Posts
From The Melungeon Historical Society
Read a transcript of an 1894 article in the New York Sun, describing a "queer race" or people in North Carolina--Melungeons.
14 December 2008
A black and white connection through common ancestry - Bellevue Reporter
A black and white connection through common ancestry - Bellevue Reporter
By LINDSAY LARIN, Bellevue Reporter Staff Writer, Nov 14 2008
After years of exchanging e-mails and long-distance phone calls, Norman J. Landerman-Moore and Ann Moore Black met face-to-face for the Western Region African American Conference held at the Bellevue South Stake Center building. The two are distant cousins, related through a common great-great-grandfather, Caleb Moore, of Ten-Mile, Meigs County, Tenn.
Sitting side by side, the newly aquatinted relatives share few similarities at first glance, but their connection runs deep, with common ancestry dating back to the 1600s. [Follow link for rest of article; also see photograph]
By LINDSAY LARIN, Bellevue Reporter Staff Writer, Nov 14 2008
After years of exchanging e-mails and long-distance phone calls, Norman J. Landerman-Moore and Ann Moore Black met face-to-face for the Western Region African American Conference held at the Bellevue South Stake Center building. The two are distant cousins, related through a common great-great-grandfather, Caleb Moore, of Ten-Mile, Meigs County, Tenn.
Sitting side by side, the newly aquatinted relatives share few similarities at first glance, but their connection runs deep, with common ancestry dating back to the 1600s. [Follow link for rest of article; also see photograph]
08 December 2008
Definitions, Explanations and Clarifications of Sociological and Anthropological Terms
Professor Peter Landstreet’s Sociology Courses » 2050A (2008-2009): "Definitions, Explanations and Clarifications of Sociological and Anthropological Terms"
Click on the link above (on the linked page from here) to go to 12-page PDF file of the following excellent synopsis of society and kinship terms, explanations, and definitions:
Definitions, Explanations and Clarifications of Sociological and Anthropological Terms
Contents
1. Kinship Terms (and Related)
2. Other Terms, Primarily Anthropological
3. Other Terms, Sociological or Common to Sociology and Anthropology
4. Societal Types
Click on the link above (on the linked page from here) to go to 12-page PDF file of the following excellent synopsis of society and kinship terms, explanations, and definitions:
Definitions, Explanations and Clarifications of Sociological and Anthropological Terms
Contents
1. Kinship Terms (and Related)
2. Other Terms, Primarily Anthropological
3. Other Terms, Sociological or Common to Sociology and Anthropology
4. Societal Types
Tribal Society and Kinship
Professor Peter Landstreet’s Sociology Courses » Some Conceptual Questions In Context of Tribal Society:
Excerpt:
"Let’s look for the social organization of kinship: You’ll find it:
A) in all the role relationships (e.g. husband-wife, mother-son, grandfather-granddaughter, etc.) that exist within families and which, taken together, “constitute” the families.
B) in kin relations of the more “extended” sort — cousin-cousin, aunt-nephew, etc.
C) in the organization of the lineage, and the clan (to use two common cases)."
Read entire article at link.
Excerpt:
"Let’s look for the social organization of kinship: You’ll find it:
A) in all the role relationships (e.g. husband-wife, mother-son, grandfather-granddaughter, etc.) that exist within families and which, taken together, “constitute” the families.
B) in kin relations of the more “extended” sort — cousin-cousin, aunt-nephew, etc.
C) in the organization of the lineage, and the clan (to use two common cases)."
Read entire article at link.
23 November 2008
World's Earliest Nuclear Family Found
Science Consciousness: World's Earliest Nuclear Family Found
[Main web site: Science Consciousness: Theory, Information and Research Articles.]
[Photo at web site with article, along with other links] Group burial of a 4,600-year-old nuclear family, with the children (a boy of 8-9 and a boy of 5-4 years) buried facing their parents(Credit: Image courtesy of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)
The earliest evidence of a nuclear family, dating back to the Stone Age, has been uncovered by an international team of researchers, including experts from the University of Bristol. The researchers dated remains from four multiple burials discovered in Germany in 2005.The 4,600-year-old graves contained groups of adults and children buried facing each other – an unusual practice in Neolithic culture.
One of the graves was found to contain a female, a male and two children. Using DNA analysis, the researchers established that the group consisted of a mother, father and their two sons aged 8-9 and 4-5 years: the oldest molecular genetic evidence of a nuclear family in the world (so far).The burials, discovered and excavated at Eulau, Saxony-Anhalt, were also unusual for the great care taken in the treatment of the dead.
The remains of thirteen individuals were found in total, all of whom had been interned simultaneously.Intriguingly, the arrangement of the dead seemed to mirror their relations in life. Several pairs of individuals were buried face-to-face with arms and hands interlinked in many cases. All the burials contained children ranging from newborns up to 10 years of age and adults of around 30 years or older. Interestingly, there were no adolescents or young adults.
Many showed injuries that indicated they were the victims of a violent raid. One female was found to have a stone projectile point embedded in one of her vertebra and another had skull fractures. Several bodies also had defence injuries to the forearms and hands.The researchers reconstruct this Stone Age tragedy using state-of-the-art genetics and isotope techniques, physical anthropology and archaeology.
Lead author Dr Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide said: "By establishing the genetic links between the two adults and two children buried together in one grave, we have established the presence of the classic nuclear family in a prehistoric context in Central Europe – to our knowledge the oldest authentic molecular genetic evidence so far. Their unity in death suggests a unity in life. However, this does not establish the elemental family to be a universal model or the most ancient institution of human communities."
As well as establishing the biological relationships of the people buried at Eulau, the researchers were also able to shed light on their social organisation using strontium isotope analysis.
Hylke de Jong, a PhD student working on the Eulau graves at the University of Bristol said: "We measured strontium isotopes in their teeth to give us an indication of where these people spent their childhood. Strontium from the food you eat is incorporated into your teeth as they grow. We can relate the proportion of different strontium isotopes back to regions with different geology and identify the area where a person grew up."
Dr Alistair Pike, Head of Archaeology at the University of Bristol and co-Director of the project, continued: "The strontium analysis showed that the females spent their childhood in a different region from the males and children. This is an indication of exogamy (marrying out) and patrilocality (the females moving to the location of the males). Such traditions would have been important to avoid inbreeding and to forge kinship networks with other communities."The burials described in detail in the article are now on permanent display in the newly renovated Landesmuseum Sachsen-Anhalt in Germany.
Journal reference:
1. Wolfgang Haak, Guido Brandt, Hylke N. de Jong, Christian Meyer, Robert Ganslmeier, Volker Heyd, Chris Hawkesworth, Alistair W. G. Pike, Harald Meller, and Kurt W. Alt. Ancient DNA, Strontium isotopes, and osteological analyses shed light on social and kinship organization of the Later Stone Age. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nov 17, 2008; 18226-18231 vol105 no.47Adapted from materials provided by University of Bristol. ScienceDaily
[Main web site: Science Consciousness: Theory, Information and Research Articles.]
[Photo at web site with article, along with other links] Group burial of a 4,600-year-old nuclear family, with the children (a boy of 8-9 and a boy of 5-4 years) buried facing their parents(Credit: Image courtesy of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)
The earliest evidence of a nuclear family, dating back to the Stone Age, has been uncovered by an international team of researchers, including experts from the University of Bristol. The researchers dated remains from four multiple burials discovered in Germany in 2005.The 4,600-year-old graves contained groups of adults and children buried facing each other – an unusual practice in Neolithic culture.
One of the graves was found to contain a female, a male and two children. Using DNA analysis, the researchers established that the group consisted of a mother, father and their two sons aged 8-9 and 4-5 years: the oldest molecular genetic evidence of a nuclear family in the world (so far).The burials, discovered and excavated at Eulau, Saxony-Anhalt, were also unusual for the great care taken in the treatment of the dead.
The remains of thirteen individuals were found in total, all of whom had been interned simultaneously.Intriguingly, the arrangement of the dead seemed to mirror their relations in life. Several pairs of individuals were buried face-to-face with arms and hands interlinked in many cases. All the burials contained children ranging from newborns up to 10 years of age and adults of around 30 years or older. Interestingly, there were no adolescents or young adults.
Many showed injuries that indicated they were the victims of a violent raid. One female was found to have a stone projectile point embedded in one of her vertebra and another had skull fractures. Several bodies also had defence injuries to the forearms and hands.The researchers reconstruct this Stone Age tragedy using state-of-the-art genetics and isotope techniques, physical anthropology and archaeology.
Lead author Dr Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide said: "By establishing the genetic links between the two adults and two children buried together in one grave, we have established the presence of the classic nuclear family in a prehistoric context in Central Europe – to our knowledge the oldest authentic molecular genetic evidence so far. Their unity in death suggests a unity in life. However, this does not establish the elemental family to be a universal model or the most ancient institution of human communities."
As well as establishing the biological relationships of the people buried at Eulau, the researchers were also able to shed light on their social organisation using strontium isotope analysis.
Hylke de Jong, a PhD student working on the Eulau graves at the University of Bristol said: "We measured strontium isotopes in their teeth to give us an indication of where these people spent their childhood. Strontium from the food you eat is incorporated into your teeth as they grow. We can relate the proportion of different strontium isotopes back to regions with different geology and identify the area where a person grew up."
Dr Alistair Pike, Head of Archaeology at the University of Bristol and co-Director of the project, continued: "The strontium analysis showed that the females spent their childhood in a different region from the males and children. This is an indication of exogamy (marrying out) and patrilocality (the females moving to the location of the males). Such traditions would have been important to avoid inbreeding and to forge kinship networks with other communities."The burials described in detail in the article are now on permanent display in the newly renovated Landesmuseum Sachsen-Anhalt in Germany.
Journal reference:
1. Wolfgang Haak, Guido Brandt, Hylke N. de Jong, Christian Meyer, Robert Ganslmeier, Volker Heyd, Chris Hawkesworth, Alistair W. G. Pike, Harald Meller, and Kurt W. Alt. Ancient DNA, Strontium isotopes, and osteological analyses shed light on social and kinship organization of the Later Stone Age. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nov 17, 2008; 18226-18231 vol105 no.47Adapted from materials provided by University of Bristol. ScienceDaily
10 September 2008
Kinship and Religion
Anthropologists Develop New Approach To Explain Religious Behavior
This integrates well with my thesis about kinship and religion in my book and also is a perfect example of "fictive kinship," also explained in my book: Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier (Univeristy of Georgia Press, 2004). CEB
[Click on link for entire article]
... "Instead of studying religion by trying to measure unidentifiable beliefs in the supernatural, we looked at identifiable and observable behavior - the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims," said Craig T. Palmer, associate professor of anthropology in the MU College of Arts and Science. "We noticed that communicating acceptance of a supernatural claim tends to promote cooperative social relationships. This communication demonstrates a willingness to accept, without skepticism, the influence of the speaker in a way similar to a child's acceptance of the influence of a parent."
Palmer and Lyle B. Steadman, emeritus professor of human evolution and social change at Arizona State University, explored the supernatural claims in different forms of religion, including ancestor worship; totemism, the claim of kinship between people and a species or other object that serves as the emblem of a common ancestor; and shamanism, the claim that traditional religious leaders in kinship-based societies could communicate with their dead ancestors. They found that the clearest identifiable effect of religious behavior is the promotion of cooperative family-like social relationships, which include parent/child-like relationships between the individuals making and accepting the supernatural claims and sibling-like relationships among co-acceptors of those claims.
"Almost every religion in the world, including all tribal religions, use family kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister and child for fellow members," Steadman said. "They do this to encourage the kind of behavior found normally in families - where the most intense social relationships occur. Once people realize that observing the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims is how we actually identify religious behavior and religion, we can then propose explanations and hypotheses to account for why people have engaged in religious behavior in all known cultures."
Citation: Explain Religious Behavior." ScienceDaily 10 September 2008. Accessed 10 September 2008.
This integrates well with my thesis about kinship and religion in my book and also is a perfect example of "fictive kinship," also explained in my book: Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier (Univeristy of Georgia Press, 2004). CEB
[Click on link for entire article]
... "Instead of studying religion by trying to measure unidentifiable beliefs in the supernatural, we looked at identifiable and observable behavior - the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims," said Craig T. Palmer, associate professor of anthropology in the MU College of Arts and Science. "We noticed that communicating acceptance of a supernatural claim tends to promote cooperative social relationships. This communication demonstrates a willingness to accept, without skepticism, the influence of the speaker in a way similar to a child's acceptance of the influence of a parent."
Palmer and Lyle B. Steadman, emeritus professor of human evolution and social change at Arizona State University, explored the supernatural claims in different forms of religion, including ancestor worship; totemism, the claim of kinship between people and a species or other object that serves as the emblem of a common ancestor; and shamanism, the claim that traditional religious leaders in kinship-based societies could communicate with their dead ancestors. They found that the clearest identifiable effect of religious behavior is the promotion of cooperative family-like social relationships, which include parent/child-like relationships between the individuals making and accepting the supernatural claims and sibling-like relationships among co-acceptors of those claims.
"Almost every religion in the world, including all tribal religions, use family kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister and child for fellow members," Steadman said. "They do this to encourage the kind of behavior found normally in families - where the most intense social relationships occur. Once people realize that observing the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims is how we actually identify religious behavior and religion, we can then propose explanations and hypotheses to account for why people have engaged in religious behavior in all known cultures."
Citation: Explain Religious Behavior." ScienceDaily 10 September 2008. Accessed 10 September 2008
31 August 2008
Arkansas Cherokees Strive For Recognition
Times Record, (Fort Smith, Arkansas) Tuesday, 26 August 2008, by Hicham Raache
In its quest to gain federal recognition, the Arkansas Cherokee Nation tribe visited Fort Smith Saturday and helped residents toward claiming their Cherokee heritage.Members of the Arkansas Cherokee Nation, aka Chickamauga Cherokee, met with community members and visitors from afar at Creekmore Park’s Azalea Room Saturday afternoon and advised them on how to become official members of the Cherokee Nation.
The Conway-based Chickamauga Cherokee has been striving since December 2007 to be officially recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, thus becoming Arkansas’ first federally recognized American Indianorganization, according to Principal Chief Harold Helton.“We need to prove we existed as a community,”
Helton said to the handfuls of community members in attendance. “We can’t (be recognized) just by filling out an application and getting an Indian identification card.”While they are currently in the process of petitioning the Bureau of Indian Affairs for tribal recognition, Chickamauga Cherokee members are traveling throughout the state and educating anyone who may have Cherokee ancestry on how to become a federally recognized Cherokee and gain benefits.
“If you have one drop of Cherokee blood, you’re Cherokee as far as I’m concerned,” Helton said.Guiding Cherokee descendants in registering with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Helton said, helps build his tribe’s base roll, which he said is based on all of the Cherokees who were in Arkansas in the 1800s. . . .
For information about the Arkansas Cherokee Nation, contact Smith at (501) 963-3713 or visit http://www.arkansascherokee.us/ on the Web. {For complete story, click on link]
In its quest to gain federal recognition, the Arkansas Cherokee Nation tribe visited Fort Smith Saturday and helped residents toward claiming their Cherokee heritage.Members of the Arkansas Cherokee Nation, aka Chickamauga Cherokee, met with community members and visitors from afar at Creekmore Park’s Azalea Room Saturday afternoon and advised them on how to become official members of the Cherokee Nation.
The Conway-based Chickamauga Cherokee has been striving since December 2007 to be officially recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, thus becoming Arkansas’ first federally recognized American Indianorganization, according to Principal Chief Harold Helton.“We need to prove we existed as a community,”
Helton said to the handfuls of community members in attendance. “We can’t (be recognized) just by filling out an application and getting an Indian identification card.”While they are currently in the process of petitioning the Bureau of Indian Affairs for tribal recognition, Chickamauga Cherokee members are traveling throughout the state and educating anyone who may have Cherokee ancestry on how to become a federally recognized Cherokee and gain benefits.
“If you have one drop of Cherokee blood, you’re Cherokee as far as I’m concerned,” Helton said.Guiding Cherokee descendants in registering with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Helton said, helps build his tribe’s base roll, which he said is based on all of the Cherokees who were in Arkansas in the 1800s. . . .
For information about the Arkansas Cherokee Nation, contact Smith at (501) 963-3713 or visit http://www.arkansascherokee.us/ on the Web. {For complete story, click on link]
25 August 2008
Link sought to a Founding Father
Link sought to a Founding Father - The Boston Globe: "
By Kyle Alspach, Globe Correspondent July 22, 2007
DOVER -- Bettye Kearse's ancestors had ties to President James Madison -- they were slaves owned by the Madison family. But she thinks there's more to the story.
She says that Madison fathered a child by one of those slaves, producing her family line.
Her assertion is a matter of much debate, and proof hasn't been found. Kearse, 64, of Dover, still believes it, certain there's truth in a story that has become part of her family's lore."
[Click on link for entire story.]
Also click on this article in the Seattle Times:
African American seeks to prove genetic link to James Madison
By Jonathan Mummolo
The Washington Post
Bettye Kearse hopes to prove she is a direct descendant of James Madison.
MONTPELIER STATION, Va. — Bettye Kearse stepped inside the mansion at Montpelier, President James Madison's estate in Virginia, and found the walls stripped bare. Rooms that were once opulently adorned have been deconstructed by archaeologists to reveal the slatted wooden frame holding together the home of one of the nation's premier architects. . . . [more at link.]
By Kyle Alspach, Globe Correspondent July 22, 2007
DOVER -- Bettye Kearse's ancestors had ties to President James Madison -- they were slaves owned by the Madison family. But she thinks there's more to the story.
She says that Madison fathered a child by one of those slaves, producing her family line.
Her assertion is a matter of much debate, and proof hasn't been found. Kearse, 64, of Dover, still believes it, certain there's truth in a story that has become part of her family's lore."
[Click on link for entire story.]
Also click on this article in the Seattle Times:
African American seeks to prove genetic link to James Madison
By Jonathan Mummolo
The Washington Post
Bettye Kearse hopes to prove she is a direct descendant of James Madison.
MONTPELIER STATION, Va. — Bettye Kearse stepped inside the mansion at Montpelier, President James Madison's estate in Virginia, and found the walls stripped bare. Rooms that were once opulently adorned have been deconstructed by archaeologists to reveal the slatted wooden frame holding together the home of one of the nation's premier architects. . . . [more at link.]
21 August 2008
Your Family. Myths and Legends in Genealogy
Your Family. Myths and Legends in Genealogy at Ancestor.com.
Last Updated: August 20th, 2008
Every family has the age old myth or the legend of the grandmother who was a “full blooded Indian princess”. In fact, the Native American tribes didn’t sport many “Indian Princesses, but almost every family has some degree of native American blood and all of them, by and large due to prejudices that used to, and in some cases, still do exist in this country, want that Native American blood to be something that is a bit more acceptable than just a “Native American woman who was part of the family”.
Admit it, Indian Princess sounds so much more acceptable and so much more romanticized than simply saying that great grandfather married a Navaho woman. In days past, having Native American blood in your family wasn’t quite as acceptable as it is in today’s society, so it was by and large hidden. The family may never had been told exactly what tribe the great grandmother came from, or if in fact she was Native.
Many families who believed their family to have native blood, particularly in areas such as Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginian are finding instead that the blood was of a race determined to be Melungeon, not the Native American they thought it was originally.
Some family legends aren’t truth at all, while others are in some cases, completely factual. Only research is going to help you determine which is which, but paying attention to them only makes sense. In most cases, legend or an old family tale has a grain of some kind of truth to it .
Legends about family history don’t normally get invented from no basis and aren’t usually completely invented from thin air. There will be somewhere in that legend a single grain of truth that you have to sift out of the dune of sand to get the real story for your family.
Some family legends you will hear as you work through your genealogy will be red flags to you however to dig a bit deeper and see if there is a grain of sand, or truth to the family legend or if it is in fact fallacy.
The more common things you might hear that should raise a flag for you will be:
• The Indian Princess Myth. Usually you’re going to hear Cherokee Indian Princess, but it may manifest itself as a Mayan Princess or any other tribe. Rest assured that it may be that there is Native American blood in the family, but Indian Princesses by and large don’t exist. In point of fact there were no tribes who actively made use of the feudal type system that was by and large a Caucasian invention, so the title Indian princess would not have been used. For the most part you’re going to find that this is always a myth, but do pay attention to it and dig around a bit to search for Native blood in your family history. Usually you are going to find it with this kind of legend in the family’s history. . . .
[Click link to read the rest of this post.]
Copyright © 2008 Ancestor.com
NOTE that this entire site has a great deal of valuable information for genealogists. At this point, I could not determine the name of the administrator for the site, however.
Last Updated: August 20th, 2008
Every family has the age old myth or the legend of the grandmother who was a “full blooded Indian princess”. In fact, the Native American tribes didn’t sport many “Indian Princesses, but almost every family has some degree of native American blood and all of them, by and large due to prejudices that used to, and in some cases, still do exist in this country, want that Native American blood to be something that is a bit more acceptable than just a “Native American woman who was part of the family”.
Admit it, Indian Princess sounds so much more acceptable and so much more romanticized than simply saying that great grandfather married a Navaho woman. In days past, having Native American blood in your family wasn’t quite as acceptable as it is in today’s society, so it was by and large hidden. The family may never had been told exactly what tribe the great grandmother came from, or if in fact she was Native.
Many families who believed their family to have native blood, particularly in areas such as Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginian are finding instead that the blood was of a race determined to be Melungeon, not the Native American they thought it was originally.
Some family legends aren’t truth at all, while others are in some cases, completely factual. Only research is going to help you determine which is which, but paying attention to them only makes sense. In most cases, legend or an old family tale has a grain of some kind of truth to it .
Legends about family history don’t normally get invented from no basis and aren’t usually completely invented from thin air. There will be somewhere in that legend a single grain of truth that you have to sift out of the dune of sand to get the real story for your family.
Some family legends you will hear as you work through your genealogy will be red flags to you however to dig a bit deeper and see if there is a grain of sand, or truth to the family legend or if it is in fact fallacy.
The more common things you might hear that should raise a flag for you will be:
• The Indian Princess Myth. Usually you’re going to hear Cherokee Indian Princess, but it may manifest itself as a Mayan Princess or any other tribe. Rest assured that it may be that there is Native American blood in the family, but Indian Princesses by and large don’t exist. In point of fact there were no tribes who actively made use of the feudal type system that was by and large a Caucasian invention, so the title Indian princess would not have been used. For the most part you’re going to find that this is always a myth, but do pay attention to it and dig around a bit to search for Native blood in your family history. Usually you are going to find it with this kind of legend in the family’s history. . . .
[Click link to read the rest of this post.]
Copyright © 2008 Ancestor.com
NOTE that this entire site has a great deal of valuable information for genealogists. At this point, I could not determine the name of the administrator for the site, however.
20 August 2008
Wake Up and Smell the Armpit
Science News / Ground Squirrels Use ‘armpit Effect’
By Susan Milius; Web edition: Wednesday, August 20th, 2008; SNOWBIRD, UTAH
Wake up and smell the armpit.
Ground squirrels use their own odors to reconstruct family relationships after hibernation.
That’s basically what Belding’s ground squirrels do in spring when hibernation has wiped out their memory of their society’s smells, says Jill Mateo of the University of Chicago. Using their own body odors as reference points, the ground squirrels figure out anew each year who’s kin and who’s not.
Self-sniffing as a guide to kinship has earned the nickname “armpit effect.” Biologists have theorized that plenty of animal species rely on their armpits when they do favors for kin or avoid relatives as mates. “There’s tantalizing evidence for the armpit effect in people,” Mateo says, but ruling out other possible explanations has been tricky in any species.
[Follow link for entire article.]
By Susan Milius; Web edition: Wednesday, August 20th, 2008; SNOWBIRD, UTAH
Wake up and smell the armpit.
Ground squirrels use their own odors to reconstruct family relationships after hibernation.
That’s basically what Belding’s ground squirrels do in spring when hibernation has wiped out their memory of their society’s smells, says Jill Mateo of the University of Chicago. Using their own body odors as reference points, the ground squirrels figure out anew each year who’s kin and who’s not.
Self-sniffing as a guide to kinship has earned the nickname “armpit effect.” Biologists have theorized that plenty of animal species rely on their armpits when they do favors for kin or avoid relatives as mates. “There’s tantalizing evidence for the armpit effect in people,” Mateo says, but ruling out other possible explanations has been tricky in any species.
[Follow link for entire article.]
14 August 2008
Public trust societies and kinship societies
Kenneth Anderson's Law of War and Just War Theory Blog
Public trust societies and kinship societies
Huntington famously argues that a clash of civilizations is underway, and locates it as a clash of religious traditions, Christianity and Islam. But it seems to me more correct to think of a clash, less of two universalist religious traditions, than of two fundamental organizational principles, kinship societies and those limited number of societies that have managed to establish, however incompletely, social organization on the basis of public trust that goes beyond ties of kinship. Those ‘public trust’ societies in one sense define modernity, but some of the core conditions predate modernity by centuries - monogamy and out-marriage, to start with.
Monogamy is a necessary, although obviously far from sufficient, condition of a society that is both egalitarian and free: a society in which a group of males has no real access to sexual reproduction is not an egalitarian society, by definition, nor a free one, and that inequality in reproductive access is tied to every other form of economic inequality. And that is to speak only of the men. From this standpoint, the fact that Christianity, for reasons that appear to me, at least, historically and even theologically quite contingent, favored both monogamy and out-marriage over cousin marriage, however much honored only in the breach, sets it apart as a form of social organization.
Modernity in some sense starts with those preconditions. The development of a social ethos that accepts the idea that individuals have fiduciary duties in the abstract, that do not pertain solely to those who are members of extended family groups - even where those extended family groups are as much or more socially, rather than genetically, defined - is what gives rise to the public trust necessary to modern Western society and the modern democratic state: that the state, and its officials, will treat people neutrally, without regard to kinship or other pre-modern markers of identity. Without that trust, the result is the form of the state, but an animating principle quite at odds with it. It is the marker of the rule of law and, it increasingly seems to me, the real line of division between societies today.
What gets the cultural cycle of public trust going in society? I have no idea but certainly it appears to be a long term cultural fact, rather than a short term political creation. Samuel Pepys, for example, wrote his diary at what appeared to be the beginning of a long term shift in English political culture: a time in which offices were still heritable and for sale, but also at a time when officials - in vital public positions such as the Royal Navy - were also beginning to be held to account for corruption and fraud. By the Industrial Revolution, the culture of the civil service was taking hold, and with it an ideal of neutrality in dealing with alternating governments and with the public. The very notion of “honor” and to whom it was owed had shifted.
The idea of equality before the law, in matters related to integrity of person, is a very old one and found widely across cultures. The idea of equality in the distribution of the largesse of state favor, and that it is dishonorable for me as a public official to favor me and mine over you and yours in the matter of state property and privilege, because it is a “public trust,” is a quite new one, and very limited in cultural scope. Yet it is the basis of legitimacy - even more the democracy - of the modern state worldwide. What we call a ‘failed state’, after all, is almost by definition that there is no concept of public trust, that it has been exhausted and depleted.
(Useful reading on this includes James Bowman, Honor; and Francis Fukuyama, Trust. Of course, if your view is that all societies are equally successful in their social and cultural arrangements, just different, but no one is better or worse, then none of this will make much sense.)
From: Kenneth Anderson's Law of War and Just War Theory Blog
Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at Washington College of Law, American University, Washington DC, and a research fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, blogs on topics related to international laws of war, international law, related human rights topics, international NGOs, and the theory of the just war. (Everything here is first draft and subject to changing my mind.)
Public trust societies and kinship societies
Huntington famously argues that a clash of civilizations is underway, and locates it as a clash of religious traditions, Christianity and Islam. But it seems to me more correct to think of a clash, less of two universalist religious traditions, than of two fundamental organizational principles, kinship societies and those limited number of societies that have managed to establish, however incompletely, social organization on the basis of public trust that goes beyond ties of kinship. Those ‘public trust’ societies in one sense define modernity, but some of the core conditions predate modernity by centuries - monogamy and out-marriage, to start with.
Monogamy is a necessary, although obviously far from sufficient, condition of a society that is both egalitarian and free: a society in which a group of males has no real access to sexual reproduction is not an egalitarian society, by definition, nor a free one, and that inequality in reproductive access is tied to every other form of economic inequality. And that is to speak only of the men. From this standpoint, the fact that Christianity, for reasons that appear to me, at least, historically and even theologically quite contingent, favored both monogamy and out-marriage over cousin marriage, however much honored only in the breach, sets it apart as a form of social organization.
Modernity in some sense starts with those preconditions. The development of a social ethos that accepts the idea that individuals have fiduciary duties in the abstract, that do not pertain solely to those who are members of extended family groups - even where those extended family groups are as much or more socially, rather than genetically, defined - is what gives rise to the public trust necessary to modern Western society and the modern democratic state: that the state, and its officials, will treat people neutrally, without regard to kinship or other pre-modern markers of identity. Without that trust, the result is the form of the state, but an animating principle quite at odds with it. It is the marker of the rule of law and, it increasingly seems to me, the real line of division between societies today.
What gets the cultural cycle of public trust going in society? I have no idea but certainly it appears to be a long term cultural fact, rather than a short term political creation. Samuel Pepys, for example, wrote his diary at what appeared to be the beginning of a long term shift in English political culture: a time in which offices were still heritable and for sale, but also at a time when officials - in vital public positions such as the Royal Navy - were also beginning to be held to account for corruption and fraud. By the Industrial Revolution, the culture of the civil service was taking hold, and with it an ideal of neutrality in dealing with alternating governments and with the public. The very notion of “honor” and to whom it was owed had shifted.
The idea of equality before the law, in matters related to integrity of person, is a very old one and found widely across cultures. The idea of equality in the distribution of the largesse of state favor, and that it is dishonorable for me as a public official to favor me and mine over you and yours in the matter of state property and privilege, because it is a “public trust,” is a quite new one, and very limited in cultural scope. Yet it is the basis of legitimacy - even more the democracy - of the modern state worldwide. What we call a ‘failed state’, after all, is almost by definition that there is no concept of public trust, that it has been exhausted and depleted.
(Useful reading on this includes James Bowman, Honor; and Francis Fukuyama, Trust. Of course, if your view is that all societies are equally successful in their social and cultural arrangements, just different, but no one is better or worse, then none of this will make much sense.)
From: Kenneth Anderson's Law of War and Just War Theory Blog
Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at Washington College of Law, American University, Washington DC, and a research fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, blogs on topics related to international laws of war, international law, related human rights topics, international NGOs, and the theory of the just war. (Everything here is first draft and subject to changing my mind.)
09 August 2008
Nepotism (Kin Favoritism)
Berry makes right call on nepotism - Opinion - Editorial - General - The Canberra Times [Australia]
Berry makes right call on nepotism
7/08/2008 12:00:00 AM
Nepotism, commonly defined as favouritism based on kinship, is a hardy perennial with deep and widespread roots. Considered as an extension to the concept of the selfish gene, there are compelling reasons why people favour family, clan or tribe over strangers. The family is, after all, the rock on which human society is built, and it behoves members to show it allegiance and advance its fortunes where possible.
Blood is thicker than water, but, intriguingly, nepotism does not always advance the long-term interests of the family. Many a family fortune has been squandered, or a dynasty rendered moribund, by those third- or fourth-generation scions who have proved unequal in skill, talent or temperament to the founders. Provided it is kept within the family firm or business, nepotism is considered by most right-thinking people as an acceptable if dubious practice, or at least as being nobody's business but the family's concerned. Where it occurs in public life, or in a business or corporation with a public shareholding, it is held in rather less esteem, if not downright hostility.
Many parliaments and legislatures, mindful of the fact that nepotism discredits entire institutions, have proscribed it in their codes of ethics or conduct. The ACT Legislative Assembly Members' code of conduct, for example, includes the warning under ''conduct as employers'' that ''Members should not appoint close relatives to positions in their own offices or any other place of employment where the Member's approval is required''. But like many such codes, the ACT's is non-binding, and though it exhorts sitting and former Members to respect the spirit of the code, some MLAs, including Bill Stefaniak and Vicki Dunne, have ignored it. Indeed, Labor MLA Mary Porter continues to employs her husband as her senior officer. And in a clear indication some MLAs consider the nepotism clause to be unnecessary if not a nuisance, an Assembly committee which conducted a recent review of the code (introduced in 2006) has recommended that the anti-nepotism clause be dropped altogether.
[The rest of the article available at link, but less about kinship than politics. Emphases added by CEB]
Berry makes right call on nepotism
7/08/2008 12:00:00 AM
Nepotism, commonly defined as favouritism based on kinship, is a hardy perennial with deep and widespread roots. Considered as an extension to the concept of the selfish gene, there are compelling reasons why people favour family, clan or tribe over strangers. The family is, after all, the rock on which human society is built, and it behoves members to show it allegiance and advance its fortunes where possible.
Blood is thicker than water, but, intriguingly, nepotism does not always advance the long-term interests of the family. Many a family fortune has been squandered, or a dynasty rendered moribund, by those third- or fourth-generation scions who have proved unequal in skill, talent or temperament to the founders. Provided it is kept within the family firm or business, nepotism is considered by most right-thinking people as an acceptable if dubious practice, or at least as being nobody's business but the family's concerned. Where it occurs in public life, or in a business or corporation with a public shareholding, it is held in rather less esteem, if not downright hostility.
Many parliaments and legislatures, mindful of the fact that nepotism discredits entire institutions, have proscribed it in their codes of ethics or conduct. The ACT Legislative Assembly Members' code of conduct, for example, includes the warning under ''conduct as employers'' that ''Members should not appoint close relatives to positions in their own offices or any other place of employment where the Member's approval is required''. But like many such codes, the ACT's is non-binding, and though it exhorts sitting and former Members to respect the spirit of the code, some MLAs, including Bill Stefaniak and Vicki Dunne, have ignored it. Indeed, Labor MLA Mary Porter continues to employs her husband as her senior officer. And in a clear indication some MLAs consider the nepotism clause to be unnecessary if not a nuisance, an Assembly committee which conducted a recent review of the code (introduced in 2006) has recommended that the anti-nepotism clause be dropped altogether.
[The rest of the article available at link, but less about kinship than politics. Emphases added by CEB]
Wallace State professor Bob Davis helps trace Indian ancestors
Wallace State professor Bob Davis helps trace Indian ancestors
Friday, August 08, 2008
BILL PLOTTNews staff writer
Bob Davis said he can almost guarantee who will show up for one of his Native American genealogy workshops.
"I get a lot of people who have a family story about a Cherokee princess," he said. "I believe most Southern black and white families have some Native American heritage, even if they don't have family stories about a Cherokee princess."
Davis is director of the Family and Regional History Program at Wallace State-Hanceville"It's purely mathematics," Davis said of his theory about Indian heritage. "Take Pocahontas. She had one grandchild who lived to adulthood, yet today more than 1 million people are descendants of hers. The genealogy's been thoroughly done on that."
Consequently, it's likely most Southerners whose ancestors were around before the United States forcibly moved Indians from their lands in the early to mid-1800s have some Indian heritage. . . .
[My favorite part] "People try to put the cart before the horse. Put Pocahontas back in the box until you've done your basic genealogical research. You've got to know who you're looking for because the Indian records are all indexed by personal names," he said.
[Follow link for entire article]
Friday, August 08, 2008
BILL PLOTTNews staff writer
Bob Davis said he can almost guarantee who will show up for one of his Native American genealogy workshops.
"I get a lot of people who have a family story about a Cherokee princess," he said. "I believe most Southern black and white families have some Native American heritage, even if they don't have family stories about a Cherokee princess."
Davis is director of the Family and Regional History Program at Wallace State-Hanceville"It's purely mathematics," Davis said of his theory about Indian heritage. "Take Pocahontas. She had one grandchild who lived to adulthood, yet today more than 1 million people are descendants of hers. The genealogy's been thoroughly done on that."
Consequently, it's likely most Southerners whose ancestors were around before the United States forcibly moved Indians from their lands in the early to mid-1800s have some Indian heritage. . . .
[My favorite part] "People try to put the cart before the horse. Put Pocahontas back in the box until you've done your basic genealogical research. You've got to know who you're looking for because the Indian records are all indexed by personal names," he said.
[Follow link for entire article]
28 July 2008
The importance of family ties in the Quran
The importance of family ties in the Quran
...In Islam, the importance of maintaining family relations is paramount. The Holy Quran says, ''And be careful of [your duty to] God in whose name you demand [your rights] from one another, and [to] the ties of relationship; surely God is ever watchful over you!'' (4:1).... [Click on link for entire article]
Copyright © 2008, The Morning Call; TheMorningCall.com, 28 July 2008
...In Islam, the importance of maintaining family relations is paramount. The Holy Quran says, ''And be careful of [your duty to] God in whose name you demand [your rights] from one another, and [to] the ties of relationship; surely God is ever watchful over you!'' (4:1).... [Click on link for entire article]
Copyright © 2008, The Morning Call; TheMorningCall.com, 28 July 2008
25 July 2008
How the States Got Their Shapes
By Mr. Mark Stein
Why does Oklahoma have that panhandle? Did someone make a mistake?
We are so familiar with the map of the United States that our state borders seem as much a part of nature as mountains and rivers. Even the oddities—the entire state of Maryland(!)—have become so engrained that our map might as well be a giant jigsaw puzzle designed by Divine Providence. But that's where the real mystery begins. Every edge of the familiar wooden jigsaw pieces of our childhood represents a revealing moment of history and of, well, humans drawing lines in the sand.
How the States Got Their Shapes is the first book to tackle why our state lines are where they are. Here are the stories behind the stories, right down to the tiny northward jog at the eastern end of Tennessee and the teeny-tiny (and little known) parts of Delaware that are not attached to Delaware but to New Jersey.
[Read more at link site]
Why does Oklahoma have that panhandle? Did someone make a mistake?
We are so familiar with the map of the United States that our state borders seem as much a part of nature as mountains and rivers. Even the oddities—the entire state of Maryland(!)—have become so engrained that our map might as well be a giant jigsaw puzzle designed by Divine Providence. But that's where the real mystery begins. Every edge of the familiar wooden jigsaw pieces of our childhood represents a revealing moment of history and of, well, humans drawing lines in the sand.
How the States Got Their Shapes is the first book to tackle why our state lines are where they are. Here are the stories behind the stories, right down to the tiny northward jog at the eastern end of Tennessee and the teeny-tiny (and little known) parts of Delaware that are not attached to Delaware but to New Jersey.
[Read more at link site]
Twin Sisters "Team," Have Triplets
Twin Sisters "Team," Have Triplets, Husband Of One Of The Sisters Fertilized Eggs; One Sister Has Twins, The Other A Girl
CBS News: COLUMBIA, Mo., July 22, 2008; online from www.cbsnews.com, July 25, 2008.
If you think genealogical research on your pre-21st-century ancestors is complicated , just think how difficult researchers of the future are are going to find it! Triplets--biological triplets from the same biological mother and the same biological mother, but born six weeks apart from different uteri.
"'They're from the same batch of eggs, same batch of sperm, and so they are considered triplets -- they just have different birthdays,' Darla [the biological mother] continued," even though her sister acted as a surrogate "mother" for the fertilized eggs produced by Darla and her husband. Confused yet?
Darla and her husband will have to legally adopt the third triplet.
Read the entire link for the complete picture (if you can wrap your brain around it).
CBS News: COLUMBIA, Mo., July 22, 2008; online from www.cbsnews.com, July 25, 2008.
If you think genealogical research on your pre-21st-century ancestors is complicated , just think how difficult researchers of the future are are going to find it! Triplets--biological triplets from the same biological mother and the same biological mother, but born six weeks apart from different uteri.
"'They're from the same batch of eggs, same batch of sperm, and so they are considered triplets -- they just have different birthdays,' Darla [the biological mother] continued," even though her sister acted as a surrogate "mother" for the fertilized eggs produced by Darla and her husband. Confused yet?
Darla and her husband will have to legally adopt the third triplet.
Read the entire link for the complete picture (if you can wrap your brain around it).
14 July 2008
angels in marble: Marriage and its Purposes
angels in marble: Marriage and its Purposes
Monday, 14 July 2008 by Hatfield Girl
Marriage and its Purposes
Contrary to romanticist vulgarisation, marriage does not either yield lifelong love and partnership, nor does it exclude such a relationship. Marriage is a contractual, social mechanism that povides the weft to the warp of kinship systems.
Italians, which really means Roman law, say always that we know who our mother is. Fathers are socially determined. Whatever web of kinship used to shape a society, men are invariably associated within it by social categorisation. Supposed to marry your mother's brother's son? Then that is where your husband (in the sense of recognized father of the familial descendant generation) will be located. Sometimes he might even be that, but more usually that is just a part of his socially ascribed role.
Essentially, groups of men exchange women (and, variously, associated property), in the interest of maintaining their command of that most fundamental economic good, human reproduction. The next generation is ultimate wealth.
Women resent this. Well, you would, wouldn't you? Dress it up any way you like, kinship groups, dominated by males, exchange women. They do so because exchange generates society, and from social order springs power that is institutionally embedded, rather than constantly reasserted by force of arms. . . . [Click link for remainder of blog entry]
Monday, 14 July 2008 by Hatfield Girl
Marriage and its Purposes
Contrary to romanticist vulgarisation, marriage does not either yield lifelong love and partnership, nor does it exclude such a relationship. Marriage is a contractual, social mechanism that povides the weft to the warp of kinship systems.
Italians, which really means Roman law, say always that we know who our mother is. Fathers are socially determined. Whatever web of kinship used to shape a society, men are invariably associated within it by social categorisation. Supposed to marry your mother's brother's son? Then that is where your husband (in the sense of recognized father of the familial descendant generation) will be located. Sometimes he might even be that, but more usually that is just a part of his socially ascribed role.
Essentially, groups of men exchange women (and, variously, associated property), in the interest of maintaining their command of that most fundamental economic good, human reproduction. The next generation is ultimate wealth.
Women resent this. Well, you would, wouldn't you? Dress it up any way you like, kinship groups, dominated by males, exchange women. They do so because exchange generates society, and from social order springs power that is institutionally embedded, rather than constantly reasserted by force of arms. . . . [Click link for remainder of blog entry]
06 July 2008
What's wrong with marrying your cousin?
What's wrong with marrying your cousin?: - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine "The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Surname
Slate.com, Posted Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 5:32 PM ET
A new group is struggling for acceptance. The group is people who are married to their cousins. These people note that 20 percent of marriages around the world are between first cousins, that Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin married their first cousins, and that first-cousin marriage, while prohibited in half the United States, is legal in Canada and throughout Europe. Now a study by the National Society of Genetic Counselors says that having a child with your first cousin raises the risk of a significant birth defect from about 3-to-4 percent to about 4-to-7 percent. According to the authors, that difference isn't big enough to justify genetic testing of cousin couples, much less bans on cousin marriage. From this, the media have concluded that marrying your first cousin is "OK." Is it?
As Frame Game has argued before, topics such as sex with animals, dog-eating, and sex with cousins are never as simple as they're made out to be. You can't just say the practice in question is icky. You have to state a principle and think through its implications. Often, you have to change your opinions on related issues in order to honor that principle, or you have to throw out the principle and change your mind about the original question.
Is cousin marriage icky? Why? You can't appeal to Victorian morality; Queen Victoria married her first cousin. You can't appeal to the Bible; in the Bible, God commands marriages between first cousins. Instead, advocates of laws against cousin marriage appeal to science. To let cousins marry, they argue, is "to play Russian roulette with genetics." Many genetic diseases are caused by recessive genes. To get the disease, you have to get the bad gene from both parents. The greater the genetic similarity between your parents, the greater your chance of getting two copies of the bad gene.
But if that's your reason for banning cousin marriage, you've drilled into a mother lode of problems. Many cousin couples can't pass on genetic diseases, since they're infertile. Are you going to ban them from marrying? If not, maybe the 24 states that ban cousin marriage should follow the lead of the five states that allow it if either party is sterile. And if procreation between first cousins is too dangerous, why stop there? Six states ban marriage between first cousins once removed, i.e., marrying the son or daughter of your first cousin. Theoretically, that's half as risky as marrying your first cousin, in terms of increasing the probability of passing on a genetic disease to your kids. How about marriage between second cousins? Theoretically, that's one-fourth as risky. No state bans such marriages. Should we change that?
If your purpose is to prevent people with dangerous genes from marrying each other, why use a crude standard such as kinship? Why not test everybody for bad genes, ban marriage between carriers, and let cousins without bad genes marry each other? Banning cousin marriage keeps these couples in the closet, deterring them from seeking genetic screening, which would help them decide whether they could safely have kids. And as the NSGC study notes, the crude assumption that children of cousins will turn out badly leads to unnecessary abortions.
If you're afraid of mandatory genetic testing and you'd prefer to ban marriage among people in high-risk categories, why not start with fertile women over 40? And what about ethnicity? Cousin couples compare laws against cousin marriage to laws against interracial marriage. They've got it backward. Sickle-cell anemia runs in blacks. Tay-Sachs runs in Jews. The best way to curtail such diseases would be to ban marriages within ethnic groups.
The New York Times, CNN, and their journalistic brothers in arms have spun the increased risk found by the NSGC study as no big deal. Why is an increase of 50 to 100 percent no big deal? At worst, said one of the study's authors, when cousins procreate, "'93 percent of the time, nothing is going to happen." What about the other 7 percent? One doctor calculated from the study's findings that "almost 10,000 children will be stillborn or born with birth defects this year in the United States from first-cousin marriages. Not marrying a cousin is a more potent remedy than many of the medications we prescribe for heart attacks." Perhaps states should at least require cousins to get genetic counseling before marrying, as Maine has done.
The study's authors and its trumpeters in the media suffer from the congenital liberal conceit that science solves all moral questions. The authors instruct genetic counselors to focus on "validating feelings" and helping cousin couples "normalize" their relationships by explaining how common cousin marriages are. In the Times, USA Today, and other publications, the authors declare that laws against cousin marriage are baseless. According to headlines and TV reports, "science" has proved that cousin marriages are "OK." No, it hasn't. Science has deflated the scientific objections to cousin marriages. Moral problems remain.
Start with the problem of double first cousins. Suppose your mom and my mom are sisters. If cousin marriage is legal, you and I can marry. What if, in addition, your dad and my dad are brothers? It isn't that hard to imagine: Boy meets girl, girl's sister likes boy's family, girl's sister gets interested in boy's brother, both couples end up getting married. The first couple produces me; the second couple produces you. North Carolina and West Virginia explicitly prohibit me from marrying you, but 20 other states don't. Is that OK? Because if it is, bear in mind that you and I have as many genes in common as an uncle and niece do. If you and I can marry, why can't an uncle and an adult niece? Science says there's no difference.
Would you rather restrict marriage to ordinary first cousins? That won't get you out of the woods. First cousins have as many genes in common as a man and his half-brother's child do. We're talking Roger and Chelsea Clinton. If first cousins can marry, why can't Roger and Chelsea? Science says there's no difference.
If you still won't cry uncle, let's look at hard-core incest. Advocates of cousin marriage say they're against sex between siblings, but they can't explain why. Cousincouples.com, the Web site to which the NSGC study refers couples for support services, wants to keep Big Brother out of the bedroom. The site argues that "sexual relations between consenting adults [are] no one's business but their own." Aunt Kate, the site's advice columnist, tells a reader who's shacking up with her half brother that "if you are consenting adults there is no prohibition on simply enjoying your relationship." The site's "Statement of Principles" touts the "special intimacy" of romance between cousins: "The love and chemistry of cousins is typically astronomical as compared with other couples. If non-cousin couples would take the time to educate themselves, they would be jealous of cousin couples!" By that logic, wouldn't sibling couples be even better?
Yes, the risk of disease in offspring of sibling couples is much higher. But why couldn't genetic screening take care of that problem? As cousincouples.com points out, "Current studies indicate that cousin couples have a lower ratio of miscarriages—perhaps because body chemistry of cousins is more similar." Wouldn't the chance of miscarriage be even lower for siblings?
Many advocates of cousin marriage dismiss bans on the practice as racist. The authors of the NSGC study urge counselors to be "culturally respectful" of immigrant communities in which cousin marriage is "traditionally preferred." Why do these traditions promote cousin marriage? In some cases, because it promises "better treatment by in-laws" or because it keeps "goods and property within a family," says the study. That sounds more like pressure than freedom. Maybe we should worry more about whether people in these communities are free not to marry their cousins.
If cultural respect is your principle, how far do you carry it? According to the study, some African, Asian, and Middle Eastern cultures prefer marriages "between an uncle and niece." Should we respect those cultures by permitting those marriages? The question isn't just hypothetical: Minnesota law has a grandfather clause allowing uncle-niece marriages when "permitted by the established customs of aboriginal cultures." And what about people from Jewish or Christian traditions that stigmatize cousin marriage? Should their genetic counselors reflect that stigma?
As Frame Game found in the case of bestiality, the best argument against a questionable practice comes, inadvertently, from within it. In this case, the answer comes from Aunt Kate's advice column at cousincouples.com. "I tell almost ALL my correspondents who are considering expressing a more than casual affection for their cousin to remember a few important things," she writes. "The first one is that you already have a guaranteed, life long relationship that you will live with for a very long time. Don't mess it up."
This is the problem with sleeping with your cousin. You can move on from an ex-spouse or ex-lover, but there's no such thing as an ex-cousin. How are your parents and your ex's parents supposed to handle a nasty divorce or a breakup? How can they support their kids without antagonizing their siblings and their siblings' kids? You've wrecked your whole family. It isn't as bad as if you'd slept with a sibling, but it's a lot worse than if you'd slept with a friend or an officemate. We don't ban you from dating people at the office, but we don't tell you it's a great idea, either.
If you get into bed with your cousin, there's no need for Uncle Sam to throw you in jail. If it works out, great. If not, you'll find yourself in a jail no uncle will let you out of.
William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2064227/
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Slate.com, Posted Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 5:32 PM ET
A new group is struggling for acceptance. The group is people who are married to their cousins. These people note that 20 percent of marriages around the world are between first cousins, that Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin married their first cousins, and that first-cousin marriage, while prohibited in half the United States, is legal in Canada and throughout Europe. Now a study by the National Society of Genetic Counselors says that having a child with your first cousin raises the risk of a significant birth defect from about 3-to-4 percent to about 4-to-7 percent. According to the authors, that difference isn't big enough to justify genetic testing of cousin couples, much less bans on cousin marriage. From this, the media have concluded that marrying your first cousin is "OK." Is it?
As Frame Game has argued before, topics such as sex with animals, dog-eating, and sex with cousins are never as simple as they're made out to be. You can't just say the practice in question is icky. You have to state a principle and think through its implications. Often, you have to change your opinions on related issues in order to honor that principle, or you have to throw out the principle and change your mind about the original question.
Is cousin marriage icky? Why? You can't appeal to Victorian morality; Queen Victoria married her first cousin. You can't appeal to the Bible; in the Bible, God commands marriages between first cousins. Instead, advocates of laws against cousin marriage appeal to science. To let cousins marry, they argue, is "to play Russian roulette with genetics." Many genetic diseases are caused by recessive genes. To get the disease, you have to get the bad gene from both parents. The greater the genetic similarity between your parents, the greater your chance of getting two copies of the bad gene.
But if that's your reason for banning cousin marriage, you've drilled into a mother lode of problems. Many cousin couples can't pass on genetic diseases, since they're infertile. Are you going to ban them from marrying? If not, maybe the 24 states that ban cousin marriage should follow the lead of the five states that allow it if either party is sterile. And if procreation between first cousins is too dangerous, why stop there? Six states ban marriage between first cousins once removed, i.e., marrying the son or daughter of your first cousin. Theoretically, that's half as risky as marrying your first cousin, in terms of increasing the probability of passing on a genetic disease to your kids. How about marriage between second cousins? Theoretically, that's one-fourth as risky. No state bans such marriages. Should we change that?
If your purpose is to prevent people with dangerous genes from marrying each other, why use a crude standard such as kinship? Why not test everybody for bad genes, ban marriage between carriers, and let cousins without bad genes marry each other? Banning cousin marriage keeps these couples in the closet, deterring them from seeking genetic screening, which would help them decide whether they could safely have kids. And as the NSGC study notes, the crude assumption that children of cousins will turn out badly leads to unnecessary abortions.
If you're afraid of mandatory genetic testing and you'd prefer to ban marriage among people in high-risk categories, why not start with fertile women over 40? And what about ethnicity? Cousin couples compare laws against cousin marriage to laws against interracial marriage. They've got it backward. Sickle-cell anemia runs in blacks. Tay-Sachs runs in Jews. The best way to curtail such diseases would be to ban marriages within ethnic groups.
The New York Times, CNN, and their journalistic brothers in arms have spun the increased risk found by the NSGC study as no big deal. Why is an increase of 50 to 100 percent no big deal? At worst, said one of the study's authors, when cousins procreate, "'93 percent of the time, nothing is going to happen." What about the other 7 percent? One doctor calculated from the study's findings that "almost 10,000 children will be stillborn or born with birth defects this year in the United States from first-cousin marriages. Not marrying a cousin is a more potent remedy than many of the medications we prescribe for heart attacks." Perhaps states should at least require cousins to get genetic counseling before marrying, as Maine has done.
The study's authors and its trumpeters in the media suffer from the congenital liberal conceit that science solves all moral questions. The authors instruct genetic counselors to focus on "validating feelings" and helping cousin couples "normalize" their relationships by explaining how common cousin marriages are. In the Times, USA Today, and other publications, the authors declare that laws against cousin marriage are baseless. According to headlines and TV reports, "science" has proved that cousin marriages are "OK." No, it hasn't. Science has deflated the scientific objections to cousin marriages. Moral problems remain.
Start with the problem of double first cousins. Suppose your mom and my mom are sisters. If cousin marriage is legal, you and I can marry. What if, in addition, your dad and my dad are brothers? It isn't that hard to imagine: Boy meets girl, girl's sister likes boy's family, girl's sister gets interested in boy's brother, both couples end up getting married. The first couple produces me; the second couple produces you. North Carolina and West Virginia explicitly prohibit me from marrying you, but 20 other states don't. Is that OK? Because if it is, bear in mind that you and I have as many genes in common as an uncle and niece do. If you and I can marry, why can't an uncle and an adult niece? Science says there's no difference.
Would you rather restrict marriage to ordinary first cousins? That won't get you out of the woods. First cousins have as many genes in common as a man and his half-brother's child do. We're talking Roger and Chelsea Clinton. If first cousins can marry, why can't Roger and Chelsea? Science says there's no difference.
If you still won't cry uncle, let's look at hard-core incest. Advocates of cousin marriage say they're against sex between siblings, but they can't explain why. Cousincouples.com, the Web site to which the NSGC study refers couples for support services, wants to keep Big Brother out of the bedroom. The site argues that "sexual relations between consenting adults [are] no one's business but their own." Aunt Kate, the site's advice columnist, tells a reader who's shacking up with her half brother that "if you are consenting adults there is no prohibition on simply enjoying your relationship." The site's "Statement of Principles" touts the "special intimacy" of romance between cousins: "The love and chemistry of cousins is typically astronomical as compared with other couples. If non-cousin couples would take the time to educate themselves, they would be jealous of cousin couples!" By that logic, wouldn't sibling couples be even better?
Yes, the risk of disease in offspring of sibling couples is much higher. But why couldn't genetic screening take care of that problem? As cousincouples.com points out, "Current studies indicate that cousin couples have a lower ratio of miscarriages—perhaps because body chemistry of cousins is more similar." Wouldn't the chance of miscarriage be even lower for siblings?
Many advocates of cousin marriage dismiss bans on the practice as racist. The authors of the NSGC study urge counselors to be "culturally respectful" of immigrant communities in which cousin marriage is "traditionally preferred." Why do these traditions promote cousin marriage? In some cases, because it promises "better treatment by in-laws" or because it keeps "goods and property within a family," says the study. That sounds more like pressure than freedom. Maybe we should worry more about whether people in these communities are free not to marry their cousins.
If cultural respect is your principle, how far do you carry it? According to the study, some African, Asian, and Middle Eastern cultures prefer marriages "between an uncle and niece." Should we respect those cultures by permitting those marriages? The question isn't just hypothetical: Minnesota law has a grandfather clause allowing uncle-niece marriages when "permitted by the established customs of aboriginal cultures." And what about people from Jewish or Christian traditions that stigmatize cousin marriage? Should their genetic counselors reflect that stigma?
As Frame Game found in the case of bestiality, the best argument against a questionable practice comes, inadvertently, from within it. In this case, the answer comes from Aunt Kate's advice column at cousincouples.com. "I tell almost ALL my correspondents who are considering expressing a more than casual affection for their cousin to remember a few important things," she writes. "The first one is that you already have a guaranteed, life long relationship that you will live with for a very long time. Don't mess it up."
This is the problem with sleeping with your cousin. You can move on from an ex-spouse or ex-lover, but there's no such thing as an ex-cousin. How are your parents and your ex's parents supposed to handle a nasty divorce or a breakup? How can they support their kids without antagonizing their siblings and their siblings' kids? You've wrecked your whole family. It isn't as bad as if you'd slept with a sibling, but it's a lot worse than if you'd slept with a friend or an officemate. We don't ban you from dating people at the office, but we don't tell you it's a great idea, either.
If you get into bed with your cousin, there's no need for Uncle Sam to throw you in jail. If it works out, great. If not, you'll find yourself in a jail no uncle will let you out of.
William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2064227/
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
02 July 2008
The way we present the topic of slavery to young people is all wrong
Marc Aronson: Face the Facts - 7/1/2008 - School Library Journal
The way we present the topic of slavery to young people is all wrong
By Marc Aronson -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2008
The way we present the topic of slavery to young people is all wrong
By Marc Aronson -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2008
Kinship and Human Society
Research and Markets: Discover the Fundamental Questions About the Emergence of Human Society; DUBLIN, Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)
Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b08325/early_human_kinshi) has announced the addition of the "Early Human Kinship" report to their offering.
Questions of 'kinship' have always been at the center of anthropology. Was there a connection between the beginnings of language and the beginnings of organized 'kinship and marriage'? How far did evolutionary selection favor gender and age as abstract principles for regulating social relations within and between ancient bands of our early ancestors? This book debates these and other fundamental questions about the emergence of human society.
Early Human Kinship brings together original studies from leading figures in the biological sciences, social anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics. The volume takes as its starting point the evolutionary link between enlarged brain capacity and the ability of human ancestors to support increasingly large population groups. It then moves beyond traditional Darwinian questions to ask how far early humans might have organized these groups according to rules about mating and social reproduction that we would recognize today.
Sponsored by the Royal Anthropological Institute, in conjunction with the British Academy, Early Human Kinship provides a major breakthrough in the debate over human evolution and the nature of society.
Key Topics Covered:
- Kinship and Material Culture: Archaeological Implications of the Human Global Diaspora: Clive Gamble (Royal Holloway College, University of London).
- Deep Roots of Kin - Developing the Evolutionary Perspective from Prehistory: John A. J. Gowlett (University of Liverpool).
- Early Human Kinship was Matrilineal: Chris Knight (University of East London).
- Alternating Birth Classes: A Note from Eastern Africa: Wendy James (University of Oxford).
- Tetradic Theory and the Origin of Human Kinship Systems: Nicholas J. Allen (University of Oxford).
- What Can Ethnography Tell us about Human Social Evolution: Bob Layton (University of Durham).
- Kinship in Biological Perspective: Robin Dunbar (University of Oxford).
- The Importance of Kinship in Monkey Society: Mandy Korstjens (University of Bournemouth).
- The Meaning and Relevance of Kinship in Great Apes: Julia Lehmann (University of Oxford).
- Grandmothering and Female Coalitions: A Basis for Matrilineal Priority?: Kit Opie and Camilla Power (both University of East London).
- A Phylogenetic Approach to the History of Cultural Practices: Laura Fortunato (University College London).
- Reconstructing Ancient Kinship in Africa: Christ Ehret (University of California at Los Angeles).
- The Co-evolution of Language and Kinship: Alan Barnard (University of Edinburgh).
- Epilogue: Reaching Across the Gaps: Hilary Callan (Royal Anthropological Institute, London).
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b08325/early_human_kinshi.
Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b08325/early_human_kinshi) has announced the addition of the "Early Human Kinship" report to their offering.
Questions of 'kinship' have always been at the center of anthropology. Was there a connection between the beginnings of language and the beginnings of organized 'kinship and marriage'? How far did evolutionary selection favor gender and age as abstract principles for regulating social relations within and between ancient bands of our early ancestors? This book debates these and other fundamental questions about the emergence of human society.
Early Human Kinship brings together original studies from leading figures in the biological sciences, social anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics. The volume takes as its starting point the evolutionary link between enlarged brain capacity and the ability of human ancestors to support increasingly large population groups. It then moves beyond traditional Darwinian questions to ask how far early humans might have organized these groups according to rules about mating and social reproduction that we would recognize today.
Sponsored by the Royal Anthropological Institute, in conjunction with the British Academy, Early Human Kinship provides a major breakthrough in the debate over human evolution and the nature of society.
Key Topics Covered:
- Kinship and Material Culture: Archaeological Implications of the Human Global Diaspora: Clive Gamble (Royal Holloway College, University of London).
- Deep Roots of Kin - Developing the Evolutionary Perspective from Prehistory: John A. J. Gowlett (University of Liverpool).
- Early Human Kinship was Matrilineal: Chris Knight (University of East London).
- Alternating Birth Classes: A Note from Eastern Africa: Wendy James (University of Oxford).
- Tetradic Theory and the Origin of Human Kinship Systems: Nicholas J. Allen (University of Oxford).
- What Can Ethnography Tell us about Human Social Evolution: Bob Layton (University of Durham).
- Kinship in Biological Perspective: Robin Dunbar (University of Oxford).
- The Importance of Kinship in Monkey Society: Mandy Korstjens (University of Bournemouth).
- The Meaning and Relevance of Kinship in Great Apes: Julia Lehmann (University of Oxford).
- Grandmothering and Female Coalitions: A Basis for Matrilineal Priority?: Kit Opie and Camilla Power (both University of East London).
- A Phylogenetic Approach to the History of Cultural Practices: Laura Fortunato (University College London).
- Reconstructing Ancient Kinship in Africa: Christ Ehret (University of California at Los Angeles).
- The Co-evolution of Language and Kinship: Alan Barnard (University of Edinburgh).
- Epilogue: Reaching Across the Gaps: Hilary Callan (Royal Anthropological Institute, London).
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b08325/early_human_kinshi.
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