This article considers the extent to which the debate about animal rights can be enriched by Richard Rorty’s theory of rights. Although Rorty’s work has enjoyed a lot of scholarly attention, commentators have not considered the implications of his arguments for animals. Nor have theorists of animal rights engaged his approach to rights. This paper argues that Rorty’s thinking holds a number of attractions for proponents of animal rights. It also considers some of its drawbacks. It is further argued that (...) Rorty’s thinking about rights avoids many of the problems that animal ethic of care theorists have found in rights discourse being applied to animals. Rorty’s work thus provides a valuable resource for bringing these two major strands within the animal ethics literature into closer theoretical kinship. (shrink)

Decades of research conducted in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, & Democratic (WEIRD) societies have led many scholars to conclude that the use of mental states in moral judgment is a human cognitive universal, perhaps an adaptive strategy for selecting optimal social partners from a large pool of candidates. However, recent work from a more diverse array of societies suggests there may be important variation in how much people rely on mental states, with people in some societies judging accidental harms just (...) as harshly as intentional ones. To explain this variation, we develop and test a novel cultural evolutionary theory proposing that the intensity of kin-based institutions will favor less attention to mental states when judging moral violations. First, to better illuminate the historical distribution of the use of intentions in moral judgment, we code and analyze anthropological observations from the Human Area Relations Files. This analysis shows that notions of strict liability—wherein the role for mental states is reduced—were common across diverse societies around the globe. Then, by expanding an existing vignette-based experimental dataset containing observations from 321 people in a diverse sample of 10 societies, we show that the intensity of a society's kin-based institutions can explain a substantial portion of the population-level variation in people's reliance on intentions in three different kinds of moral judgments. Together, these lines of evidence suggest that people's use of mental states has coevolved culturally to fit their local kin-based institutions. We suggest that although reliance on mental states has likely been a feature of moral judgment in human communities over historical and evolutionary time, the relational fluidity and weak kin ties of today's WEIRD societies position these populations' psychology at the extreme end of the global and historical spectrum. (shrink)

Understanding the selves, situations and actions of Africans can never be comprehended outside kinship. Local and foreign worldviews are first pigeonholed into culture and defined within kinship realities in Nigeria and Africa. There have been studies on kinship in Africa. However, the findings from such studies portrayed the immutability of African kinship. Thus, as an important contribution to the on-going engagement of kinship in the twenty-first century as an interface between the contemporary Diaspora, this article (...) engaged kinship within international migration. This is a major behavioural and socio-economic force in Nigeria. Methodological triangulation was adopted as part of the research design and primary data were collected through in-depth interviews (IDIs), and life histories of international migrants were documented and focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with kin of returnees. The article found and concluded that while returnees continued to appreciate local kinship infrastructures, the infrastructures were liable to reconstruction primarily determined by dominant support situations in the traditional African kinship networks. (shrink)

Chagnon’s analysis of a well-known axe fight in the Yanomamö village of Mishimishiböwei-teri (Chagnon and Bugos 1979) is among the earliest empirical tests of kin selection theory for explaining cooperation in humans. Kin selection theory describes how cooperation can be organized around genetic kinship and is a fundamental tool for understanding cooperation within family groups. Previous analysis on groups of cooperative Lamaleran whale hunters suggests that the role of genetic kinship as a principle for organizing cooperative human groups (...) could be less important in certain cases than previously thought (Alvard Human Nature 14:129–163, 2003b). Evidence that supports a strong role for genetic kinship—groups are found to be more related than expected by chance—may be spurious because of the correlation between social structure and genetic kinship. Reanalysis of Chagnon’s data using matrix regression techniques, however, confirms that genetic kinship was the primary organizing principle in the axe fight; affinal relations were also important, whereas lineage identity explained nothing. (shrink)

The conceptualisation of kinship and its study remain contested within anthropology. This paper draws on recent cognitive science, developmental cognitive psychology, and the philosophy of science to offer a novel argument for a view of kinship as progeneratively or reproductively constrained. I shall argue that kinship involves a form of extended cognition that incorporates progenerative facts, going on to show how the resulting articulation of kinship’s progenerative nature can be readily expressed by an influential conception of (...) kinds, the homeostatic property cluster view. Identifying the distinctive role that our extended cognitive access to progenerative facts plays in kinship delivers an integrative, progenerativist view that avoids standard performativist criticisms of progenerativism as being ethnocentric, epistemically naïve, and reductive. (shrink)

Kinship and reciprocity are two main predictors of altruism. The ultimatum game has been used to study altruism in many small-scale societies. We used the ultimatum game to examine effects of individuals’ family and kin relations on altruistic behavior in a kin-based horticultural community in rural Dominica. Results show sex-specific effects of kin on ultimatum game play. Average coefficient of relatedness to the village was negatively associated with women’s ultimatum game proposals and had little effect on men’s proposals. Number (...) of brothers in the village was positively associated with men’s ultimatum game proposals and negatively associated with women’s proposals. Similarly, presence of father in the village was associated with higher proposals by men and lower proposals by women. We interpret the effect of brothers on men’s proposals as a consequence of local competition among brothers. We speculate that daughter-biased parental care in this community creates a sense of entitlement among women with brothers, which may explain the inverse relation between number of brothers and women’s ultimatum game proposals. The pattern of results may be consistent with how matrifocality affects cultural models of fairness differently along gender and family lines. (shrink)

Work was conducted among traditional, subsistence whale hunters in Lamalera, Indonesia, in order to test if strict biological kinship or lineage membership is more important for explaining the organization of cooperative hunting parties ranging in size from 8 to 14 men. Crew identifications were collected for all 853 hunts that occurred between May 3 and August 5, 1999. Lineage identity and genetic relatedness were determined for a sample of 189 hunters. Results of matrix regression show that genetic kinship (...) explains little of the hunters’ affiliations independent of lineage identity. Crew members are much more closely related to each other than expected by chance, but this is due to the correlation between lineage membership and genetic kinship. Lineage members are much more likely to affiliate in crews, but kin with r<0.5 are just as likely not to affiliate. The results are discussed vis-à-vis the evolution of cooperation and group identity. (shrink)

The article revisits the old controversy concerning the relation of the mother's brother and sister's son in patrilineal societies in the light both of anthropological criticisms of the very notion of kinship and of evolutionary and epidemiological approaches to culture. It argues that the ritualized patterns of behavior that had been discussed by Radcliffe-Brown, Goody and others are to be explained in terms of the interaction of a variety of factors, some local and historical, others pertaining to general human (...) dispositions. In particular, an evolved disposition to favor relatives can contribute to the development and stabilization of these behaviors, not by directly generating them, but by making them particularly "catchy" and resilient. In this way, it is possible to recognize both that cultural representations and practices are specific to a community at a time in its history (rather than mere tokens of a general type), and that they are, in essential respects, grounded in the common evolved psychology of human beings. (shrink)

A common Chinese addressing practice is to address non-kin people with kinship terms, a phenomenon sometimes described as ‘kinship term generalization’. Previous studies have mainly focused on the characteristics and functions of kinship term generalization, confined to certain specific generalized kinship terms, and limited to GKTs in some Chinese dialects or certain Chinese literary works. The present study adopts the socio-pragmatic perspective to examine the phenomenon among Chinese graduate students, a social group not heeded in the (...) literature. Based on the analysis of the data collected, we argue that Chinese graduate students’ varying use of GKTs in academic settings is a pragmatic strategy, characterized by the family-centered cultural values of the Chinese society. It is hoped that the present study at the intersection between pragmatics and sociolinguistics may enrich the study of address forms in general, and in particular of Chinese GKTs. (shrink)

In this article, I reconsider bio-essentialism in the study of kinship, centering on David Schneider’s influential critique that concluded that kinship was “a non-subject” (1972:51). Schneider’s critique is often taken to have shown the limitations of and problems with past views of kinship based on biology, genealogy, and reproduction, a critique that subsequently led those reworking kinship as relatedness in the new kinship studies to view their enterprise as divorced from such bio-essentialist studies. Beginning with (...) an alternative narrative connecting kinship past and present and concluding by introducing a novel way of thinking about kinship, I have three constituent aims in this research article: (1) to reconceptualize the relationship between kinship past and kinship present; (2) to reevaluate Schneider’s critique of bio-essentialism and what this implies for the contemporary study of kinship; and (3) subsequently to redirect theoretical discussion of what kinship is. This concluding discussion introduces a general view, the homeostatic property cluster (HPC) view of kinds, into anthropology, providing a theoretical framework that facilitates realization of the often-touted desideratum of the integration of biological and social features of kinship. [bio-essentialism, kinship studies, homeostatic property cluster kinds, Schneider, genealogy]. (shrink)

This article revisits the old controversy concerning the relation of the mother’s brother and sister’s son in patrilineal societies in the light both of anthropological criticisms of the very notion of kinship and of evolutionary and epidemiological approaches to culture. It argues that the ritualized patterns of behavior discussed by Radcliffe-Brown, Goody, and others are to be explained in terms of the interaction of a variety of factors, some local and historical, others pertaining to general human dispositions. In particular, (...) an evolved disposition to favor relatives can contribute to the development and stabilization of these behaviors not by directly generating them but by making them particularly “catchy” and resilient. In this way, it is possible to recognize both that cultural representations and practices are specific to a community at a time in its history (rather than mere tokens of a general type) and that they are, in essential respects, grounded in the common evolved psychology of human beings. (shrink)

Patterns of human kinship commonly involve preferential treatment of relatives based on lineal descent (lineages) rather than degree of genetic relatedness (kindreds), presenting a challenge for inclusive fitness theory. Here, we examine effects of lineage and kindred characteristics on reproductive success (RS) and number of grandchildren for 130 men and 124 women in a horticultural community on Dominica. Kindreds had little effect on fitness independently of lineage characteristics. Fitness increased with the number of lineal relatives residing in the community (...) but decreased beyond an apparently optimal lineage size, suggesting resource enhancement and competition among kin. Female-biased patrilineage sex ratio was positively associated with men’s fitness, while male-biased matrilineage sex ratio was positively associated with women’s fitness. Number of brothers in the community was negatively associated with men’s, but not women’s, fitness. Parents and number of sisters had no effect on either male or female reproduction; however, women with younger sisters had higher RS, suggesting benefits of kin support for childcare. In sum, imposed norms for lineage social organization may enhance lineal ancestors’ inclusive fitness at a cost to individual inclusive fitness. (shrink)

In conversation with Marilyn Strathern’s work on kinship and especially on metaphors of intellectual and reproductive creativity, this paper provides an analysis of plagiarism not as a violation of intellectual property but of the kinship relationships between author, work, and readers. It also analyzes the role of figures of kidnapped slaves and children in the genealogy of the modern concept of plagiarism.

Research in anthropology has shown that kin terminologies have a complex combinatorial structure and vary systematically across cultures. This article argues that universals and variation in kin terminology result from the interaction of (1) an innate conceptual structure of kinship, homologous with conceptual structure in other domains, and (2) principles of optimal, “grammatical” communication active in language in general. Kin terms from two languages, English and Seneca, show how terminologies that look very different on the surface may result from (...) variation in the rankings of a universal set of constraints. Constraints on kin terms form a system: some are concerned with absolute features of kin (sex), others with the position (distance and direction) of kin in “kinship space,” others with groups and group boundaries (matrilines, patrilines, generations, etc.). Also, kin terms sometimes extend indefinitely via recursion, and recursion in kin terminology has parallels with recursion in other areas of language. Thus the study of kinship sheds light on two areas of cognition, and their phylogeny. The conceptual structure of kinship seems to borrow its organization from the conceptual structure of space, while being specialized for representing genealogy. And the grammar of kinship looks like the product of an evolved grammar faculty, opportunistically active across traditional domains of semantics, syntax, and phonology. Grammar is best understood as an offshoot of a uniquely human capacity for playing coordination games. (shrink)

Phenomena like meat sharing in hunter-gatherers, self-sacrifice in intergroup conflicts, and voluntary contribution to public goods provision in laboratory experiments have led to the development of numerous theories on the evolution of altruistic in-group beneficial behavior in humans. Many of these theories abstract away from the effects of kinship on the incentives for public goods provision, though. Here, it is investigated analytically how genetic relatedness changes the incentive structure of that paradigmatic game which is conventionally used to model and (...) experimentally investigate collective action problems: the linear public goods game. Using recent anthropological data sets on relatedness in 61 contemporary hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies the relevant parameters of this model are then estimated. It turns out that the kinship patterns observed in these societies substantially reduce the negative effect of increasing group size on incentives for public goods provision. It is suggested, therefore, that renewed attention should be given to inclusive fitness theory in the context of public goods provision also in sizable groups, because its explanatory power with respect to this central problem in the evolution of human cooperativeness and altruism might have been substantially underrated. (shrink)

This essay zooms in on a series of parentheses in Derrida’s Politics of Friendship in order to examine a somewhat failed encounter between deconstruction and Donna Haraway’s ontological discourse on kinship and companion species. The essay claims that Derrida’s notion of trace, as it exceeds the humanist-anthropocentric logic and challenges any simple division between humankind and animality, can be followed as a condition for thinking friendship, kinship, or companionship as non-strictly anthropological categories, and for accounting for a principle (...) of failure or fallibility at the very heart of the ‘encounter’ with the other – human or nonhuman. What Derrida calls ‘the possibility of failure’ is inseparable from a certain legibility and illegibility of friendship, kinship, and companionship, from their dependence on the trace-structure, suggesting that they do not have strict ontological consistency (pace Haraway) but are structurally differantial and heterogeneous, and therefore remain to be read, interpreted, attested, translated, perhaps in view of transformative deconstruction. Reading and, with it, fallibility and undecidability, contribute to problematising Haraway’s ontology of companionship, making-kin, and becoming-together. Moreover, from the perspective of the exegesis of deconstruction, the essay also claims that the problematic of the trace-structure – virtually limitless in Derrida’s corpus – presupposes, everywhere it appears, the interrogation of the anthropological machine, of human exceptionalism, and raises the ‘question of animality’ even when this ‘question’ is not formulated as such, and when the so-called ‘animal’ is not named as such. (shrink)

In the second half of the 19th century, anthropology rode the coat-tails of modernity, adopting new printing technologies, following new travel networks, and gaining increasing access to Indigenous people as colonialism spread and new policies were developed to contain and control people in settler-colonial states. The early innovator in kinship studies Lewis Henry Morgan and his two greatest proteges, Lorimer Fison and A. W. Howitt, working respectively in the United States, Fiji, and Australia, epitomised this conflation of governance, technologies (...) of representation, and anthropology. They corresponded on the alterity of kinship systems across increasingly regularised postal routes, and developed new forms of collecting and new diagrammatic representations of kinship using developments at the press. Nineteenth-century kinship studies were focused exclusively on relationships formed through biology and descent, and there was little recognition of kinship making beyond these forms. This was especially significant for Howitt, whose closest Aboriginal interlocutor, Tulaba, claimed him as a brogan (brother), according to Gunaikurnai kinship paradigms. This article tracks the links between the collection and publication of kinship material in the questionnaires and the books of the latter part of the 19th century across the English-speaking world and the outcomes for Indigenous peoples, as arguments for distinctive kinship systems helped define their ‘primitiveness’ and dismissed Aboriginal attempts to forge kinship links across the settler/Indigenous divide. (shrink)

The celebrated author of _Gender Trouble_ here redefines Antigone's legacy, recovering her revolutionary significance and liberating it for a progressive feminism and sexual politics. Butler's new interpretation does nothing less than reconceptualize the incest taboo in relation to kinship -- and open up the concept of kinship to cultural change. Antigone, the renowned insurgent from Sophocles's _Oedipus,_ has long been a feminist icon of defiance. But what has remained unclear is whether she escapes from the forms of power (...) that she opposes. Antigone proves to be a more ambivalent figure for feminism than has been acknowledged, since the form of defiance she exemplifies also leads to her death. Butler argues that Antigone represents a form of feminist and sexual agency that is fraught with risk. Moreover, Antigone shows how the constraints of normative kinship unfairly decide what will and will not be a livable life. Butler explores the meaning of Antigone, wondering what forms of kinship might have allowed her to live. Along the way, she considers the works of such philosophers as Hegel, Lacan, and Irigaray. How, she asks, would psychoanalysis have been different if it had taken Antigone -- the "postoedipal" subject -- rather than Oedipus as its point of departure? If the incest taboo is reconceived so that it does not mandate heterosexuality as its solution, what forms of sexual alliance and new kinship might be acknowledged as a result? The book relates the courageous deeds of Antigone to the claims made by those whose relations are still not honored as those of proper kinship, showing how a culture of normative heterosexuality obstructs our capacity to see what sexual freedom and political agency could be. (shrink)

The target paper claims to contribute to the conceptualisation of kinship but is, in fact, only concerned with descriptive kinship terminologies. It uses Optimal Theory to analyse this vocabulary but it is not clear if this is to be understood as a psychological phenomenon. Jones does not make clear how this special vocabulary might relate to kinship in general.

Violence, Kinship and the Early Chinese State: The Shang and Their World. By Roderick Campbell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xxx + 331. $99.

In this commentary, I focus on Jones' suggestion of a close connection between the domain of space and that of kinship. I expand on that suggestion by introducing the concept of frame of reference and show how it can possibly participate to the generation of kinship systems.

Jones introduces an intricate machinery of kin classification that overcomes limitations of previous accounts. I question whether such a machinery is plausible. Because individuals never need to learn the entire spectrum of kin terminology, they could rely on data-driven learning. The complexity of Jones's machinery for kin classification casts doubt on the existence of innate structures that cover the complete linguistic domain.

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 50 Heft: 1 Seiten: 315-328.

In this article, I argue that kinship implicitly operates as a normative ethical concept in Christine Korsgaard's account of animal ethics. I begin with an examination of the key theoretical foundations of Korsgaard's account and then examine the ways kinship operates as an ethical concept in her account, arguing that the ethical obligations she discusses are fundamentally grounded in a recognition of kinship with other animals. I conclude by recognizing that there are many remaining questions about (...) class='Hi'>kinship and animal ethics but that the concept holds significant potential for thinking about the ethical obligations that we have to nonhuman animals. (shrink)

The choice of emphasis in kinship studies has often resulted in incompatible theoretical models of kinship that are mutually undermining and contradictory. Jones' attempts to reconcile disparate approaches to kinship using OT is useful, however; seeing kinship as a specialized system for representing genealogy may be unwarranted in the light of recent advances in mathematical approaches to kinship terminologies.

In the discussions leading up to the enactment of the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Regulations 2015, it was repeatedly emphasised, by many commentators, that maternal spindle transfer and pronuclear transfer did not give rise to children who could be considered as having three or more parents. This was because it was argued that only the genetic material found in the chromosomes should be considered as the determining factor for the formation of parent–child relationships and the resulting kinship identities. (...) In this present study, however, this assertion will be questioned in the light of different kinds and different understandings of kinship identities. It will also be suggested that any person who is partly responsible for the very existence of a child, through any means, may qualify as a causal parent — a parent whom the resulting child may want to identify. As a result, a positive response should be given to a request from a person born from MST and PNT concerning identifying information for all the individuals responsible for bringing him or her into existence. In the light of this, the article will conclude that it is regrettable that the UK government enacted binding legislation making sure that children, born through MST and PNT, will never be able to contact the egg donors and, in the case of PNT, the sperm donors. This reflects a very limited understanding of who parents really are and may give rise to serious long-term psychological distress in the prospective children. (shrink)

We think about personal relationships in two distinct ways. The first focuses on relationships between blood relatives: parents and their children, siblings, and perhaps first cousins. The second focuses on intimacy: relationships where each individual is honest to and trusting of the other; each cares for the other and seeks the other’s company. In this article I ask how these two conceptions are, can be, or should be linked. Should we strive to make all relationships with kin intimate? Even if (...) the answer is a qualified “No,” does that mean relationships with kin are not valuable? I offer some tentative answers to these questions. Despite its limitations, I hope this provides a framework from which future exploration of these issues might profitably begin. (shrink)

Although same-sex couples and their offspring have been legitimised in many European countries, heteronormativity is still embedded in institutions and practices, thereby continuing to affect the daily lives of LGBT individuals. Italy represents a clear example of the hegemonic power of heteronormativity because of the fierce opposition to recognising lesbian and gay parenthood among many parts of society. This paper focuses on the peculiarities of the Italian scenario with the aim of highlighting how heteronormativity works in contemporary neoliberal contexts. By (...) drawing on queer and feminist perspectives, the article also analyses how LGBT equal rights demands can contribute, to some extent, to reinforcing heteronormativity. Implications concerning strategies for challenging the regime of normality and queering kinship are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kinship:The Relationship Between Johnstone's Ideas about Philosophical Argument and the Pragma-Dialectical Theory of ArgumentationFrans H. van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser1. Johnstone on the Nature of Philosophical ArgumentAs he himself declared in Validity and Rhetoric in Philosophical Argument (1978, 1), the late philosopher Henry W. Johnstone Jr. devoted a long period of his professional life to clarifying the nature of philosophical argument. His well-known view was that philosophical arguments (...) are sui generis, i.e., not to be judged by the standards of argumentation in science or everyday discourse. Philosophical arguments are not ad rem, but are based on premises that are expressed or implied commitments of a party in dialogue. This is why philosophical argumentation is, according to Johnstone, always ad hominem. In philosophical argumentation, every ad rem argument begs the question.Usually, ad hominem argumentation is dismissed as invalid. Johnstone, however, maintains that making use of argumentum ad hominem is the only way to establish a philosophical conclusion. In an argumentum ad hominem, inferences are drawn from propositions stated or implied by the other party and critical questions are raised about the conclusions that were drawn, so that it can be used to refute a philosophical position by showing that this position is inconsistent. As Walton (2001) rightly observes, this type of ad hominem argumentation boils down to arguing from commitments of the other party, i.e., ex concessis.The use of ad hominem argumentation as the criticism of a position in terms of its own presuppositions is, in Johnstone's view, the only valid argument in philosophy, if any philosophical argument is indeed valid. All philosophical polemic is in this perspective in fact addressed ad hominem. This applies not only to philosophical argumentation that concerns self-referential refutation but also to other ad hominem types of philosophical argumentation, including the tu quoque argument (1978, 11–12).According to Johnstone, there is no objective criterion for determining the validity of ad hominem argumentation. Validity must, says Johnstone in the [End Page 51] epilogue of his collected essays on philosophical argument, be viewed as "a regulative ideal" (135). Much earlier, Johnstone had already come to the conclusion that "the valid argument is the one that maintains philosophical discussion" (38). It is this self-perpetuating feature that is the distinctive rationality of philosophy. By forcing the interlocutor to elaborate his philosophical position rather than just repeat it, the gap between the interlocutors is bridged.In order to distinguish between constructive persuasive argumentation and mere repetition or other forms of paralyzing the discourse, the line must be drawn between responsible and irresponsible persuasion. This is a problem for Johnstone. Where the Ancients solved the problem by insisting that the persuader be virtuous, Johnstone proposed to base the distinction between responsible and irresponsible persuasion on the attitude of the philosopher and his interest in maintaining the philosophical enterprise. The philosopher is a critic who criticizes con amore. His intention to do so, however, is revealed "only in the way he goes about his work" (84).A more down to earth criterion for responsible persuasion that Johnstone proposed is that the discourse should not tend to degenerate. Logic, as the discipline concerned with reason, serves to prevent the discussion from degenerating, but it can do so only if the parties concerned have jointly committed themselves to certain logical principles. If in philosophical argument a defendant is under no obligation to acknowledge an inconsistency when the other party points out an inconsistency in his position, then the other party's criticism cannot count as valid. According to Johnstone, however, it will depend on the parties' presuppositions whether or not they consider two statements as being inconsistent. In other words, what is inconsistent for the one party may not be inconsistent for the other party.Few obligations are imposed on everyone; most obligations arise from commitments made by specific individuals or groups of individuals. As Johnstone says, "Even the cogent philosophical argument is not, of course, absolutely cogent; it is cogent only relatively to interlocutors who maintain the premises on which it depends" (27). Once we abandon the search for objective conditions under which philosophical arguments can be valid, according... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kinship across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration by Kristin E. HeyerVictor CarmonaKinship across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration By Kristin E. Heyer WASHINGTON, DC: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2012. 198 PP. $29.95Heyer renders an important service to the discipline, which has not seen a book-length account of a Christian immigration ethic since Dana Wilbanks’s Recreating America (1996). In Kinship across Borders, Heyer provides a nuanced (...) and comprehensive theological ethical analysis of undocumented immigration and argues that “a Christian immigration ethic calls believers to promote structures and practices marked by kinship and justice” (4). To that end, she advances four distinct theses in as many chapters—interpretations of personhood, sin, family, and solidarity—each appropriating a specific resource from the Christian tradition in order to reorient immigration policies from a “paradigm centered on national interest, expediency, or economic efficiency” to one that is person centered (4). Her project challenges American Christians to reckon with their responsibility in advancing structures and furthering ideologies that sustain forced migrations, including economic refugees, in the Western Hemisphere.Chapter 1 relies on Margaret Farley’s “obligating features of person-hood”—namely, autonomy and relationality—to identify the prevailing immigration paradigm, which views immigrants as economic commodities, security threats, and/or foreigners to be assimilated (21). This paradigm reflects internalized ideologies and a series of external structures that weaken the personal agency of immigrants who, in significant ways, “are unable to [End Page 194] determine the direction their lives will take” (22). Chapter 2 turns to Catholic social encyclicals and liberation theology to develop a dialectical interpretation of personal and social sin. Heyer posits that though persons are responsible for their actions, they “remain subject to external [structural] influences” that limit the ways in which they may exercise their agency (46). She uses this idea not to accuse undocumented immigrants but rather to highlight the sinful ideological blinders that often limit American Christians’ capacity to act hospitably towards them. “Given the relationship between the United States and sending countries in geographic, economic, and political terms,” she writes, “US citizens may be willfully negligent of or indirectly responsible for the conditions that give rise to undocumented migration across their borders” (46).Chapters 3 and 4 provide robust accounts of cross-border kinship in the context of the family and globalization, with their rich visions of human relationships that break open the prevailing immigration paradigm. For example, though familismo among Latin American immigrants may lend itself to restrict women’s personal agency, it nevertheless offers an “extensive and malleable understanding of kinship networks, … [with] boundaries among members that remain fluid and transcend genetics,” thus broadening the relationships within which to flourish (82). To address global kinship, Heyer develops an account of institutional, incarnational, and conflictual solidarity that breaks free from the tendency to frame the immigration debate in the United States as a purely domestic issue that lacks meaningful global implications. Chapter 5 concludes the book by identifying implications for reorienting immigration policy and rhetoric as well as Christian ethics so that they better account for the immigrant experience by developing the necessary resources, including a more robust understanding of moral agency in the midst of marginalization.The argument is strongest in chapters 2 and 3, which develop a crisp critical analysis of the sources and insightful interpretations of often overlooked ones, including immigrants’ experiences. Furthermore, Heyer adeptly engages multiple US Hispanic theologians and Christian ethicists in ways that sharpen her argument throughout. The argument is weakest in chapter 5 because it does not fully integrate earlier insights on cross-border familial and global kinship while accounting for civic kinship. I strongly recommend Kinship across Borders for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students taking courses on Catholic social thought, Protestant social ethics, and theology and/or ethics of migration. [End Page 195]Victor CarmonaOblate School of TheologyCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Jones uses a mechanism from the linguistic theory, Optimality Theory, to generate the range of kin systems observed in human cultures and human languages. The observed distribution of kinship systems across human societies suggests that some possibilities are preferred over others, a result that would indicate Jones' model needs to be refined, especially in its treatment of markedness.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:KINSHIP AND SEPARATION IN CAVELL'S PURSUITS OF HAPPINESS by Alex Neill In the second part of his article "Getting To Know You,"1 Roger A. Shiner suggests that light can be shed on various epistemological and metaphysical problems through a consideration of what Stanley Cavell has called in his book Pursuits ofHappiness "the Hollywood genre of remarriage."2 Shiner's aim is "to present the genre of remarriage as a figure (...) for the profoundest relationships of epistemology and metaphysics.... Specifically, divorce and remarriage as part of human life are to be seen as figures for separation and kinship, avoidance and acknowledgement in the philosophical sense of those terms" (p. 80). Much of the first part of his paper is concerned with spelling out just what the philosophical sense of these terms in Cavell's work is, and in particular with attempting to draw out the conceptual relationship and balance between the twin notions of kinship and separation. Understanding this relationship is crucial to Shiner's metaphysical and metaphilosophical projects; however, he thinks that it is obscured by Cavell himself: "I believe Cavell's own account in Pursuits ofHappiness to be unstable and its instability importantly instructive" (p. 87). While I share Shiner's view that what he calls Cavell's "conceptual framework" represents an original and important contribution to our understanding of central issues in epistemology and metaphysics, and agree with much of what he has to say about its importance with regard to questions of philosophical method, I find his claim that there is an instability in Cavell's account of the roles of kinship and separation in Pursuits of Happiness unconvincing. There are two elements involved in this claim, and I think that Shiner's discussion of both is seriously misleading with regard to the conceptual relationships between kinship, separation, and acknowledgement. In what follows, I would like to consider 136 Alex Neill137 his claim in some detail, with a view to clarifying the nature of the relationships between these concepts. The standard pattern of the comedies that Cavell discusses in Pursuits ofHappiness is represented by a progression from marriage to divorce to remarriage. A central claim of Shiner's paper is that this pattern reflects a theme which runs through much of Cavell's other work, according to which our relationship to the world and to others is not one of knowing but of acknowledging. 3 Shiner's suggestion is that remarriage is a figure for the condition of acknowledgement, a condition which requires an acceptance of the facts of both human kinship (symbolized here by a first marriage) and human separation (symbolized here by divorce). Shiner's assertion that there is an instability in Cavell's account of the genre of remarriage is based on the latter's inclusion of Bringing Up Baby and It Happened One Night in the genre. His suggestion is that the inclusion of these films obscures the importance of the notion of kinship, a key notion in the genre in its own right, and an important figure for a central concept of metaphysics. The point is that in these films, the protagonists are not at first married to each other: the films begin with their meeting for the first time, and conclude with their marriages. Thus it appears that in Bringing Up Baby and It Happened One Night the kinship stage of the pattern is missing. This is the first element in the instability which Shiner is concerned to bring out. If the inclusion of Bringing Up Baby and It Happened One Night in the genre of remarriage is legitimate, then, it would seem that they must represent or express kinship in some way other than through a first marriage. That is, in order to see Cavell's account as being stable, we need an alternative formulation ofkinship that can be satisfied by these films. A candidate for such an alternative formulation is suggested by Cavell in his reading of The Philadelphia Story: "Having... in some way created a childhood past together, remains a law for the happiness of the pair in the universe of remarriage comedies" {PH, p. 136). However, Shiner finds this formulation of kinship in terms of... (shrink)

This paper considers an argument for why kinship is not significant in industrialized Western societies. There are various objections to the argument, of which I present one supported by two examples.

This essay responds to Donna J. Haraway's (2016) provocation to ‘stay with the trouble’ of learning to live well with nonhumans as kin, through practice-based approaches to learning to care for nonhuman others. The cases examine the promotion of care for trees through mobile game apps for forest conservation, and kinship relations with city farm animals in Kentish Town, London. The cases are analysed with a view to how they articulate care practices as a means of making kin. Two (...) concepts are proposed, ‘learning from’ and ‘facing’ the Other, which are thickened through discussions of how caring takes place in each case in relation to a particular category of nonhuman other: animated tree and urban farm animal. Thus while attendant to situations of care involving a specific nonhuman subject, the cases also broker thinking on learning from and facing (the) other kinds of trees and animals, and the interspecies dynamics of which they are a part. The intersectional implications of the practice sites and participants are elaborated, to complexify and affirm situated but also reflexive approaches to caring. In doing this, the authors attend to their own positionalities, seeking to diversify Western-based ecofeminist engagements with caring, while asking what their research can do for the nonhuman other. They formulate and apply a collaborative methodological approach to the case studies, developed through cultivating attentiveness to the nonhuman subject of research. The authors consider in particular how attentiveness to the nonhuman other can facilitate practices of knowing that further a non-anthropocentric and non-innocent ethic of caring. By further interconnecting situations of caring for nonhuman animals and plants, the authors advocate for practices of care that antagonise how species boundaries are drawn and explore the implications for learning to care for nonhumans as kin. (shrink)

Until Speculative Realism’s arrival a few years back, few philosophers found it problematic to view nature as a cultural construct, circumscribed and dependent on human attitudes. While I share speculative realists’ goal to strengthen philosophy’s mind-independence, I worry that isolating nature as beyond human minds not only absolves human responsibility, but eradicates “kinship” relations, which capture non-hu­man nature providing for and sustaining human beings, and vice versa. To develop an environmental philosophy that affords mind-independence and offers evidence, unlike Positive (...) Aesthetics, which idealizes wilderness, I discuss: 1) the pro/cons of nature’s mind-independence, 2) the implications for aspection, 3) the need for assessment tools that guide human action, 4) the reasons for grounding ethical action in kinship, and 5) recent research that suggests biodiverse cities exemplify the kinship model. Inseparable from nature, human beings are kindred participants in shared eco-systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kinship:The Relationship Between Johnstone's Ideas about Philosophical Argument and the Pragma-Dialectical Theory of ArgumentationFrans H. van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser1. Johnstone on the Nature of Philosophical ArgumentAs he himself declared in Validity and Rhetoric in Philosophical Argument (1978, 1), the late philosopher Henry W. Johnstone Jr. devoted a long period of his professional life to clarifying the nature of philosophical argument. His well-known view was that philosophical arguments (...) are sui generis, i.e., not to be judged by the standards of argumentation in science or everyday discourse. Philosophical arguments are not ad rem, but are based on premises that are expressed or implied commitments of a party in dialogue. This is why philosophical argumentation is, according to Johnstone, always ad hominem. In philosophical argumentation, every ad rem argument begs the question.Usually, ad hominem argumentation is dismissed as invalid. Johnstone, however, maintains that making use of argumentum ad hominem is the only way to establish a philosophical conclusion. In an argumentum ad hominem, inferences are drawn from propositions stated or implied by the other party and critical questions are raised about the conclusions that were drawn, so that it can be used to refute a philosophical position by showing that this position is inconsistent. As Walton (2001) rightly observes, this type of ad hominem argumentation boils down to arguing from commitments of the other party, i.e., ex concessis.The use of ad hominem argumentation as the criticism of a position in terms of its own presuppositions is, in Johnstone's view, the only valid argument in philosophy, if any philosophical argument is indeed valid. All philosophical polemic is in this perspective in fact addressed ad hominem. This applies not only to philosophical argumentation that concerns self-referential refutation but also to other ad hominem types of philosophical argumentation, including the tu quoque argument (1978, 11–12).According to Johnstone, there is no objective criterion for determining the validity of ad hominem argumentation. Validity must, says Johnstone in the [End Page 51] epilogue of his collected essays on philosophical argument, be viewed as "a regulative ideal" (135). Much earlier, Johnstone had already come to the conclusion that "the valid argument is the one that maintains philosophical discussion" (38). It is this self-perpetuating feature that is the distinctive rationality of philosophy. By forcing the interlocutor to elaborate his philosophical position rather than just repeat it, the gap between the interlocutors is bridged.In order to distinguish between constructive persuasive argumentation and mere repetition or other forms of paralyzing the discourse, the line must be drawn between responsible and irresponsible persuasion. This is a problem for Johnstone. Where the Ancients solved the problem by insisting that the persuader be virtuous, Johnstone proposed to base the distinction between responsible and irresponsible persuasion on the attitude of the philosopher and his interest in maintaining the philosophical enterprise. The philosopher is a critic who criticizes con amore. His intention to do so, however, is revealed "only in the way he goes about his work" (84).A more down to earth criterion for responsible persuasion that Johnstone proposed is that the discourse should not tend to degenerate. Logic, as the discipline concerned with reason, serves to prevent the discussion from degenerating, but it can do so only if the parties concerned have jointly committed themselves to certain logical principles. If in philosophical argument a defendant is under no obligation to acknowledge an inconsistency when the other party points out an inconsistency in his position, then the other party's criticism cannot count as valid. According to Johnstone, however, it will depend on the parties' presuppositions whether or not they consider two statements as being inconsistent. In other words, what is inconsistent for the one party may not be inconsistent for the other party.Few obligations are imposed on everyone; most obligations arise from commitments made by specific individuals or groups of individuals. As Johnstone says, "Even the cogent philosophical argument is not, of course, absolutely cogent; it is cogent only relatively to interlocutors who maintain the premises on which it depends" (27). Once we abandon the search for objective conditions under which philosophical arguments can be valid, according... (shrink)

Peopling the donor world -- The meaning of family in a changing world -- Creating families -- Creating communities across families -- The laws of the donor world: parents and children -- Law, adoption, and family secrets: disclosure and incest -- Reasons to regulate -- Regulating for connection -- Regulating for health and safety: setting limits in the gamete world -- Why not to regulate -- Conclusion: challenging and creating kinship.

Our own animately e/motional bodies are yearning for relationships with other bodies of the more-than-human kind. To support this opinion, I describe an intra-action caring for three rescued piglets that led to an awareness of human animal and animal-other relationships. The following questions are addressed: 1) What is involved corporeally, e/motionally, and sensorily in interspecies intra-actions? 2) What are the affects and telling effects of these intra-actions? I describe how my intra-action with the piglets manifested an awareness of the liveliness (...) of other animals, and an understanding of interspecies kinship. To further understand interspecies kinship, I explore the role of the body, and the e/motional and sensory affordances of the intra-actions involving me and the piglets. The concepts of corporeality, inter-corporeality, and trans-corporeality are considered. In the second part of the paper, I describe tensions of human exceptionalism that were revealed in caring for the piglets. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kinship:The Relationship Between Johnstone's Ideas about Philosophical Argument and the Pragma-Dialectical Theory of ArgumentationFrans H. van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser1. Johnstone on the Nature of Philosophical ArgumentAs he himself declared in Validity and Rhetoric in Philosophical Argument (1978, 1), the late philosopher Henry W. Johnstone Jr. devoted a long period of his professional life to clarifying the nature of philosophical argument. His well-known view was that philosophical arguments (...) are sui generis, i.e., not to be judged by the standards of argumentation in science or everyday discourse. Philosophical arguments are not ad rem, but are based on premises that are expressed or implied commitments of a party in dialogue. This is why philosophical argumentation is, according to Johnstone, always ad hominem. In philosophical argumentation, every ad rem argument begs the question.Usually, ad hominem argumentation is dismissed as invalid. Johnstone, however, maintains that making use of argumentum ad hominem is the only way to establish a philosophical conclusion. In an argumentum ad hominem, inferences are drawn from propositions stated or implied by the other party and critical questions are raised about the conclusions that were drawn, so that it can be used to refute a philosophical position by showing that this position is inconsistent. As Walton (2001) rightly observes, this type of ad hominem argumentation boils down to arguing from commitments of the other party, i.e., ex concessis.The use of ad hominem argumentation as the criticism of a position in terms of its own presuppositions is, in Johnstone's view, the only valid argument in philosophy, if any philosophical argument is indeed valid. All philosophical polemic is in this perspective in fact addressed ad hominem. This applies not only to philosophical argumentation that concerns self-referential refutation but also to other ad hominem types of philosophical argumentation, including the tu quoque argument (1978, 11–12).According to Johnstone, there is no objective criterion for determining the validity of ad hominem argumentation. Validity must, says Johnstone in the [End Page 51] epilogue of his collected essays on philosophical argument, be viewed as "a regulative ideal" (135). Much earlier, Johnstone had already come to the conclusion that "the valid argument is the one that maintains philosophical discussion" (38). It is this self-perpetuating feature that is the distinctive rationality of philosophy. By forcing the interlocutor to elaborate his philosophical position rather than just repeat it, the gap between the interlocutors is bridged.In order to distinguish between constructive persuasive argumentation and mere repetition or other forms of paralyzing the discourse, the line must be drawn between responsible and irresponsible persuasion. This is a problem for Johnstone. Where the Ancients solved the problem by insisting that the persuader be virtuous, Johnstone proposed to base the distinction between responsible and irresponsible persuasion on the attitude of the philosopher and his interest in maintaining the philosophical enterprise. The philosopher is a critic who criticizes con amore. His intention to do so, however, is revealed "only in the way he goes about his work" (84).A more down to earth criterion for responsible persuasion that Johnstone proposed is that the discourse should not tend to degenerate. Logic, as the discipline concerned with reason, serves to prevent the discussion from degenerating, but it can do so only if the parties concerned have jointly committed themselves to certain logical principles. If in philosophical argument a defendant is under no obligation to acknowledge an inconsistency when the other party points out an inconsistency in his position, then the other party's criticism cannot count as valid. According to Johnstone, however, it will depend on the parties' presuppositions whether or not they consider two statements as being inconsistent. In other words, what is inconsistent for the one party may not be inconsistent for the other party.Few obligations are imposed on everyone; most obligations arise from commitments made by specific individuals or groups of individuals. As Johnstone says, "Even the cogent philosophical argument is not, of course, absolutely cogent; it is cogent only relatively to interlocutors who maintain the premises on which it depends" (27). Once we abandon the search for objective conditions under which philosophical arguments can be valid, according... (shrink)

The development of the emerging science of ecology influenced the later work of both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Both use zoology, biology, and ecology intheir attempts to navigate between mechanism and vitalism, but their interpretations and use of the life sciences take them on divergent paths and lead them to radically different conclusions regarding the relationship between man and animal. This essay takes up the problematic of kinship with animals in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Beyond the texts of these two thinkers (...) are the more general stakes of the relationships between humans and animals and the question of whether or not animals can be our kin. (shrink)

The development of the emerging science of ecology influenced the later work of both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Both use zoology, biology, and ecology intheir attempts to navigate between mechanism and vitalism, but their interpretations and use of the life sciences take them on divergent paths and lead them to radically different conclusions regarding the relationship between man and animal. This essay takes up the problematic of kinship with animals in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Beyond the texts of these two thinkers (...) are the more general stakes of the relationships between humans and animals and the question of whether or not animals can be our kin. (shrink)

This paper follows the Salt-Wind and subterraneous freshwater flows in Hawaiian poet Brandy Nālani McDougall's collection of poetry The Salt-Wind/ka Makani Pa'akai. McDougall illustrates that in order to begin again in the aftermath of American imperialism and environmental destruction, one must return to the salt-water and sub-surface waterings, and the ancestral connections and voices therein who beckon her (and others) home. In this way, her work is situated within contemporary movements within the Pacific, presently coming together in deimperializing efforts to (...) restructure a future for the Pacific that is ‘beyond empires’ (Fujikane, 2012: 191). Selecting two poems in particular from McDougall's collection—'Hāloanaka’ and ‘On a Routing Slip from the U.S. Postal Service, Pukalani Branch'—I illustrate how they chart the ancestral, cosmological, and historical flows of kinship between Kānaka Maoli and their near and distant earthly and spiritual relations. In particular, the water that passes through the taro plant infuses all manner of kinship, economic, and social relations in Hawai'i, connecting Kānaka Maoli to their ancestor Hāloa, and to land, sea, and each other, as well as—through the formative oceanic movements of Moana Nui—to other Pacific islanders. A thirst for water—sacred, imaginative, mobile, past, present—underwritten by an assertion of Hawaiian sovereignty, language, and tradition flows just beneath the surface of McDougall's words. (shrink)