidence to the contrary is abundantly provided in myth, ritual, and indigenous theories of procreation. What kinship systems often do show, however, is a strategic denial of the role of the mother who, upon deeper understanding of indigenous concepts of procreation, turns out to be a ‘sterile vessel’ or without substantial contribution to her child. I illustrate this premise by extending earlier analyses of Gimi kinship and reexamining certain materials on neighbouring Daribi provided by Roy Wagner and on Iatmul peoples of the Sepik River as originally described in Naven by Gregory Bateson eighty years ago.     

Social structure is where the hearth is: a "woman's place" in Beti society

Among the patrilineal, virilocal Beti, a people of the Southern Cameroon, the 3 stones of the cooking hearth symbolize the 3 kinship identities which define a woman's place in Beti society: her mother-in-law ("senior co-wife"), her daughter-in-law ("junior co-wife"), and her son-in-law ("daughter's husband"). Among her own descent group she is always a daughter; among her marital relations she is an adult, but a foreigner; but her real place in society is defined in terms of her position among her "co-affines," i.e., those with whom she is linked by common marital ties. A Beti village is the material manifestation of the "house of people," which is composed of a headman, his same-womb brothers, his mother's house's junior co-wives' sons, and his unmarried same-womb sisters and daughters. The house of people's women's children are classified as "of same father." Within the "same father house of people" are a series of matrifocal houses, which form the basis of new domestic units when the headman dies and the mens' house is dismantled. A new house of people is formed with son as headman and mother as "hindwoman." Thus, although the Beti are patrilineal, a man's house of people proceeds from his mother's house, but whether or not a woman becomes a "hindwoman" depends on her sons-in-law's bridewealth payments, which enable her to have daughters-in-law. A woman's becoming a "hindwoman" and originator of a new domestic unit depends on both her mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relation and her mother-in-law/son-in-law relation. Thus in the domestic organization of the village, the making of a woman's place determines the making of a man's. On the level of the lineage system, an analogous process takes place. The Beti are divided into about 100 exogamous, patrilineal, patrilocal clans, each consisting of up to 4 levels of patrilineages, designated by the names of their eponymous female ancestors. Descent is determined by recruitment and alignment. Recruitment proceeds from the matrimonial ties to the mother's husband's group or (in the absence of bridewealth) to her father's group. Alignment is founded on ritual food distribution and operates through co-affinal links between women. On the level of lineage organization a woman's place is determined by a succession of mother-in-law/daughter-in-law ties. The woman's place in Beti society is thus defined by both the static domestic structure and by the dynamic supra-domestic lineage syste.     

Changing electoral politics: The local level

This article explores contemporary notions of Italian kinship—procreation, the family, biological and social relatedness—as they are shaped by programmes of gamete donation (these are programmes that require the use of third‐party egg and semen to achieve conception). The research was carried out in Italian clinics of assisted conception and presents the views of heterosexual couples suffering from impaired infertility. The overall material reveals the power of kinship as a cultural form.     

Ethnopoetics,or the anthropologist as coyote

In most, if not all, societies, incest taboos—perhaps the most universal of cultural taboos—include prohibitions on marriage between parent and child or between siblings. This universality suggests a biological origin, yet the considerable variation across societies in the full range of prohibited marriage relations implies a cultural origin. Correspondingly, theories regarding the origin of incest taboos vary from those that focus on the biological consequences (were marriage-based procreation allowed to include inbred matings) to those that focus on social consequences such as confounding social roles, especially within the family, or restricting networks of interfamily alliances, were marriages to take place between close relatives. For those focusing on the biological consequences, the sexual aversion hypothesis of the anthropologist Edvard Westermarck has played a central role through seemingly providing an empirically grounded, causal link from the phenomenal level of behavior to the ideational level of culture. Yet the matter is not so simple and requires rethinking of what we mean by kinship and how our ideas about kinship relate to the widespread occurrence of incest taboos and the extensive variability in their content.     

Contesting Marshall Sahlins on Kinship

In a recent two‐part article on the nature of kinship, Marshall Sahlins maintains that performative criteria for kin‐reckoning are at least as salient as procreative ones, and that, at conception, an individual is endowed with a wide circle of kin, including the ancestral dead. For both reasons, he argues, there is no warrant for granting privileged status to what anthropologists have called ‘primary’ kinship. The contentions here are that performative criteria are modeled upon procreative ones; that ties to ancestral figures are seen as antithetical to procreative ties; and that, therefore, all kinship constructs are derived from nuclear family relationships. Evidence in support of these contentions is provided from the Mae Enga, Fiji, the Trobriands, and Aboriginal Australia.     

Complex Contagions and the Diffusion of Innovations: Evidence from a Small-N Study

The recent literature on “complex contagions” challenges Granovetter’s classic hypothesis on the strength of weak ties and argues that, when the actors’ choice requires reinforcement from several sources, it is the structure of strong ties that really matters to sustain rapid and wide diffusion. The paper contributes to this debate by reporting on a small-N study that relies on a unique combination of ethnographic data, social network analysis, and computational models. In particular, we investigate two rural populations of Indian and Kenyan potters who have to decide whether to adopt new, objectively more efficient and economically more attractive, technical/stylistic options. Qualitative field data show that religious sub-communities within the Indian and Kenyan populations exhibit markedly different diffusion rates and speed over the last thirty years. To account for these differences, we first analyze empirically observed kinship networks and advice networks, and, then, we recreate the actual aggregate diffusion curves through a series of empirically calibrated agent-based simulations. Combining the two methods, we show that, while single exposure through heterophilious weak ties were sufficient to initiate the diffusion process, large bridges made of strong ties can in fact lead to faster or slower diffusion depending on the type of signals circulating in the network. We conclude that, even in presence of “complex contagions,” dense local ties cannot be regarded as a sufficient condition for faster diffusion.     

(De)queering Hatshepsut: Binary Bind in Archaeology of Egypt and Kingship Beyond the Corporeal

The representations of Egyptian female king Hatshepsut are, as a consequence of a binary heteronormative sex/gender bind, continuously queered in scholarship. Statements on her body and identity are often made by directly equating her representations with the corporeal. This paper offers a critique of the heteronormative interpretations of Hatshepsut, which often identify her as a cross-dresser, gender-bender or “woman with a beard.” An alternative approach will be attempted with the discussion of her imagery in the context of queer and Actor Network theoretical encounters. This paper argues that the binary bind of the sex/gender system can be traversed through a complex network of actants, including bodies, ancestors, relatives, gods, and material culture.     

How elections are fought in Ascoli: kinship,politics, history and culture

Based on fieldwork and archival study in a small north Puglian town, this article explores the complex interrelationship between kinship and politics. In the context of a recent local election, it seeks to show how ties of kinship and affinity provide a moral framework and idiom for civic cooperation, and how shared political ideologies and a common political heritage define and reinforce a sense of lineage identity. It argues that a failure to engage with the implications of 'kinship beyond the household' has both detracted from the analysis of Italian local politics and impeded our understanding of the long-term resilience of wider kinship forms,especially in periods of acute system change.     

Tradition and Christianity: Controversial Funerals and Concepts of the Person among the Paiwan,Taiwan

This essay focuses on the complex and dynamic relationships between tradition and Christianity among the Paiwan, an Austronesian‐speaking people in Taiwan. The ethnography comes from a village in which adherents of traditional religion and Presbyterians live in the same area, but in separate quarters. They have close kinship and marriage ties; however, the funeral constitutes a major area of controversy and tension. I juxtapose their contrasting representations of death and funerals to highlight their differences and trace the source of their conflict to the ideological domain of concepts of the person. I argue that the differences in their funerals can be explained by the differences in the ways the two groups articulate two versions of the person. Adherents of traditional religion emphasize the holistic side of the person by calling the spirit of the deceased to reunite with the living, whereas Presbyterians stress the individualistic side of the person and maintain the boundary between the living and the dead. I propose that it is the co‐existence of two distinct concepts of the person and the different ways of articulating those concepts which shape the dynamic but often contradictory relationship between tradition and Christianity.     

Disrupting air power: Performativity and the unsettling of geopolitical frames through artworks

This paper advances the concept of disruption, drawing upon Butler's (1993) work on performativity, her engagement with Goffman's (1974) frame analysis and recent work on performativity within critical geopolitics. It argues this approach provides a useful tool with which to elucidate gaps in the iterative processes of geopolitical discourse production that offer opportunities for momentary distortions to these dominant articulations of power. It analyses the utility of this approach through discussion of three artworks by the acclaimed British artist Fiona Banner. In June 2010 she unveiled her prestigious Duveens commission project at Tate Britain. The work, entitled ‘Harrier and Jaguar’, was the most ambitious of a series of engagements with military aircraft which have spanned over a decade of creative work. Banner's work has become synonymous with challenging dominant discourses on power and war especially through textual representations of war films and innovative uses of military aircraft. Beginning with her book project, ‘All the world's fighter planes’ (2004) and moving through her Duveens project to the military aircraft-related work ‘Tornado’ (2010), this paper argues that Banner's work illustrates the utility of the concept of disruption; going beyond simply raising questions about our engagements with military aircraft, to actively disrupting our encounters with and understandings of these objects and thus popular representations of air power.     

Communities of kin and English landed gentry families of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

This article focuses on the kinship networks of the landed gentry of Devon, Lincolnshire and Hertfordshire in the modern period. Using national census household returns, the visitors’ books of a Devon gentry family and correspondence the article reveals dense and meaningful kinship networks centred on the main country house but also woven into the wider familial world of the gentry. Whenever possible, the inheritance of landed estates passed through the male line. But kin networks were bilateral, founded on both birth and marriage, on relations both through the male and the female line. Kin relations provided a range of services within a culture of visiting, epistolary practice and affection, which generated close and cherished family ties.     

ONE NAME,MANY GROUNDS: LAND,MARRIAGE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE AMONG THE OROKAIVA OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

It is proposed, through an examination of published materials on the Orokaiva, that established and even competing models and concepts of ‘kinship’ and marriage (generalized and direct exchange, agnatic descent, clan, balanced reciprocity) have little or no explanatory power since they either do not fit the published facts or they predict the same results, despite published assertions to the contrary. An hypothesis linking relationship terminology, marriage ‘systems’ and land use is proposed. Some features in the ‘system’ of ‘kinship’ terminology appear to be expressive of the ideology of gardening rather than ‘kinship’ and marriage per se.     

Power and Historical Figuring: Rachael Pringle Polgreen's Troubled Archive

Rachael Pringle Polgreen, a freed‘mulatto’ woman who owned an infamous brothel/hotel in Bridgetown, Barbados during the 1770s and 1780s became known to her contemporaries through her role in the (sexual) entertainment of transient naval officers and the visits of Prince William of England. Piecing together ‘evidence’ from her will, estate inventory, a nineteenth‐century novel, a lithograph and an interview with a British officer, I engage Polgreen's complicated and fragmented archive, revealing how Polgreen represents an example of the problems with sources depicting women of African descent who lived in a slave society and the silences that inundate their archive. The first part of this article critically re‐examines pieces of her archive, through which an image of Polgreen emerges incommensurable with narratives of her triumphs. Next, through an analysis of the processes by which Polgreen is historically confined by powerful archival and subsequent historical representations, I challenge previous assumptions about her life. Finally, introducing material from the British parliamentary debates in which an incident involving Polgreen is described and new material from Barbados deeds left by Polgreen's former slave, I expose the nuances of Polgreen's ‘agency’ in a slave society – that which depended upon her sexual subjugation of other women of African descent.     

Kinship,Organisations and ‘wannabes’: Aboriginal Identity Negotiation in South‐western Sydney

ABSTRACT This paper explores the ambiguous and dynamic nature of Aboriginal identity in south‐western Sydney. While for most of the Aboriginal people in rural and remote areas, identity has been primarily a matter of kinship ties associated with their perceived place of origin, Aboriginal people often recognize each other as Aboriginal by sharing and recognizing certain ‘Aboriginal’ cultural mores and traits. These two principles of identity are flexible enough to be extended to those who are not raised in an Aboriginal family environment; one meeting with their Aboriginal family is a minimum requirement. In south‐western Sydney, where organizations dealing with Aboriginal issues provide ways of connecting Aboriginal people from various backgrounds, in line with the government's homogenized notion of Aboriginality, Aboriginal people from Aboriginal family environments encounter those who cannot even meet this compromised criterion. Their presence gives rise to tension and conflict revolving around the concept of Aboriginality. Aboriginal cultural values that emphasize actual engagement provide ways of overcoming such dilemmas. Through common participation in the activities of the aforesaid organisations, Aboriginal people in south‐western Sydney develop a new sense of ‘Aboriginality’, which embraces those who cannot claim kinship ties.     

Men who ‘Marry Out’: unsettling masculinity,kinship, and nation through migration across the Taiwan Strait

Family reunification has become a widely recognized means to move across borders in the contemporary world. As a migration strategy, family reunification redefines the relationship of kinship to nation, diversifying the ‘national family’ and its gendered role expectations. This article uses cross-border marriages between Chinese and Taiwanese to interrogate how immigration affects the experiences of men who migrate through or in conjunction with marriage, integrating scales of family, citizenship, and nation in an analysis of migrant masculinity. Migrant husbands describe their disempowerment as male providers and citizens through the patrilineal and patrilocal kinship language of having ‘married out.’ The article examines the salience of this kinship model for immigrant husbands seeking to redefine their relationship to patrilineal gender privileges and secure citizenship status. How do men who migrate through marriage negotiate gendered kinship principles that may work to their benefit in their home country but undermine their status once they migrate? How does the experience of migrating as a kin-dependent threaten men’s self-image as family providers? By investigating these challenges to hegemonic masculinity, the article asks how migration reconfigures the gendered foundations of family formation by undermining kinship-based models of normative masculinity and creating a gender crisis for some migrant husbands.     

Geographies of relatedness

This paper explores the analytic purchase and substantive concerns of what I am calling geographies of relatedness . Drawing on recent work in feminist anthropology which has reconsidered kinship as classificatory system and practice, and highlighting the attentiveness to sites, scales and contexts within this work, I suggest ways in which a focus on relatedness may shape approaches to established and emerging matters of concern in human geography. I consider first the foundational status but flexible meaning of 'blood' in kinship thinking, and the ways the flexibility of kinship can be curtailed and its foundational status reinstated in relation to the nation and the state. Second, I consider the geographies of relatedness that are constituted through and practised in the process of establishing degrees of biological connection, delimiting difference, mapping human 'diversity' and defining personal, collective and human origins at different scales and with different effects. A focus on geographies of relatedness, I argue, highlights the ways blood ties or similarly naturalized connections move between and connect categories of relatedness with different sizes, extents and configurations across space, as well as different temporalities. It suggests an alertness to new global mappings of human relatedness and difference and combines a critical attention to ideas of the 'nature' of human reproduction as foundational, original or primal in the natural order of the social, to ideas of 'place of origin': personal, national, ethnic, racialized, universal in their familiar and emergent forms.     

Mother's Umbilicus and Father's Spirit: The Dialectics of Selfhood of a Yagwoia Transgendered Person

ABSTRACT This is an ethnographic exploration of a Yagwoia transgendered person and his‐her life‐situation within the specificities of libidinal dynamics and economy of intersubjective relationships that constitute Yagwoia matrix of kinship and affinal relatedness. Developed within a framework of psychoanalysis and existential phenomenology, and forged through a long‐term field research, this study offers an in‐depth perspective on concrete realities of gender experience and social existence in an Angan life‐world of east Papua New Guinea.     

External Ties and the Reduction of Knowledge Asymmetries among Clusters within Global Value Chains: The Case of the Ceramic Tile District of Castellon

Classical industrial districts' literature is not focused on the role played by external ties but gives more importance to the local districts' endogenous development. Global value chains connect clusters to other external agents through external linkages and constitute a framework to analyse the complex inter-linkages between clusters and other external agents. In the field of the external ties and the global value chain approach Academia is primarily focused on the ties which link clusters in developing nations to global markets, although global value chains also consider connections between clusters in similar activities and even when both are located in developed nations. Thus, external linkages are mainly performed by multinational enterprise (MNE) affiliates which play fundamental role of knowledge diffusers and absorbers in the process of knowledge exchange throughout global value chains. The work examines the process of knowledge exchange between clusters through external ties using the global value chain approach. For this purpose, empirical work is conducted with 22 face-to-face interviews to provide a case study about a leading cluster in the global ceramic tile industry. Results show that the basic knowledge to successfully compete is locally originated, although it can be complemented with global knowledge learnt or generated in other territories. MNE affiliates bridge structural holes through external ties and reduce knowledge asymmetries within global value chains. External ties on network-based governance chains exist, matter and affect clusters allowing upgrading even between developed nations.     

The Stalk that Supports the Flower: Orang Rimba Kinship,Marriage and Gender in Jambi Sumatra

This article examines Orang Rimba kinship, marriage and gender relations in the Bukit Duabelas region of Jambi, Sumatra. Orang Rimba social organization, its terms and concepts, primary kinship relations, use of botanic metaphor and key structural contrasts demonstrate their ties to Malay and Austronesian‐speaking peoples throughout the region. The manner in which these concepts are applied is very different, and is arranged in a way to fit their unique way of life in the forests. Some of the broader differences relate to their mobile economy, small and dispersed camps, and asymmetrical relations of affinity, which take place in the context of egalitarian social relations. This results in a set of social relationships not unlike many of the bride service societies throughout the world. Orang Rimba women have great rights over forest resources, yet are restrained in their interactions with men and outsiders by rigid gender relations.