Paper 2: Rethinking Kinship and Relatedness in Practice (2024)
Due: Monday Nov 18, midnight, Moodle upload.
Length and Format:
Diagram: Use whatever medium/media format that works best for you (could be hand-drawn, and then photographed) to create your color-coded kinship diagram. Include it with your paper (ideally as an attachment that can be magnified to view).
Essay: 5-7 pages, double-spaced, 1 inch margins all around, 12 point fonts. Please spellcheck. They should be well-organized, with a clear argument supported by evidence from readings and other relevant sources. Give parenthetic citations (author year: page; i.e., Sapir 1924: 517) for all quotations or direct paraphrases of ethnographic and theoretical passages. Any sources outside of the assigned readings should be listed in an attached bibliography. Wikipedia is NOT an appropriate source for an academic paper.
Evaluation: I will evaluate and respond to papers based on (in order of priority):
See Paper Criteria for Anthro Papers
See the Paper Template for Analytic or Ethnographic Papers
- Degree to which you respond to the assignment and incorporate ideas and issues from class materials in your discussion;
- Extent to which you demonstrate clear understanding of understanding of basic terms of theorists' arguments or presented in class;
- the creativity and originality of your diagram and your ideas
- The clarity of your diagram, essay organization and writing
Topic: In weeks 6-10, we read classical theories (and critiques of them!) about the nature of society, kinship, cultural logics, symbols, religion, ritual and power. This project is your chance to consider them in relation to someone's life story and experiences of relatedness. This is a two-part exercise: a kinship diagram with an interviewee and then an analysis of aspects of the person's narrative and your interaction with them based on selected readings from weeks 6-10.
1) Interview someone in person or via zoom (a relative, a friend) and, using anthropological kinship notation, diagram her/his/their kinship relations (use whatever media works best for you), indicating all socially-relevant bilateral relatives (eg., relatives on both/all parents' sides, including deceased). See if you can get at least 3-4 generations.
During your conversation, depending on your interlocutors' level of comfort, ask them what they think makes a relative or someone "related" to them. Inquire about specific memories of key events, activities or rituals in their lives that were important to them in creating (or losing) a sense of relatedness to others. Ask perhaps what kinship terms are most or least meaningful to them, what they think has changed, or discuss how mainstream media depicts kinship and/or family relations.
Ethics of interviewing: Let the person know clearly what the assignment is for, that you can use a pseudonym for them if they want, that without their permission any paper you write will not be published or shared with anyone but the instructor. If you can, ask permission to use your phone to audio record the interview so that you do not forget anything they said. Assure them that you will not post the recording to any social media and will destroy it afterwards if they so choose.
Your diagram should use full anthropological kinship notation (see the kinship notation handout and this online tutorial on drawing a kinship diagram (watch it at 1.75 speed!), and should include both the names of the relatives and the appropriate kin terms. If separate terms are used in addressing and referring to the relative (e.g., a person referred to as "grandmother" but addressed as "Nana"), please indicate both.
If you feel that the standard anthropological kinship terms are inadequate, feel free to modify them by adding alternative graphic representations, but explain why in your essay!
Include a Key for your chart(s) explicating the symbols/colors used.
2) Write up a 5-7 page critical reflection on what this process revealed to you about kinship and relatedness and/or the practice of trying to interview someone and then graphically represent their stated relatives. Discuss and analyse aspects of the person's narrative and your conversation by drawing on at least two theorists from weeks 6-10.
Consider:
*What types of kin and relatedness seemed most important to your interlocutor? Why? Would you say that they emphasized a form of unilinear descent or bilateral (cognatic) descent? How did class, ethnicity/race or gender relations seem to figure into their experience of relatedness? How did your interlocutor talk about affines or other non-genetic relatives?
*What seemed new or surprised you about the process? unexpected complexities? What alternatives might there be to understanding or diagramming kinship? What might this demonstrate about the nature of relatedness or personhood and efforts to understand such relationships?*How were kinship (clan) relations important for Durkheim's theory of society and religion? How might such an argument about "collective representations" be applied to understanding how your interlocutor discussed kinship? With reference to Du Bois', Asad's, or Rosaldo's critiques, what might Durkheim's approach miss or obscure?
*How does Evans-Pritchard understand kinship? With reference to Du Bois', Asad's, or Rosaldo's critiques, what might this approach help us grasp or what might it obscure?
*Did you discern any important basic categories of kinship and personhood that were important to your interlocutor, or in your conversation? How might Levi-Strauss or Sahlins' analysis of cultural "structures" or logics help to grasp some less conscious aspects of kinship and relatedness? With reference to Rosaldo's critique, what might such a focus miss or obscure?
*Can Douglas, Turner or Geertz' approaches to symbols and ritual elucidate aspects of how your interlocutor discussed the importance of kin or relations? With reference to Rosaldo's critique, what could such an approach miss or obscure?