Kinship Structure Research Articles

Spatiotemporal variation in patterns of genetic diversity, genetic structure, and life history across Zostera marina meadows in North Carolina, USA

Seagrass meadows are some of the most productive marine plant ecosystems in the world, yet their loss continues on a global scale. Zostera marina, an ecologically important foundation species, reproduces both sexually and asexually, yielding different levels of genetic diversity throughout its range, which in turn can influence resistance to, and resilience from, environmental disturbances. Understanding the genetic structure and diversity of these populations, and how they fluctuate over space and time, will aid in the conservation and management of seagrasses in an environment where the effects of climate change are likely to be chronic. Using microsatellite data, we examined spatiotemporal genetic structure and genetic diversity of Z. marina over a 10 yr period at 2 sites in North Carolina (USA), the southern limit of its geographic range in the Western Atlantic. Both meadows were genetically diverse, with very little spatial genetic structure existing within and between sites, and relative temporal stability between decadal time points. Within-site kin structure was more pronounced in the earlier years, and allelic richness increased over time at both sites, suggesting an increase in sexual reproduction, potentially in response to thermal stress. Despite the genetic similarities between sites, life history strategies showed phenotypic plasticity, and several metrics of genetic diversity were associated with meadow health. These findings point to the adaptive potential of Z. marina and provide promising insight into how the species will perform as the effects of climate change continue to amplify over the next century.

Pembelajaran Qur’an Berdasarkan Klan

This study aims to find out about the traditional model of learning Qur’an based on clan which is applied with ritual religion that maintained by the community in Samate Village South Salawati District Raja Ampat Island. Using a qualitative research with a social phenomenology paradigm. The results of this study found that every fam or clan has the people who capable to teach the Qur’an to their family and also the availability of teachers in reading Qur’an in Samate Village are much enough if it seen from the number of fam or clan. The difference of learning technique between the teachers are caused by the factor of teacher education in developing religious education innovation more programmed. The policy in selecting the teachers leads to the kinship structure between teachers and students which is a tradition from generation to generation. The people there really maintain harmony even they have different teachers where it can create social stability among the community. The origin of learning Qur’an is where everyone in one family or clan in society who has the ability to read the Qur’an has the opportunity to developing Qur’an education even that person does not receive a formal education.

Characteristics and competencies of successful resource parents working in Indian country: A systematic review of the research

Despite the implementation of the Indian Child Welfare Act over the last 40 years, American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) children continue to be removed from their homes at an alarming rate and are overrepresented across the United States’ foster care system. To ensure the future of tribal communities, it is imperative that AIAN children grow up connected to their culture and their identity. One method to ensure stability is to increase efforts to recruit and retain competent, committed tribal relatives as caretakers, and when not possible, AIAN resource parents who are ready and able to care for them. This study utilized PRISMA methodology to conduct a systematic review to identify characteristics and competencies of successful resource parents who care for AIAN children and youth. Four major characteristics (strong cultural identity, resilient and adaptive to change, willingness to access tribal resources, and willingness to access kin/family as resources) and five major competencies (history, laws and policy; health and wellness from the AIAN perspective, AIAN family, kinship and community structure, and AIAN learning style, pedagogy and methods) were identified. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Rites and Rights: Lineage Property and Law in Korea

This Article sets forth a historical overview of the evolution of lineage property and succession law in Korea from the premodern through contemporary times. The desire to continue the family and safeguard patrimonial integrity is arguably a universal phenomenon, but the primacy of Confucian ancestral rituals during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910), combined with the indigenous kinship structure, created a distinct lineage organization and culture. The strict primogenitary order and postmortem adoption practices ensured agnatic succession through ritual heir, which rendered the concepts of vacant succession and succession in abeyance theoretically irrelevant, if not inconceivable. Korea did not see the rise of joint property-holding corporate clan estates as in China. Under Japanese rule (1910-1945), ritual-based succession and property relations underwent major reconfigurations in law. The evolving colonial jurisprudence on lineage assets and also on the property of the houses that went extinct illustrated the effort of the courts to negotiate between traditional normativity and modern civil law. In modern Korean law, a lineage group is construed as an unincorporated association and disputes over its assets continue to arise. Investigation of lineage property offers an opportunity to explore how Confucian ideology and its precepts have influenced Korean law and history over centuries. It demonstrates that East Asian legal tradition needs to be assessed through comparison of cultural and social realities in different countries, in all their independence and interdependence.

Kinship and social organization in Copper Age Europe. A cross-disciplinary analysis of archaeology, DNA, isotopes, and anthropology from two Bell Beaker cemeteries.

We present a high-resolution cross-disciplinary analysis of kinship structure and social institutions in two Late Copper Age Bell Beaker culture cemeteries of South Germany containing 24 and 18 burials, of which 34 provided genetic information. By combining archaeological, anthropological, genetic and isotopic evidence we are able to document the internal kinship and residency structure of the cemeteries and the socially organizing principles of these local communities. The buried individuals represent four to six generations of two family groups, one nuclear family at the Alburg cemetery, and one seemingly more extended at Irlbach. While likely monogamous, they practiced exogamy, as six out of eight non-locals are women. Maternal genetic diversity is high with 23 different mitochondrial haplotypes from 34 individuals, whereas all males belong to one single Y-chromosome haplogroup without any detectable contribution from Y-chromosomes typical of the farmers who had been the sole inhabitants of the region hundreds of years before. This provides evidence for the society being patrilocal, perhaps as a way of protecting property among the male line, while in-marriage from many different places secured social and political networks and prevented inbreeding. We also find evidence that the communities practiced selection for which of their children (aged 0–14 years) received a proper burial, as buried juveniles were in all but one case boys, suggesting the priority of young males in the cemeteries. This is plausibly linked to the exchange of foster children as part of an expansionist kinship system which is well attested from later Indo-European-speaking cultural groups.

The marriage between our families has ended the enmity]. Genealogy of a Marriage

The outcome of an inquiry into a family saga, this article discusses gender relations in a Roma community in eastern Romania. Focusing on the events and negotiations that lead to the establishing of a marriage, I show how the apparent male domination is nuanced by the sometimes victorious struggles of women to impose their own choices. Observing marriages and their structures from the viewpoint of the women involved, this work both provides new empirical knowledge and sheds light on the male bias in anthropological research of kinship structures.

Practice of adoption in Aotearoa before the 1881 Adoption of Children Act

INTRODUCTION: With the arrival of Europeans in Aotearoa New Zealand came a familial kinship structure and ideas of caring and nurturing children different from that of indigenous Māori society. Europeans brought with them a practice of adoption, a concept that differed from the indigenous kinship practice of whāngai. This led to misunderstandings between the two cultures about care arrangements, particularly when a Māori child was left with a European couple. Even the reasons why Māori engaged in this type of arrangement was often not fully understood by Europeans. For Māori, these arrangements were usually temporary, while Europeans considered them to be permanent. Hence, we have the beginning of the challenges that contributed to the creation of the 1881 Adoption of Infants Act, a first within the British Empire.APPROACH: This article begins with a description of the Māori practice of whāngai and the European practice of adoption preceding the 1881 act, highlighting the key differences between each—the most significant difference being the European idea of permanent and the Māori idea of temporary care arrangements.

Channel network structure determines genetic connectivity of landward-seaward Avicennia marina populations in a tropical bay.

Mangrove ecosystems along the East African coast are often characterized by a disjunct zonation pattern of seaward and landward Avicennia marina trees. This disjunct zonation may be maintained through different positions in the tidal frame, yielding different dispersal settings. The spatial configuration of the landscape and coastal processes such as tides and waves is expected to largely influence the extent of propagule transport and subsequent regeneration. We hypothesized that landward sites would keep a stronger genetic structure over short distances in comparison with enhanced gene flow among regularly flooded seaward fringes. We tested this hypothesis from densely vegetated A. marina transects of a well‐documented mangrove system (Gazi Bay, Kenya) and estimated local gene flow and kinship‐based fine‐scale genetic structure. Ten polymorphic microsatellite markers in 457 A. marina trees revealed no overall significant difference in levels of allele or gene diversities between sites that differ in hydrological proximity. Genetic structure and connectivity of A. marina populations however indicated an overall effect of geographic distance and revealed a pronounced distinction between channels and topographic setting. Migration models allowed to infer gene flow directionality among channels, and indicated a bidirectional steppingstone between seaward and nearest located landward stands. Admixed gene pools without any fine‐scale structure were found within the wider and more exposed Kidogoweni channel, suggesting open systems. Elevated kinship values and structure over 5 to 20 m distance were only detected in two distant landward and seaward transects near the mouth of the Mkurumuji River, indicating local retention and establishment. Overall, our findings show that patterns of A. marina connectivity are explained by hydrological proximity, channel network structure, and hydrokinetic energy, rather than just their positioning as disjunct landward or seaward zones.

Identity as a Lens on Livelihoods: Insights From Turkana, Kenya

Abstract Livelihood surveys often categorise pastoralist households by economic activity and material assets, using measures such as herd ownership, extent of mobility and the degree of reliance on livestock vs other sources of subsistence and income. However, in contexts of high variability and uncertainty, such objective classifications may inadvertently perpetrate two distortions. First, they stabilise highly fluid economic landscapes, overlooking the ways in which people draw opportunistically from an array of livelihood strategies or move between them over time. Second, they may flatten the social field, overlooking the ways that class and kinship structure and constrain people’s livelihood options. This paper argues for greater attention to subjective assessments of livelihood, such as the labels by which people self-identify or distinguish themselves from others. Drawing on over twenty months of anthropological fieldwork, I describe the notion of raiya, a polysemous identity construct that has become a salient part of everyday discourse in Turkana County, Kenya. While raiya connotes an array of conventional dichotomies – including rural/urban, traditional/modern and nomadic/sedentary – attention to the uses of this term in ‘speech acts’ reveals how it is used to manage relationships and access opportunities across these apparent divisions. This example demonstrates how research on identity practices can inform the study of livelihoods, not only because self-identification indicates a commitment to certain cultural values (Moritz 2012), but also because identity labels highlight the messy processes of boundary-shifting and boundary-crossing that characterise social and economic life under conditions of high variability.

A Convegerence between Anthropology and Literature: How Reading, Writing, and Ethnography Intertwine

This text examines the convergent and double-sided relationship between anthropology as an ethnological study, which of necessity uses literary language - and writing itself as a subject for ethnography. Cultural Reader-response theory shows that every text involves some participation on the reader’s part and is not a solitary unchanging object. This response will itself be a function of social and cultural relations. At the same time, cultural and social life, studied by anthropologists, only becomes explicable through language and the results of ethnographic fieldwork are always, therefore, mediated by linguistic forms. The development of literary anthropology gained momentum in the 1980s but had already germinated in the pioneering work of Levi-Strauss whose work on kinship structures in the 1940s and his study of myth turned the attention of anthropologists towards the important and neglected dimension of language. Since then it has been recognised that an anthropologist’s work is diminished if theoretical and linguistic aspects are unaddressed. and the realm of socio-anthropology has been enriched. Disciplinary and genre distinctions have become very fluid in the past few decades and many university departmental studies now blend literary criticism with culture studies, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, folk discourses, and hermeneutics. While a standard definition of one of any two terms may be possible, it may not always be practical. Therefore, the definition of these two terms—anthropology and literature—needs to be updated from time to time to reflect ongoing developments and the advancements taking place in various fields. In particular, it is evident that coinciding with the linguistic turn’ in English literature studies, the discourse of anthropology has become permeable. A broad ‘literary anthropology’ can become possible as a science only if it maintains a dialogue between ideas, actions, and texts. The results and conclusions of this study substantiate the inseparable and interdependent relationship between two traditional approaches to investigating man as a social being.

Queering Emotion in South Asia

Abstract A paucity of scholarship on emotions in South Asia through a queer lens prevails, as the field is relatively new, and thus, majorly normative. Discussions around emotions, particularly guilt, remain heteronormative. The act of queering emotion not only challenges the dominant gendered affective discourse, but also proposes an alternative framework to understand and elucidate emotions pertinent to queer lives in South Asia. The study analysed ethnographic accounts of 32 gay men from the Eastern Indian state of Odisha. The objectives of this study are threefold. One, it examines the validity of the hypothesis that guilt among gay men is not just an internal orientation, but can be induced by people’s complicitous actions. Two, it uncovers how guilt based on “reciprocity” is roused among gay men in a social system (Lebra, 1971). Society urges gay men to repay their parents, siblings, and caretakers by fulfilling their heteronormative expectations. Three, it foregrounds how gay men respond when apprised of their indebtedness to individuals. The study examines emotions in South Asia through a queer lens by investigating the complex manner in which the queer subjects negotiate with their affectual spaces, viz. social institutions of family and other alternative kinship structures.

A mathematical model of kin selection in floral displays

Plants can adjust their competitive traits for acquiring resources in response to the relatedness of their neighbours. Recently, it has been found that plants can alter their investment in traits of attracting pollinators based on kin-interaction. We build a mathematical model to study the optimal floral display to attract pollinators in a patch with kin structure. We show that when plants can attract pollinators to a whole patch through the magnet effect, the floral display should increase with the increasing relatedness of the plants in the patch. Our model also indicates that increasing investment into attracting pollinators is a form of altruism, reducing a plant’s own seed production but increasing the contribution of other plants to its fitness. We also predict that seed production should increase with increasing relatedness in the patch. Our model provides the explicit conditions when resource allocation to attract pollinators in response to neighbour relatedness can be favoured by kin selection, and a possible mechanism for the plants to deal with the consequent loss of pollinator diversity and abundance.

Health and kinship matter: Learning about direct-to-consumer genetic testing user experiences via online discussions.

BackgroundMillions of people have undergone direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTC-GT), but little is known about individuals' motivations and experiences (e.g., discussion topics and emotions after obtaining the test results) in engaging with DTC-GT services. Previous studies either involved only a small number of DTC-GT consumers or were based on hypothetical scenarios.ObjectiveOur study aimed to fill this gap by investigating online discussions about DTC-GT that developed naturally among tens of thousands of social media users.MethodsWe focused on the posts that were published in the r/23andme and r/AncestryDNA subreddits, which correspond to the two companies with the largest number of consumers in the DTC-GT market. We applied computational methods to infer and examine the topics discussed, temporal trends in posting rates and themes (e.g., aggregation of related topics), and emotions expressed in these online forums.ResultsWe collected 157,000 posts published by 16,500 Reddit users between 2013 and 2019. We found that the posting rates increased sharply after popular promotional events (e.g., each Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday) and most posts were inquiries into, or status updates about, testing progress. The inferred themes of Ancestral Origin and Kinship/Feelings were the two most frequently discussed, while discussions about the Health Risks theme focused primarily on submitting DTC-GT raw data to third parties for interpretation. The Kinship/Feelings theme exhibited the largest range of emotional response. A qualitative review of the posts with extreme emotions showed that some people became excited because they found their biological parents or other kin, while others became upset because they unexpectedly found that their parents or other kin were not biologically related to them.ConclusionThis research demonstrates that online social media platforms can serve as a rich resource for characterizing actual DTC-GT experiences. The findings suggest that DTC-GT consumers' purchasing behaviors are associated with societal events and that future investigations should consider how DTC-GT challenges our understanding of kinship structure and function, genomic privacy, and the interpretation of health risks.

Biological history of an Italian prehistoric community and the population of the central Italy during the 1st millennium BCE.

Understanding the population of Central Italy during the 1st millennium BCE is a crucial topic in the biological history of the Mediterranean basin. This period saw the emergence of the Etruscan and Roman cultures which had a significant impact on the bio-cultural history of the region. In this study, we analyse a prehistoric population from Caracupa (Iron Age, Latium, Central Italy). The results suggest an overall good level of health for the population. Despite this, some musculoskeletal changes related to biomechanical stressors were observed, probably as the result of strenuous physical activity. The results of a Simple Matching analysis of intragroup distance distributions suggest potential model of kinship structures and lineages. This may be due to the relative geographic isolation of the Caracupa population. Furthermore, in order to investigate the wider population of Central Italy during the 1st millennium BCE, we have constructed a population pattern using genetic and phenotypic skeletal and dental traits. The comparison between Central Italy and more isolated populations indicated a divergence between the Western and Eastern sides of Central Italy. However, we do not exclude a probable common genetic substratum for all Central Italian populations during the 1st millennium BCE.

Contextualizing the Cultural Factors Associated With Cancer Care in Nigeria: An Ethnonursing Study.

Introduction: Culture and care are two important phenomena of particular concern to transcultural nursing. Cancer care is generally affected by certain cultural factors that influence how cancer patients experience diseases and seek and utilize care services. This study aimed to explore the cultural factors that affect cancer care in a Nigerian cancer care institution. Method: This study adopted an ethnonursing method involving participant observation and individual interviews. The study was conducted in the oncology unit of University College Hospital, Nigeria. Seven nurses and six patients were key participants, while four physicians, three ward assistants, and six patients' relatives constituted the general participants. Result: Two themes and five patterns were identified. Participants described how the interplay of several cultural factors influenced or inhibited cancer care. Findings revealed significant influence of kinship, family, and social structure as well as the roles played by cultural beliefs, values, and practices in cancer care in Nigeria. Discussion: Cultural factors need to be considered broadly for the efforts toward prevention, early diagnosis, and treatment of cancer to be effective in Nigeria.

Genetic patterns of repeat and multiple parasitism by screaming cowbirds, a specialist brood parasite

Avian brood parasites lay their eggs in the nests of other species, leaving the hosts to care for the parasitic offspring. The bookkeeping hypothesis predicts that, in order to reduce competition between parasitic nestlings, female parasites should keep a mental inventory of host nests that they have already parasitized and avoid laying multiple eggs in the same host nest. However, selection against repeat parasitism should be weaker when host nests are limited, or when hosts are able to rear more than one parasitic nestling. Here we use microsatellite genotyping of parasitic eggs to test whether female screaming cowbirds, Molothrus rufoaxillaris, avoid repeatedly parasitizing nests of their primary host, the greyish baywing, Agelaioides badius, in Argentina. Parasitism rates were extremely high (96.5% of 57 host clutches were parasitized with an average of 5.7 cowbird eggs each), indicating that host nests are limited. Although eggs laid by the same female showed moderate spatiotemporal clustering, individual females rarely laid more than one egg in the same host clutch (2 of 57 clutches, 26 of which contained multiple genotyped cowbird eggs). Females were much more likely to lay subsequent eggs in different host nests than to return to the same host nest. We found no evidence for kin structure among female cowbirds parasitizing the same host nest, which were no more closely related than chance would predict. These results suggest that female screaming cowbirds frequently lay eggs in host nests that have already been parasitized by unrelated females. However, they typically lay just one egg per host clutch, even though greyish baywings are capable of rearing several nestlings. Since screaming cowbird laying is often poorly synchronized with that of their host, avoidance of repeat parasitism may be adaptive if it allows females to spread the risk of failure among multiple host nests.

The Motivation of Women in Performing the Role of Mamak in Works of Local Minangkabau Literary Art

The goal of this research is to study the social phenomena related to the motivation of women in performing the role of mamak (uncle, mother’s brother), and the effect of this on the matrilineal system which is actualized in local Minangkabau literature. The research uses a qualitative method and a content analysis with an approach of structuralism and literary sociology. The research data source is six titles of local Minangkabau literature chosen based on purposive sampling. The data analysis uses intrinsic and extrinsic methods. The research results show seven causative factors related to the decline in the role of mamak and two causative factors related to the motivation of women in performing the role of mamak . The values contained in the motivation of women performing the role of mamak include courage to defend justice, an unyielding spirit, and responsibility to family. This influences the system of values in the matrilineal system of Minangkabau, by weakening the role of mamak , strengthening the role of the nuclear family, and causing a shift in the kinship structure within the family. Keywords: Minangkabau women, role of mamak , local literature, motivation. DOI: 10.7176/ADS/83-03 Publication date: July 31 st 2020

Bilingualism in Döver Mahallesi in Defne District of Hatay

As a communication tool, language is one the most basic structures that distinguish humans from other living species. Language has an interdisciplinary field of study with this aspect. In anthropology, which is the science of human being, ethnic and religious identity, economy, social structure, traditions, kinship, marriage, and various other structures can be analyzed through language. One of the studies on language is anthropological studies on bilingualism. In this study, the bilingualism process in Döver Mahallesi of Hatay's Defne District was discussed. The majority of Arab Alevis (Nusayris) living in Döver Mahallesi can speak both Arabic and Turkish. The main focus of this study is when these bilingual individuals speak which language, and the reasons affecting their preferences. In this context, the data obtained as a result of the field research were analyzed and the results were attempted to be reached. It has been aimed to focus on the effects of everyday events on bilingualism, and the relationship between social relations, public existence, differences between generations, gender variables and religious education, and language. Issues such as language preferences of bilingual people in economics, migration and political processes, in the effects of everyday events on language, in the language used to restrict or construct ethno-religious identity, in perceptions of and attitudes of individuals towards bilingualism, in differences between generations, and in the public and private areas are revealed.

The Role of Somali Kinship in Sustaining Bureaucratic Governance around Dagahaley Camp in Kenya

ABSTRACT Bureaucracy is often portrayed as having an unrivalled capacity to shape human relationships in states and organisations. By contrast, however, ethnographic studies have suggested that bureaucracy cannot easily take root among Somalis and other Muslim nomadic societies where kinship is ostensibly supreme. Based on ethnographic research at Dagahaley refugee camp, this article challenges the idea that Somali kinship and bureaucratic structures are rival governing technologies. I demonstrate that kinship and bureaucracy play similar roles and are, therefore, not incompatible. Kinship provided traction to bureaucratic procedures in the way people used it alongside bureaucracy as means of governance and resource access. The article contributes to legal and political anthropology, as well as the burgeoning field of ethnography of bureaucracy by attributing common portrayals of civil wars, ethnicity, and nepotism as ‘nomadic’ or ‘African’ problems to commentators’ failure to grasp the value of kinship in these societies.

Panmixia in a sea ice-associated marine mammal: evaluating genetic structure of the Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) at multiple spatial scales

AbstractThe kin structure of a species at relatively fine spatial scales impacts broad-scale patterns in genetic structure at the population level. However, kin structure rarely has been elucidated for migratory marine mammals. The Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) exhibits migratory behavior linked to seasonal patterns in sea ice dynamics. Consequently, information on the spatial genetic structure of the subspecies, including kin structure, could aid wildlife managers in designing future studies to evaluate the impacts of sea ice loss on the subspecies. We sampled 8,303 individual walruses over a 5-year period and used 114 single-nucleotide polymorphisms to examine both broad-scale patterns in genetic structure and fine-scale patterns in relatedness. We did not detect any evidence of genetic structure at broad spatial scales, with low FST values (≤ 0.001) across all pairs of putative aggregations. To evaluate kin structure at fine spatial scales, we defined a walrus group as a cluster of resting individuals that were less than one walrus body length apart. We found weak evidence of kin structure at fine spatial scales, with 3.72% of groups exhibiting mean relatedness values greater than expected by chance, and a significantly higher overall observed mean value of relatedness within groups than expected by chance. Thus, the high spatiotemporal variation in the distribution of resources in the Pacific Arctic environment likely has favored a gregarious social system in Pacific walruses, with unrelated animals forming temporary associations.