Experimental-Formal Analysis of Kinship

Leaf, Murray J.

doi:10.2307/20456604

Cited by 25 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Use of the latter has led to analytical cul-desacs (Leaf and Read 2012) and what has passed for analysis has sometimes been little more than description (Read 2000)-which is not to belittle the value of good description. We obtain good description when we begin with ethnographic observations showing that culture-bearers compute kinship relations through products of kin terms, as this provides an effective way to experimentally make evident and to represent patterning arising from implementation of the cultural knowledge embedded in a kinship terminology (Leaf 2006). Similarly, we need to distinguish between, on the one hand, modeling aimed at accounting for patterning in the culture idea systems of culture-bearers and, on the other hand, modeling that focuses on patterning expressed in the behavioral context of the instantiation of those culture idea systems.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The cultural knowledge that enculturated individuals have of their kinship terminology is expressed by them through kin term computations and can be elicited systematically with kin term products based on primary kin terms for the positions within a family (Leaf 2006;Leaf and Read 2012). We can graph the products and their outcome in a manner similar to graphing the structure for the Friend/Enemy rules.…”

Section: A Kinship Terminology As a Theory Model: Concept Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Modeling Cultural Idea Systems: The Relationship between Theory Models and Data Models

Read

2013

Perspectives on Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Kinship Terminology As a Theory Model: Concept Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling Cultural Idea Systems: The Relationship between Theory Models and Data Models

Read

2013

Perspectives on Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…13 Kin-term product equations can be elicited systematically from informants as Leaf (2006) discusses in detail and illustrates with the Punjabi terminology (see also .…”

Section: Kin-term Productsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What is common across kinship terminologies is a conceptually bounded set of kin terms (Leaf 2006;, the kin-term product (technically, a binary product) as the means for working out the structural relations among those kin terms, and culturally salient, structural equations giving a terminology structure its particular form. By recognising that intersystem comparison may be made at the level of these elements, Lehman (2011) draws the opposite conclusion as does Kronenfeld from the ethnographic facts establishing the cultural saliency of computing kin relations using kin terms and the kin-term product.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Focality and Extension in Kinship: Essays in Memory of Harold W. Scheffler

Shapiro¹

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Hal Scheffler was one of the world's great anthropologists and, without question, its foremost authority on human kinship. These considerations in themselves would be quite enough to merit a collection of essays in his memory, but his work also touches upon certain larger issues in our appreciation of the human condition, as well as current social controversies.It was for his extensionist position on kinship terminologies-what he liked to call 'systems of kin classification'-that he was best known. In a nutshell, Scheffler would come to raise two questions: (1) What is the primary meaning-what he called the focus-of kinship terms like English 'mother', 'father', 'brother', 'sister' etc.? (2) By what procedures do people extend these meanings from their foci to others? His answers, based upon meticulous analyses of kinship terminologies in various parts of the world, were that focal membership is supplied mostly by nuclear family relationships, from which relationships it is extended to peopleeven to things-outside the nuclear family; and that these extensions are accomplished by ordered sets of rules that have considerable generality cross-culturally. Choiseul Island kinshipScheffler's first publication on kinship, based upon his doctoral dissertation, was his book-length treatment of sociality on Choiseul Island (Scheffler 1965), now part of the independent Solomon Islands. Two things deserve special emphasis in Scheffler's Choiseul analysis. First, there are rich data on distinctions made by the Choiseulese themselves. Second, Choiseulese ideas about kinship are not so different from our own. 1 We are especially indebted for this personal information from Jan Simpson, Hal's widow, her secretary Mary Smith and Ray Kelly, his Yale colleague. 5 INTRODUCTIONWith regard to the first point, even though more distant kin are superficially classed with one's parents, siblings, children, and other close kin, these latter are said, in native parlance, to be the 'true' members of their respective kin classes (Scheffler 1965: 75, 81). The singling out of focal membership by words translatable as 'true' (or 'real') is typical of a very large number of kinship terminologies throughout the world-a point Hal Scheffler would repeatedly make in subsequent analyses (e.g. Scheffler 1972b: 354; Scheffler 1973: 766; Scheffler and Lounsbury 1971: 43) and which probably supplies the most frequently encountered evidence in the ethnographic literature for the extensionist position (Shapiro 2016(Shapiro , 2017. With regard to the second point, Scheffler notes an expression in the Choiseul language that he translates as 'kin', which implies that they idiomise kinship in ways that are entirely familiar to English speakers. Towards a general theory of human kinshipA year after the publication of his Choiseul analysis, Hal Scheffler put forward nothing less than a general statement on human kinship. In this important but neglected essay Scheffler lays the groundwork for his general position on human kinship, to wit: [D]ifferent socie...

show abstract

“…We can now identify, recursively, all of the kin terms in the kinship terminology by querying a competent user of a kinship terminology (Leaf 2006;Leaf and Read 2012) in the manner indicated in Fig. 1(B) by starting with a set G of primary kin terms for the terminology.…”

Section: Kin Term Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural kinship as a computational system: from bottom-up to top-down forms of social organization

Read

2012

Comput Math Organ Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Experimental-Formal Analysis of Kinship

Cited by 25 publications

References 9 publications

Modeling Cultural Idea Systems: The Relationship between Theory Models and Data Models

Modeling Cultural Idea Systems: The Relationship between Theory Models and Data Models

Focality and Extension in Kinship: Essays in Memory of Harold W. Scheffler

Cultural kinship as a computational system: from bottom-up to top-down forms of social organization

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About