What Are Kinship Terminologies, and Why Do We Care? A Computational Approach to Analyzing Symbolic Domains

Abstract

Kinship is a fundamental feature and basis of human societies. We describe a set of computat ional tools and services, the Kinship Algebra Modeler, and the logic that underlies these. Thes e were developed to improve how we understand both the fundamental facts of kinship, and h ow people use kinship as a resource in their lives. Mathematical formalism applied to cultural concepts is more than an exercise in model building, as it provides a way to represent and exp lore logical consistency and implications. The logic underlying kinship is explored here thro ugh the kin term computations made by users of a terminology when computing the kinship r elation one person has to another by referring to a third person for whom each has a kin term relationship. Kinship Algebra Modeler provides a set of tools, services and an architecture to explore kinship terminologies and their properties in an accessible manner.

Introducing Qualitative and Social Science Factors in Archaeological Modelling: Necessity and Relevance

“…This shows the value of simulations for working out the behavioural consequences of cultural rules, thereby adding to the ethnographic record. With regard to the kinship terminology systems that Read discusses in this chapter, he has also developed (in conjunction with Michael D. Fischer at Kent University, UK; see Read, Fischer and Leaf 2013) an extensive computer model, called Kinship Algebraic Expert System (KAES), for implementing the algebraic analysis of kinship terminology systems that he discusses in his chapter (Read 2006). The computer model makes it possible for the algebraic analysis of a kinship terminology to be carried out even without a background in the formalism of abstract algebras.…”

Persistent Cultures: Miskitu Kinship Terminological Fluidity

“…In the case of basic color terms, the difference is on the order of more than 20,000 potential combinations of basic color terms versus roughly two--dozen combinations that are actually present in the ethnographic record. Read, Fischer and Leaf (2013) have found that in all kinship terminologies thus far analyzed, a finite number of the structure of a set of related primary kin terms can be precisely generated from an algebra comprised of a finite set of culturally salient equations and generators capable of generating the structure more efficiently than listing each relationship. This demonstrates that the kinship structure we observe can be acquired using less information than would be required than if the entire terminological structure were acquired as observed.…”

Maintenance of cultural diversity: Social roles, social networks, and cognitive networks

“…Cultural kinship systems both define the societal boundaries and provide the structure and organization that establish the basis for the role differentiation that Smaldino discusses (Leaf 2009;Leaf & Read 2012). The kinship terminologies that express the different systems of cultural kinship relations are not emergent, as research on the structural logic of kinship systems has demonstrated (e.g., Leaf & Read 2012;Read 1984;Read et al 2013). Terminologies are not the epiphenomena of already patterned behavioras was assumed in some of the early research on human kinship systems and has been assumed in accounts of human evolution (e.g., Chapais 2008)but are constructed idea systems (Leaf & Read 2012) that provide conceptual organization for the small-scale societies from which present-day human societies have evolved.…”