WHY CAN HUNTER-GATHERER GROUPS BE ORGANIZED SIMLARLY FOR RESOURCE PROCUREMENT, BUT THEIR KINSHIP TERMINOLOGIES ARE STRIKINGLY DISSIMILAR: A CHALLENGE FOR FUTURE CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH

Cross-cultural research involves explanatory arguments framed at the meta-level of a cohort of societies, each with its own historical development as an internally structured and organized system. Historically, cross-cultural research on hunter-gatherer groups initially was in accord with the general anthropological interest in determining the ideational basis for differences in systems of social organization, but more recent work has shifted emphasis to the phenomenal level of factors affecting the mode of adaptation to an external environment. This has left a major lacuna in our understanding of the reasons for cross-cultural differences among ideational systems such as kinship terminologies in hunter-gatherer societies. I address this lacuna in this article through cross-cultural comparison of hunter-gatherer kinship terminologies at an ideational, qualitative level. The means for so doing is first worked out using the kinship terminology of the Hadza, an East African hunter-gather group. Next, comparison of the Hadza and their kinship terminology with two other hunter-gatherer groups prominent in the anthropological literature, along with their kinship terminologies, makes evident a major disjunction between, on the one hand, the similarity of hunter-gatherer societies at the phenomenal level of activities such as food procurement and, on the other hand, striking differences among the same groups at the ideational level of the structural organization of their kinship terminologies. The reason for the striking differences between the ideational and the phenomenal levels is not immediately evident and remains a topic to be addressed in future cross-cultural research

BACK TO KINSHIP III: A GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Back to Kinship III is the third Special Issue of the e-journal, Structure and Dynamics sponsored by the group, Kinship Circle. Each issue is dedicated to current kinship research.There are 5 articles in this Special Issue, covering a wide range of kinship research questions and topics The first two articles, by William Young and Warren Shapiro, respectively, employ ethnographic evidence as the reason for revising previous kinship ideas. The next two articles, by Robert Parkin and Dwight Read, respectively, focus on kinship terminology and revisit theoretical issues. The last article, by Alain Matthey de l’Etang, discusses theorizing by Dwight Read challenging the “received view” of kin terms being derived through a genealogical framework and proposing, in its place, that kin terms are structurally organized through a generative logic for the terminolog

The substance of cultural evolution: Culturally framed systems of social organization

Models of cultural evolution need to address not only the organizational aspects of human societies, but also the complexity and structure of cultural idea systems that frame their systems of organization. These cultural idea systems determine a framework within which behaviors take place and provide mutually understood meanings for behavior from the perspective of both agent and recipient that are critical for the coherence of human systems of social organization

Behavioural mimicry as an indicator of affiliation

Previous research has shown that behavioural mimicry fosters affiliation, and can be used to infer whether people belong to the same social unit. However, we still know very little about the generalizability of these findings and the individual factors involved. The present study intends to disentangle two important variables and assess their importance for affiliation: the matching in time of the behaviours versus their matching in form. In order to address this issue, we presented participants with short videos in which two actors displayed a set of small movements (e.g. crossing their legs, folding their arms, tapping their fingers) arranged to be either contingent in time or in form. A dark filter was used to eliminate ostensive group marks, such us phenotype or clothing. Participants attributed the highest degree of affiliation to the actors when their subsequent movements matched in form, but were delayed by 4-5 seconds, and the lowest degree when the timing of their movements matched, but they differed in form. To assess the generalizability of our findings, we took our study outside the usual Western context and tested a matching sample of participants from a traditional small-scale society in Kenya. In all, our results suggest that movements are used to judge the degree of affiliation between two individuals in both large- and small-scale societies. While moving in different ways at the same time seems to increase the perceived distance between two individuals, movements which match in form seem to invoke closeness

Kinship algebra expert system (KAES). a software implementation of a cultural theory

The computer program Kinship Algebra Expert System (KAES) provides a graphically based framework for constructing, if possible, a generative algebraic model for the structure of a kinship terminology (the terms used to refer to one’s kin). The algebraic modeling is based on a theory of kinship terminologies elaborated through writing the software program. The theory relates the properties and structure of kinship terminologies to an underlying logic that the KAES program helps uncover and model as a generative structure. The program then relates the structural logic of a kinship terminology modeled by the KAES program to a genealogical space based on genealogical tracing of kin relations. The KAES program demonstrates the surprisingly logical character of kinship terminologies and challenges the received view of the primacy of genealogical relations in defining cultural kinship through showing how genealogical definitions of kin terms can be accurately predicted in the terminologies considered to date

A Book Review Made out of Whole Cloth

 A good book review provides documentation for its evaluations, especially when they are either very positive or very negative. A good review is also faithful to what the author has written and bases criticisms or praise on accurate paraphrasing or quotes from the book. This review by Thompson fails on both accounts. Critical comments are not documented and the review is based on what Thompson imagines Read to have written, not what Read actually wrote