the nature of nurture

Abstract

The problem of what is to be included in “the nature of kinship” is examined by focusing on kinship and friendship in Truk District, Caroline Islands, Micronesia. A cultural model of “intensive interpersonal relationships” is presented showing how natural kinship, created kinship, and friendship conceptually interlock for Trukese. It is concluded that the essence of kinship as a general cross‐cultural construct is sharing and that cross‐cultural studies of kinship must focus on the variety of symbolic actions that stand for kinship in different cultural settings.

Tradition in the face of change: Food choices among Pulapese in Truk state

“…Production and distribution of food occur among kin on Pulap, and sharing food expresses more than sociability or generosity-it expresses and establishes kinship. The essence of kinship throughout the area of Truk rests not on biological ties but on sharing resources, particularly food (Marshall 1977). Daily sharing of food delineates a homesite (yiimw) and the establishment of a separate descent line.…”

Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship: Compatibility between Cultural and Biological Approaches

“…The fear of danger or threat triggers caregiving responses, just as it triggers attachment responses. " (Berman and Sperling 1994,9) This interplay of reciprocated caregiving and bonding in adult attachments reappears in chapter 8 (e. g. Witherspoon 1975;Marshall 1977). Ainsworth (1989) discusses social bonds beyond the parent-child and marital ones, albeit here apparently in reference to western (urban) culture, and agrees that proximity-seeking and caregiving may both be components of some such bonds; "Friendship can connote a wide range of dyadic relationships, including relationships with acquaintances with whom one has occasional pleasant interaction, relationships with congenial companions with whom one spends quite a great deal of time in activities of mutual concern or interest, and close intimate relationships with one or a few particularly valued persons whose company one seeks intermittently.…”

“…(Stafford 2000,12,24 emphasis in original) Many of the accounts reviewed in chapter 8 used concepts from attachment theory to describe social bonds. Marshall (1977) "This article examines the ways emergent human psychological needs and social identities dynamically intermingle through experience to organize meaningful social relationships. Specifically, I examine the idealized cultural models that associate kinbased identities and acts of need fulfilment and how these models mediate the formation of personally meaningful and socially legitimate relationships in Chuuk Lagoon (formally Truk) of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).…”

I. Introduction

“…Following in Schneider's footsteps, many anthropologists have argued that the people they study do not define human relatedness by reference to birth and filiation (e.g., Nuttall, 2000;Marshall, 1977;Witherspoon, 1975) and that, crucially, they do not recognize the ontological distinction between relationships engendered by biological reproduction and relationships engendered by social interactions such as sharing food and locality (e.g., Carsten, 2000, pp. 25-27;Ingold, 1991, p. 362 for a particularly clear formulation of this point).…”