I recently came across this video in an article entitled 'Is Kinship Back?', focusing on the re-invigoration of Kinship Studies in the behavioral and social sciences.
The video discusses research the speaker has conducted on the linguistic figuration of kinship categories.
The research asks why some 'cultures' and languages 'carve up' kinship categories differently to others.
They find that two explanatory principles govern the categorization of kin:
(1) the simplicity of categories
and (2) their ability to convey information effectively.
He opens with the example of Grandparents for 'English language speakers'. He suggests English language speakers have two classificatory categories for grandparents: 'grandmother' and 'grandfather' - making no differentiation between maternal and paternal grandparents in this classificatory frame for example. Yet this linguistic schema's balancing of simplicity and practical efficacy of communication in explaining how the person related to a given person, leads the researchers to define it as 'optimal'.
However, when brought to bear on the flexible, dynamic and sometimes ambiguous kinship terms emerging from the pragmatic Antillean kinship arrangements I encounter in Dominica, this reductive notion of 'English language speakers'' kinship terms falls on its face.
Pragmatism and the idiosyncrasies and specificities of relationships, overrule functional imperatives to simplistically convey information. For the kin members I've been working with, I believe that the emphasis is not on communicating and knowing who is related and how they are related within a big societal structure of symbols - although this information can sometimes be inferred from hearing classificatory terms. The emphasis is more on the meaning of these names in everyday relational terms, between subject and her/his kinsperson.
For example. I know a man whose 2 grandchildren stay with him and his wife, their grandmother. His grandchildren call him papa. His wife runs an informal daycare in the home, therefore there are around 5 other children in the home who also call him papa. He has no cognatic ('blood') relationship to these other children, and they most probably have one or two more papas in addition to him. But they classify him as papa given their everyday practical relationship to them, of course he takes them around the village walking hand in hand and visiting people to say 'hello' as any papa might. Therefore, the blurring/opening of normative categories and terms that are seen to have a fixed meaning, renders any simple model presenting a universal functionalist system of ease of reference and communication analytically problematic in an Antillean kinship context.
[I wrote this a little too quickly late at night so I hope you catch my drift - please comment and question if not or you disagree or you want to draw comparative references to other people, examples, places or indeed Dominica too]
