----2. Worksheet. Care & Kin in different cultures

Care from mother's brother in other cultures

In a previous worksheet, we considered how your mother's brother is responsible for your care among the Musuo of China. It is not just among the Musuo. In many cultures, your mother's brother, not your father, is responsible for providing affectionate care for you. In other societies he is the stern disciplinarian. Why is it one or the other? Anthropologist Levi-Strauss thought he had the answer. The following diagram explains:

Generation

Observe that:

•  the husband - wife - brother all belong to one generation (highlighted in green)
• the son (nephew) belongs to another generation (highlighted in blue)

Notice how, among the Trobriand Islanders:

• within one generation, one relationship is + and one is  -
• between the generations, one relationship is - and one is +

The same applies for the Cherkess:

If the husband-wife relationship is good, brother-sister will be bad. And vice versa.

If the uncle-nephew relationship is good, father-son will be bad. And vice versa.

Kinship puzzles

Each of the following questions draws you into the relational logic of kinship. Lévi-Strauss argued that kinship systems are structured around oppositions—and that the avunculate (maternal uncle–nephew relationship) is key. Based on what you know about his theory, answer the following questions:

https://lms.latrobe.edu.au/draftfile.php/113682/user/draft/53432222/question-set-537892.h5p

Takeaway

Levi-Struass contends that patterns of kinship and care are not something we choose or even are aware of. It runs along pre-determined structures that were here before we were born and will remain after we die. But does Levi-Strauss's structural analysis of kinship truly provide insight into patterns of care?

Discussion

1a. What about your family? Which of these kinship structures does it most closely resemble? Who has what kind of caring duties? 

OR

1b. Which kind of kinship structure do you think would suit your personality best? Who would have the caring duties?

 OR

1c. Think about someone who has cared for you in a meaningful way—this could be a relative, friend, neighbour, teacher, or anyone else important in your life. How does your relationship with them fit (or not fit) into the kinship structures we’ve studied? What might this tell us about how care helps create kinship, even beyond biological or traditional family roles?

2. In Caring & Family, Winarnita and Herriman describe how care is shaped by migration, religion, and transnational family life. Marriage migrants to the Cocos Islands organise care across households, generations, and national borders.Does this reading support or challenge the idea that care and kinship are always culturally “natural”?

3. Buch (2015, 238-239) writes:

"leading scholars such as Borneman (2001, p. 43) ... argue that studies of kinship may be productively reoriented away from concerns about marriage, sexuality, and gender toward “a concern for the actual situations in which people experience the need to care and be cared for and to the political economies of their distribution.”

Do you think the study of kinship should focus more on care and how economics and politics affects how family organise it? Or should it remained focus the classic concepts like marriage, sexuality, and gender?