Coextinction and cothreatened refer to the phenomena of the loss or decline of a host species resulting in the loss or endangerment of other species that depends on it, potentially leading to cascading effects across trophic levels. The term originated by the authors Stork and Lyal (1993) and was originally used to explain the extinction of parasiticinsects following the loss of their specific hosts. The term is now used to describe the loss of any interacting species, including competition with their counterpart, and specialist herbivores with their food source. Coextinction is especially common when a keystone species goes extinct.
Causes
The most frequently cited example is that of the extinct passenger pigeon and its parasitic bird liceColumbicola extinctus and Campanulotes defectus. Recently, C. extinctus was rediscovered on the band-tailed pigeon, and C. defectus was found to be a likely case of misidentification of the existing Campanulotes flavus.
However, even though the passenger pigeon louse was rediscovered,
coextinctions of other parasites, even on the passenger pigeon, may have
occurred. Several louse species—such as Rallicola extinctus, a huia parasite—probably became extinct together with their hosts.
Recent studies have suggested that up to 50% of species may go extinct in the next 50 years.
This is in part due to coextinction; for example the loss of tropical
butterfly species from Singapore is attributed to the loss of their
specific larval host plants.
To see how possible future cases of coextinction would play out,
researchers have made models to show probabilistic relationships between
affiliate and host extinctions across co-evolved inter-specific
systems. The subjects are pollinating Ficus Wasps and Ficus, primate parasites, (Pneumocystis Fungi, Nematode, and Lice)
and their hosts, parasitic mites and lice and their avian hosts,
butterflies and their larval host plants, and ant butterflies and their
host ants. For all but the most host-specific affiliate groups (e.g.,
primate Pneumocystis fungi and primates), affiliate extinction levels
may be modest at low levels of host extinction but can be expected to
rise quickly as host extinctions increase to levels predicted in the
near future. This curvilinear relationship between host and affiliate
extinction levels may also explain, in part, why so few coextinction
events have been documented to date.
Investigations have been carried out into coextinction risk among the rich Psyllid fauna Hemiptera – Psylloidea inhabiting acacias (Fabaceae-Mimosoideae: Acacia) in central eastern New South Wales, Australia. The results, suggest that A. ausfeldii hosts one specialist psyllid species, Acizzia, and that A. gordonii
hosts one specialist psyllid, Acizzia. Both psyllid species may be
threatened at the same level of their host species with coextinction.
Interaction patterns can be used to anticipate the consequences
of phylogenetic effects. By using a system of methodical observations,
scientists can use the phylogenetic relationships of species to predict
the number of interactions they exhibit in more than one-third of the
networks, and the identity of the species with which they interact in
about half of the networks. Consequentially, simulated extinction events
tend to trigger coextinction cascades of related species. This results
in a non-random pruning of the evolutionary tree.
"Species coextinction is a manifestation of the interconnectedness of organisms in complex ecosystems. The loss of species through coextinction represents the loss of irreplaceable evolutionary and coevolutionary
history. In view of the global extinction crisis, it is imperative that
coextinction be the focus of future research to understand the
intricate processes of species extinctions. While coextinction may not
be the most important cause of species extinctions, it is certainly an
insidious one." (Koh et al. 2004)
Koh et al. also define coendangered as taxa "likely to go extinct if their currently endangered hosts [...] become extinct."
One example is the near extinction of the genus Hibiscadelphus as a consequence of the disappearance of several of the Hawaiian honeycreepers, its pollinators. There are several instances of predators and scavengers dying out following the disappearance of species which represented their source of food: for example, the coextinction of the Haast's eagle with the moa.
Coextinction may also occur on a local level: for example, the decline in the red ant Myrmica sabuleti in southern England, caused by habitat loss, resulted in the local extinction of the large blue
butterfly, which is dependent on the ant as a host for the larvae. In
this case the ant avoided local extinction, and the butterfly has been
reintroduced.
Another example of species going through coextinction is the rhinoceros stomach bot fly (Gyrostigma rhinocerontis) and its host species the endangered black rhinoceros and white rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis and Ceratotherium simum).
The fly's larvae mature in a rhinoceros's stomach lining, having
entered the body via the digestive tract, and so are dependent on
rhinoceros species to reproduce.
Consequences
Coextinction can mean loss of biodiversity
and diversification. Coextinctions can influence not only parasite and
mutualist diversification but also their hosts. Arguably, parasites
facilitate host diversification through sexual selection.
That loss of parasites can reduce host diversification rates.
Coextinction can also result in loss of evolutionary history. The
extinction of related hosts can lead to the extinction of related
parasites. The loss of history is likely to be greater than the loss
expected, were species to go extinct at random.
Furthermore, if coextinctions are clustered, it is more likely that
coextinction can produce non-random trait loss. Species that are at risk
of coextinction are expected to be larger because rare hosts tend to be
larger and larger hosts have larger parasites.
They can also be expected to have lengthy generation times or higher
tropic positions. Coextinction can extend beyond biodiversity and has
direct and indirect consequences from the communities of lost species.
One main consequence of coextinction that goes beyond biodiversity is
mutualism, by loss of food production with a decline in threatened
pollinators. Losses of parasites can have negative impacts on humans or
the species. In rare hosts, losses of specialist parasites can
predispose hosts to infection by emergent parasites.
Furthermore, relating to the consequences of removing specialist
parasites from rare hosts, is the problem of where the parasites will go
once their host is extinct. If the parasites are dependent on only
those species than there are parasite species that are at risk of
extinction through co-endangerment. On the other hand, if they are able
to find and switch onto alternative hosts, those hosts can turn out to
be humans. Either way, the loss of parasites by co extinction or the
acquiring of new parasites by alternative hosts, proves to be a major
issue. Coextinction can go beyond the decreased biodiversity, it can
range into various biomes and link various ecosystems.
A study conducted in New Caledonia has shown that extinction of a coral reef-associated fish species of average size would eventually result in the co-extinction of at least ten species of parasites.
Risks
The host
Specificity and Life Cycle is a major factor in the risk of
coextinction. Species of mutalists, parasites, and many free-living
insects that have staged life cycles are more likely to be a victim of
coextinction. This is due to the fact that these organisms may depend on
multiple hosts throughout their lives in comparison to simple life
cycled organisms. Also, if organisms are evolutionary flexible, then these organisms may escape extinction.
The area with that has the greatest effect of coextinction is the
tropics. There is a continued disappearance in the habitat, human
intervention, and a great loss in vital ecosystem services.
This is threatening because the tropics contain 2/3 of the all known
species but they aren't in a situation where they can be fully taken
care of. Along with forest loss other risk factors include: coastal
development, overexploitation of wildlife, and habitat conversion, that
also affect human well-being.
In an effort to find a stop to coextinction, researchers have
found that the first step would be to conserve the host species in which
other species are dependent on. These hosts serve as major components
for their habitat and need them to survive. In deciding what host to
protect, it is important to choose one that can benefit an array of
other dependent species.
A comparison of phylogenetic and phenetic (character-based) concepts
Biologicalsystematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees (synonyms: cladograms, phylogenetic trees,
phylogenies). Phylogenies have two components: branching order
(showing group relationships) and branch length (showing amount of
evolution). Phylogenetic trees of species and higher taxa are used to study the evolution of traits (e.g., anatomical or molecular characteristics) and the distribution of organisms (biogeography). Systematics, in other words, is used to understand the evolutionary history of life on Earth.
Branches and applications
In
the study of biological systematics, researchers use the different
branches to further understand the relationships between differing
organisms. These branches are used to determine the applications and
uses for modern day systematics.
Biological systematics classifies species by using three specific branches. Numerical systematics, or biometry, uses biological statistics to identify and classify animals. Biochemical systematics classifies and identifies animals based on the analysis of the material that makes up the living part of a cell—such as the nucleus, organelles, and cytoplasm. Experimental systematics
identifies and classifies animals based on the evolutionary units that
comprise a species, as well as their importance in evolution itself.
Factors such as mutations, genetic divergence, and hybridization all are
considered evolutionary units.
With the specific branches, researchers are able to determine the
applications and uses for modern-day systematics. These applications
include:
Studying the diversity of organisms and the differentiation
between extinct and living creatures. Biologists study the
well-understood relationships by making many different diagrams and
"trees" (cladograms, phylogenetic trees, phylogenies, etc.).
Including the scientific names of organisms, species descriptions
and overviews, taxonomic orders, and classifications of evolutionary and
organism histories.
Explaining the biodiversity of the planet and its organisms. The systematic study is that of conservation.
Manipulating and controlling the natural world. This includes the
practice of 'biological control', the intentional introduction of
natural predators and disease.
Definition and relation with taxonomy
John Lindley
provided an early definition of systematics in 1830, although he wrote
of "systematic botany" rather than using the term "systematics".
In 1970 Michener et al. defined "systematic biology" and "taxonomy" (terms that are often confused and used interchangeably) in relationship to one another as follows:
Systematic biology (hereafter called simply systematics) is the field
that (a) provides scientific names for organisms, (b) describes them,
(c) preserves collections of them, (d) provides classifications for the
organisms, keys for their identification, and data on their
distributions, (e) investigates their evolutionary histories, and (f)
considers their environmental adaptations. This is a field with a long
history that in recent years has experienced a notable renaissance,
principally with respect to theoretical content. Part of the theoretical
material has to do with evolutionary areas (topics e and f above), the
rest relates especially to the problem of classification. Taxonomy is
that part of Systematics concerned with topics (a) to (d) above.
Taxonomy, systematic biology, systematics, biosystematics, scientific
classification, biological classification, phylogenetics: At various
times in history, all these words have had overlapping, related
meanings. However, in modern usage, they can all be considered synonyms
of each other.
For example, Webster's 9th New Collegiate Dictionary of 1987
treats "classification", "taxonomy", and "systematics" as synonyms.
According to this work, the terms originated in 1790, c. 1828, and in
1888 respectively. Some claim systematics alone deals specifically with relationships through time, and that it can be synonymous with phylogenetics, broadly dealing with the inferred hierarchy of organisms. This means it would be a subset of taxonomy as it is sometimes regarded, but the inverse is claimed by others.
Europeans tend to use the terms "systematics" and
"biosystematics" for the study of biodiversity as a whole, whereas North
Americans tend to use "taxonomy" more frequently. However, taxonomy, and in particular alpha taxonomy, is more specifically the identification, description, and naming (i.e. nomenclature) of organisms,
while "classification" focuses on placing organisms within hierarchical
groups that show their relationships to other organisms. All of these
biological disciplines can deal with both extinct and extant organisms.
Systematics uses taxonomy as a primary tool in understanding, as
nothing about an organism's relationships with other living things can
be understood without it first being properly studied and described in
sufficient detail to identify and classify it correctly. Scientific classifications are aids in recording and reporting information to other scientists and to laymen. The systematist,
a scientist who specializes in systematics, must, therefore, be able to
use existing classification systems, or at least know them well enough
to skilfully justify not using them.
Phenetics
was an attempt to determine the relationships of organisms through a
measure of overall similarity, making no distinction between plesiomorphies (shared ancestral traits) and apomorphies (derived traits). From the late-20th century onwards, it was superseded by cladistics, which rejects plesiomorphies in attempting to resolve the phylogeny of Earth's various organisms through time. Today's systematists generally make extensive use of molecular biology and of computer programs to study organisms.
Taxonomic characters
Taxonomic characters are the taxonomic attributes that can be used to provide the evidence from which relationships (the phylogeny) between taxa are inferred. Kinds of taxonomic characters include:
In Confucian, Chinese Buddhist and Taoist ethics, filial piety (Chinese: 孝, xiào) is a virtue of respect for one's parents, elders, and ancestors. The Confucian Classic of Filial Piety, thought to be written around the Qin-Han
period, has historically been the authoritative source on the Confucian
tenet of filial piety. The book, a purported dialogue between Confucius and his student Tseng Tzu, is about how to set up a good society using the principle of filial piety. Filial piety is central to Confucian role ethics.
In more general terms, filial piety means to be good to one's
parents; to take care of one's parents; to engage in good conduct not
just towards parents but also outside the home so as to bring a good
name to one's parents and ancestors; to show love, respect and support;
display courtesy; to ensure male heirs, uphold fraternity among
brothers; wisely advise one's parents, including dissuading them from
moral unrighteousness; display sorrow for their sickness and death; to
bury them and carry out sacrifices after their death.
Filial piety is considered a key virtue in Chinese
and other East Asian cultures, and it is the main subject of many
stories. One of the most famous collections of such stories is The Twenty-four Cases of Filial Piety (Chinese: 二十四孝; pinyin: Ershi-si xiao).
These stories depict how children exercised their filial piety in the
past. While China has always had a diversity of religious beliefs,
filial piety has been common to almost all of them; historian Hugh D.R.
Baker calls respect for the family the only element common to almost all
Chinese people.
Terminology
The western term filial piety was originally derived from studies of Western societies, based on Mediterranean cultures. However, filial piety among the ancient Romans, for example, was largely different from the Chinese in its logic and enactment. Filial piety is illustrated by the Chinese characterxiao (孝). The character is a combination of the character lao (old) above the character zi (son), that is, an elder being carried by a son. This indicates that the older generation should be supported by the younger generation. In Korean Confucianism, the character 孝 is pronounced hyo (효). In Vietnamese, the character 孝 is written in the Vietnamese alphabet as hiếu. In Japanese, the term is generally rendered in spoken and written language as 親孝行, oyakōkō, adding the characters for parent and conduct to the Chinese character to make the word more specific.
In traditional texts
Illustrations of the Ladies' Classic of Filial Piety (detail), Song Dynasty, depicting the section "Serving One's Parents-in-Law".
For Confucius, filial piety is not merely ritual outside respect to one's parents, but an inward attitude as well. Filial piety consists of several aspects. Filial piety is an awareness of repaying the burden born by one's parents. As such, filial piety is done to reciprocate the care one's parents have given. However, it is also practiced because of an obligation towards one's ancestors.
According to some modern scholars, xiào is the root of rén (仁; benevolence, humaneness), but other scholars state that rén, as well as yì (義; righteousness) and li (禮; propriety) should be interpreted as the roots of xiào. Rén means favorable behavior to those who we are close to. Yì refers to respect to those considered worthy of respect, such as parents and superiors. Li is defined as behaving according to social norms and cultural values. Moreover, it is defined in the texts as deference, which is respectful submission, and reverence, meaning deep respect and awe. Filial piety was taught by Confucius as part of a broad ideal of self-cultivation (Chinese: 君子; pinyin: jūnzǐ) toward being a perfect human being.
Modern philosopher Hu Shih
argued that filial piety gained its central role in Confucian ideology
only among later Confucianists. He proposed that Confucius originally
taught the quality of rén in general, and did not yet emphasize xiào that much. Only later Confucianists such as Tseng Tzu focused on xiào as the single, most important Confucianist quality.
Confucian ethics does not regard filial piety as a choice, but rather as an unconditional obligation of the child. The relationship between parents and children is the most fundamental of the five cardinal relationships (Chinese: 五倫; pinyin: wǔlún) described by Confucius in his role ethics, and filial piety, together with fraternal love, underlies this system. It is the fundamental principle of Confucian morality:
filial piety was seen as the basis for an orderly society, together
with loyalty of the ministers toward the ruler, and servitude of the
wife toward the husband. In short, filial piety is central to Confucian role ethics and is the cardinal virtue, that defines, limits or even eliminates all other virtues.
According to the traditional texts, filial piety consists of physical care, love, service, respect and obedience. Children should attempt not to bring their parents in disgrace. Confucian texts such as Book of Rites give details on how filial piety should be practiced.
Respect is envisioned by detailed manners such as the way children
salute their parents, speak to them (words and tone used) or enter and
leave the room in which their parents are, as well as seating
arrangements and gifts.
Care means making sure parents are comfortable in every single way:
this involves food, accommodation, clothes, hygiene, and basically to
have them "see and hear pleasurable things", in Confucius' words, and to have them live without worry.
But the most important expression of and exercise in filial piety were
the burial and mourning rituals to be held in honor of one's parents.
Filial piety means to be good to one's parents; to take care of
one's parents; to engage in good conduct not just towards parents but
also outside the home so as to bring a good name to one's parents and
ancestors; to perform the duties of one's job well (preferably the same job as one's parents to fulfill their aspirations) as well as to carry out sacrifices to the ancestors; not be rebellious, to be polite, and well-mannered; to show love, respect and support, to be near home to serve one's parents; display courtesy; ensure male heirs, uphold fraternity among brothers; wisely advise one's parents, including dissuading them from moral unrighteousness; display sorrow for their sickness and death; bury them and carry out sacrifices after their death. Furthermore, a filial child should promote the public name of its family, and it should cherish the affection of its parents.
Traditional texts essentially describe filial piety in terms of a
son–father relationship, but in practice, it involves all parent–child
relationships, as well as relationships with stepparents, grandparents
and ancestors.
But filial piety also involves the role of the parent to the
child. The father has a duty to provide for the son, to teach him in
traditions of ancestor worship, to find a spouse for him, and leave a good heritage.
A father is supposed to be 'stern and dignified' to his children,
whereas a mother is supposed to be 'gentle and compassionate'. The
parent's virtues are to be practiced, regardless of the child's piety,
and vice versa. Nevertheless, filial piety mostly identified the child's duty, and in this, it differed from the Roman concept of patria potestas,
which defined mostly the father's authoritative power. Whereas in Roman
culture and later in the Judeo-Christian West people in authority
legitimated their influence by referring to a higher transcending power,
in Chinese culture authority was defined by the roles of the
subordinates (son, subject, wife) to their superior (fathers, emperor,
husband) and vice versa. As roles and duties were depersonalized,
supremacy became a matter of role and position, rather than person, as
it was in the West.
Anthropologist Francis Hsu argued that a child's obedience from a Confucian perspective was regarded as unconditional, but anthropologist David K. Jordan and psychologist David Yau-fai Ho disagree.
Jordan states that in classical Chinese thought, 'remonstrance' was
part of filial piety, meaning that a pious child needs to dissuade a
parent from performing immoral actions. Ho points out in this regard that the Confucian classics do not advocate 'foolish filial piety' (愚孝 pinyin: yúxiào). However, Jordan does add that if the parent does not listen to the child's dissuasion, the child must still obey the parent, and Ho states that "rebellion or outright defiance" is never approved in Confucian ethics.
Filial piety not only extends to behavior of children toward
their parents, but also involves gratitude toward the human body they
received from their parents, as the body is seen as an extension of one's parents.
This involves prohibitions on damaging or hurting the body, and this
doctrine has affected how the Confucianists regarded the shaving of the
head by Buddhist monks, but also has created a taboo on suicide, regarded as 'unfilial behavior' (不孝 pinyin: bùxiào).
Relation with society at large
A memorial stone at a Korean elementary school, with the inscription "filial piety".
Filial piety is regarded as a principle that ordered society, without which chaos would prevail. It is described as "an inevitable fact of nature", as opposed to mere convention, and it is seen to follow naturally out of the father–son relationship. In the Chinese tradition of patriarchy, roles are upheld to maintain the harmony of the whole. According to the Neo-Confucian philosopher Cheng Hao
(1032–1085 CE), relationships and their corresponding roles "belong to
the eternal principle of the cosmos from which there is no escape
between heaven and earth".
The idea of filial piety became popular in China because of the
many functions it had and many roles it undertook, as the traditional
Confucian scholars such as Mencius (4th century BCE) regarded the family as a fundamental unit that formed the root of the nation. Though the virtue of xiào
was about respect by children toward their parents, it was meant to
regulate how the young generation behaved toward elders in the extended
family and in society in general. Furthermore, devotion to one's parents was often associated with one's devotion to the state, described as the "parallel conception of society" or the "Model of Two". The Classic of Filial Piety states that an obedient and filial son will grow up to become a loyal official (pinyin: chung)—filial piety was therefore seen as a truth that shaped the citizens of the state, and the loyalty of the minister to his emperor was regarded as the extension of filial piety. Filial piety was regarded as being a dutiful person in general.
Nevertheless, the two were not equated. Mencius teaches that
ministers should overthrow an immoral tyrant, should he harm the
state—the loyalty to the king was considered conditional, not as
unconditional as in filial piety towards one parents.
In East Asian languages and cultures
Confucian
teachings about filial piety have left their mark on East Asian
languages and culture. In Chinese, there is a saying that "among
hundreds of behaviors, filial piety is the most important one" (pinyin: bai xing xiao wei xian).
In modern Chinese, filial piety is rendered with the words Xiao xun, meaning 'respect and obedience'.
While China has always had a diversity of religious beliefs, filial
piety has been common to almost all of them; historian Hugh D.R. Baker
calls respect for the family the only element common to almost all
Chinese people. Historian Ch'ü T'ung-tsu stated about the codification of patriarchy in Chinese law that "[i]t was all a question of filial piety". Filial piety also forms the basis for the veneration of the aged, for which the Chinese are known.
However, filial piety among the Chinese has led them to be mostly
focused on taking care of close kin, and be less interested in wider
issues of more distant people:
nevertheless, this should not be mistaken for individualism. In Japan,
however, devotion to kinship relations was and still is much more
broadly construed, involving more than just kin.
In Korean culture, filial piety is also of crucial importance.
In Taiwan, filial piety is considered one of eight important virtues,
among which filial piety is considered supreme. It is "central in all
thinking about human behavior".
Taiwan generally has more traditional values with regard to the
parent–child relationship than the People's Republic of China (PRC).
This is reflected in attitudes about how desirable it is for the elderly
to live independently.
In behavioral sciences
According to R.M. Lee, in the final stage of the development of filial piety, it is a means to realize one's ethical ideals.
Social scientists have done much research about filial piety and related concepts. It is a highly influential factor in studies about Asian families and intergenerational studies, as well as studies on socialization patterns.
Filial piety has been defined by several scholars as the recognition by
children of the aid and care their parents have given them, and the
respect returned by those children. Psychologist K.S. Yang has defined it as a "specific, complex syndrome or set of cognition, affects, intentions, and behaviors concerning being good or nice to one's parents". As of 2006, psychologists measured filial piety in inconsistent ways, which has prevented much progress from being made.
Filial piety is defined by behaviors such as daily maintenance, respect and sickness care offered to the elderly. Although in scholarly literature five forms of reverence have been described, multi-cultural researcher Kyu-taik Sung has added eight more to that, to fully cover the traditional definitions of elder respect in Confucian texts:
Care respect: making sure parents are comfortable in every single way;
Victual respect: taking the parents' preferences into account, e.g. favorite food;
Gift respect: giving gifts or favors, e.g. presiding meetings;
Presentational respect: polite and appropriate decorum;
Linguistic respect: use of honorific language;
Spatial respect: having elders sit at a place of honor, building graves at respectful places;
Celebrative respect: celebrating birthdays or other events in honor of elders;
Public respect: voluntary and public services for elders;
Acquiescent respect: listening to elders without talking back;
Consultative respect: consulting elders in personal and family matters;
Salutatory respect: bowing or saluting elders;
Precedential respect: allowing elders to have priority in distributing goods and services;
Funeral respect: mourning and burying elders in a respectful way;
Ancestor respect: commemorating ancestors and making sacrifices for them.
These forms of respect are based on qualitative research.
Some of these forms involve some action or work, whereas other forms
are more symbolic. Female elders tend to receive more care respect,
whereas male elders tend to receive more symbolic respect.
Apart from attempting to define filial piety, psychologists have
also attempted to explain its cognitive development. Psychologist R.M.
Lee distinguishes a five-fold development, which he bases on Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development.
In the first stage, filial piety is comprehended as just the giving of
material things, whereas in the second stage this develops into an
understanding that emotional and spiritual support is more important. In
the third stage, the child realizes that filial piety is crucial in
establishing and keeping parent–child relationships; in the fourth
stage, this is expanded to include relationships outside of one's
family. In the final stage, filial piety is regarded as a means to
realize one's ethical ideals.
Psychologists have found correlations between filial piety and lower
socio-economic status, female gender, elders, minorities, and
non-westernized cultures. Traditional filial piety beliefs have been
connected with positive outcomes for the community and society, care for
elder family members, positive family relationships and solidarity. On
the other side, it has also been related to an orientation to the past,
resistance to cognitive change, superstition and fatalism; dogmatism,
authoritarianism and conformism, as well as a belief in the superiority
of one's culture; and lack of active, critical and creative learning
attitudes.
Ho connects the value of filial piety with authoritarian moralism and
cognitive conservatism in Chinese patterns of socialization, basing
himself on findings among subjects in Hong Kong and Taiwan. He defines authoritarian moralism
as hierarchical authority ranking in family and institutions, as well
as the pervasiveness of using moral precepts as criteria of measuring
people. Cognitive moralism he derives from social psychologist Anthony Greenwald,
and means a "disposition to preserve existing knowledge structures" and
resistance to change. He concludes that filial piety appears to have a
negative effect on psychological development, but at the same time,
partly explains the high motivation of Chinese people to achieve
academic results.
In family counselling research, filial piety has been seen to help establish bonding with parents.
Ho argues that the value filial piety brings along an obligation to
raise one's children in a moral way to prevent disgrace to the family.
However, filial piety has also been found to perpetuate dysfunctional
family patterns such as child abuse: there may be both positive and
negative psychological effects.
Francis Hsu made the argument that when taken to the level of the
family at large, pro-family attitudes informed by filial piety can lead
to nepotism, corruption and eventually are at tension with the good of
the state as whole.
In Chinese parent–child relations, the aspect of authority goes
hand-in-hand with the aspect of benevolence. E.g. many Chinese parents
support their children's education fully and do not allow their children
to work during their studies, allowing them to focus on their studies.
Because of the combination of benevolence and authoritarianism in such
relations, children feel obliged to respond to parents' expectations,
and internalize them.
Ho found, however, that in Chinese parent–child relations, fear was
also a contributing factor in meeting parents' filial expectations:
children may not internalize their parents' expectations, but rather
perform roles as good children in a detached way, through affect–role dissociation.
Studying Korean family relations, scholar Dawnhee Yim argues that
internalization of parents' obligations by children may lead to guilt,
as well as suppression of hostile thoughts toward parents, leading to
psychological problems.
Jordan found that despite filial piety being asymmetrical in nature,
Chinese interviewees felt that filial piety contained an element of
reciprocity: "... it is easy to see the parent whom one serves today as
the self who is served tomorrow." Furthermore, the practice of filial
piety provides the pious child with a sense of adulthood and moral
heroism.
History
Pre-Confucian history
The origins of filial piety in East Asia lie in ancestor worship, and can already be found in the pre-Confucian period. Epigraphical findings such as oracle bones contain references to filial piety; texts such as the Classic of Changes
(10th–4th century BCE) may contain early references to the idea of
parallel conception of the filial son and the loyal minister.
Early Confucianism
Page of the illustrated version of the Classic of Filial Piety, annotated by Kuan (1286–1324)
In the T'ang dynasty (6th–10th century), not performing filial piety was declared illegal, and even earlier, during the Han dynasty (2nd century BCE–3rd century CE), this was already punished by beheading.
Behavior regarded as unfilial such as mistreating or abandoning one's
parents or grandparents, or refusing to complete the mourning period for
them was punished by exile and beating, at best.
From the Han Dynasty onward, the practice of mourning rites came
to be seen as the cornerstone of filial piety and was strictly practiced
and enforced. This was a period of unrest, and the state promoted the
practice of long-term mourning to reestablish their authority. Filial
piety toward one's parents was expected to lead to loyalty to the ruler,
expressed in the Han proverb "The Emperor rules all-under-heaven with
filial piety". Government officials were expected to take leave for a mourning period of two years after their parents died.
Local officials were expected to encourage filial piety to one's
parents—and by extension, to the state—by behaving as an example of such
piety.
Indeed, the king himself would perform an exemplary role in expressing
filial piety, through the ritual of 'serving the elderly' (pinyin: yang lao zhi li). Nearly all Han emperors had the word xiào in their temple name. The promotion of filial piety in this manner, as part of the idea of li, was more an acceptable way to create order in society than resorting to law.
Filial piety became a keystone of Han morality.
During the early Confucian period, the principles of filial piety
were brought back by Japanese and Korean students to their respective
homelands, where they became central to the education system. In Japan,
rulers gave awards to people deemed to practice exemplary filial
conduct.
During the Mongolian rule in the Yuan dynasty (13th–14th century), the practice of filial piety was perceived to deteriorate. In the Ming dynasty (14th–17th century), emperors and literati
attempted to revive the customs of filial piety, though in that
process, filial piety was reinterpreted, as rules and rituals were
modified.
Even on the grassroots level a revival was seen, as societies that
provided vigilance against criminals started to promote Confucian
values. A book that was composed by members of this movement was The Twenty-four Cases of Filial Piety.
Introduction of Buddhism
Buddha image with scenes of stories in which he repaid his parents. Baodingshan, Dazu, China
Filial piety is an important aspect of Buddhist ethics since early Buddhism, and was essential in the apologetics and texts of Chinese Buddhism. In the Early Buddhist Texts such as the Nikāyas and Āgamas, filial piety is prescribed and practiced in three ways: to repay the gratitude toward one's parents; as a good karma or merit; and as a way to contribute to and sustain the social order. In Buddhist scriptures, narratives are given of the Buddha and his disciples practicing filial piety toward their parents, based on the qualities of gratitude and reciprocity.
Initially, scholars of Buddhism like Kenneth Ch'en saw Buddhist
teachings on filial piety as a distinct feature of Chinese Buddhism.
Later scholarship, led by people such as John Strong and Gregory Schopen, has come to believe that filial piety was part of Buddhist doctrine since early times. Strong and Schopen have provided epigraphical
and textual evidence to show that early Buddhist laypeople, monks and
nuns often displayed strong devotion to their parents, concluding filial
piety was already an important part of the devotional life of early Buddhists.
When Buddhism was introduced in China, it had no organized celibacy. Confucianism emphasized filial piety to parents and loyalty to the emperor, and Buddhist monastic life was seen to go against its tenets.
In the 3rd–5th century, as criticism of Buddhism increased, Buddhist
monastics and lay authors responded by writing about and translating
Buddhist doctrines and narratives that supported filiality, comparing
them to Confucianism and thereby defending Buddhism and its value in
society. The Mouzi Lihuolun referred to Confucian and Daoist classics, as well as historical precedents to respond to critics of Buddhism. The Mouzi
stated that while on the surface the Buddhist monk seems to reject and
abandon his parents, he is actually aiding his parents as well as
himself on the path towards enlightenment. Sun Chuo (c.300–380) further argued that monks were working to ensure the salvation of all people and making their family proud by doing so, and Liu Xie stated that Buddhists practiced filial piety by sharing merit with their departed relatives. Buddhist monks were also criticized for not expressing their respect to the Chinese emperor by prostrating and other devotion, which in Confucianism was associated with the virtue of filial piety. Huiyuan
(334–416) responded that although monks did not express such piety,
they did pay homage in heart and mind; moreover, their teaching of
morality and virtue to the public helped support imperial rule.
From the 6th century onward, Chinese Buddhists began to realize
that they had to stress Buddhism's own particular ideas about filial
piety in order to for Buddhism to survive. Śyāma,
Sujāti and other Buddhist stories of self-sacrifice spread a belief
that a filial child should even be willing to sacrifice its own body. The Ullambana Sūtra introduced the idea of transfer of merit through the story of Mulian Saves His Mother and led to the establishment of the Ghost Festival.
By this Buddhists attempted to show that filial piety also meant taking
care of one's parents in the next life, not just this life. Furthermore, authors in China—and to some extent Japan—wrote that in Buddhism, all living beings have once been one's parents, and that practicing compassion to all living beings as though they were one's parents is the more superior form of filial piety.
Another aspect emphasized was the great suffering a mother goes through
when giving birth and raising a child. Chinese Buddhists described how
difficult it is to repay the goodness of one's mother, and how many sins mothers often committed in raising her children.
The mother became the primary source of well-being and indebtedness for
the son, which was in contrast with pre-Buddhist perspectives
emphasizing the father.
Nevertheless, although some critics of Buddhism did not have much
impact during this time, this changed in the period leading up to the Neo-Confucianist revival, when Emperor Wu Zong (841–845) started the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution, citing lack of filial piety as one of his reasons for attacking Buddhist institutions.
Filial piety is still an important value in a number of Asian
Buddhist cultures. In China, Buddhism continued to uphold a role in
state rituals and mourning rites for ancestors, up until late imperial
times (13th–20th century). Also, sūtras and narratives about filial piety are still widely used.
The Ghost Festival is still popular in many Asian countries, especially
those countries which are influenced by both Buddhism and Confucianism.
During the 17th century, some missionaries tried to prevent Chinese
people from worshiping their ancestors. This was regarded as an assault
on Chinese culture.
During the Qing dynasty, however, filial piety was redefined by the emperor Kangxi
(1654–1722), who felt it more important that his officials were loyal
to him than that they were filial sons: civil servants were often not
allowed to go on extended leave to perform mourning rituals for their
parents. The parallel conception of society therefore disappeared from
Chinese society.
Unlike western societies, patriarchalism
and its enactment in law grew more strict in late imperial China. The
duties of the obedient child were much precisely and rigidly prescribed,
to the extent that legal scholar Hsu Dau-lin
argued about this period that it "engendered a highly authoritarian
spirit which was entirely alien to Confucius himself". Indeed, the late
imperial Chinese held patriarchalism high as an organizing principle of
society, as laws and punishments gradually became more strict and
severe.
But during the same time, in Japan, a classic work about filial practices was compiled, called Biographies of Japanese Filial Children (Japanese pronunciation: Fu San Ko Shi Dan).
19th–20th century
During
the rise of communism in China in the early 20th century, Confucian
values and family-centered living were discouraged by the state. During the New Culture Movement
of 1911, Chinese intellectuals and foreign missionaries attacked the
principle of filial piety, the latter considering it an obstruction of
progress.
In Japan, filial piety was not regarded as an obstacle to
modernization, though scholars are in disagreement as to why this was
the case.
Francis Hsu believed that "the human networks through which it found
concrete expressions" were different in Japan, and there never was a
movement against filial piety as there was in China.
The late imperial trend of increased patriarchalism made it difficult
for the Chinese to build strong patrimonial groups that went beyond kin.
Though filial piety was practiced much in both countries, the Chinese
way was more limited to close kin than in Japan. When industrialization
increased, filial piety was therefore criticized more in China than in
Japan, because China felt it limited the way the country could meet the
challenges from the West.
For this reason, China developed a more critical stance to filial piety
and other aspects of Confucianism than other East Asian countries,
including not only Japan, but also Taiwan. In the 1950s, Mao Zedong's
socialist measures led to the dissolution of family businesses and more
dependence on the state instead; Taiwan's socialism did not go that far
in state control.
Ethnographic evidence from the 19th and early 20th century shows
that Chinese people still very much cared for their elders, and very
often lived with one or more married sons.
Developments in modern society
In 21st century-Chinese societies, filial piety expectations and practice have decreased. One cause for this is the rise of the nuclear family without much co-residence with parents. Families are becoming smaller because of family planning
and housing shortage. Other causes of decrease in practice are
individualism, the loss of status of elderly, emigration of young people
to cities and the independence of young people and women. To amplify this trend, the number of elderly people has increased fast.
The relationship between husband and wife came to be more
emphasized, and the extended family less and less. Kinship ties between
the husband and wife's families have become more bi-lateral and equal.
The way respect to elders is expressed is also changing. Communication
with elders tends to be become more reciprocal and less one-way, and
kindness and courtesy is replacing obedience and subservience.
Care-giving
Stone headrest with scenes of filial piety, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
In modern Chinese societies, elderly care has much changed. Studies
have shown that there is a discrepancy between the parents' filial
expectations and the actual behaviors of their children. Especially the discrepancy with regard to respect shown by the children makes elderly people unhappy.
Industrialization and urbanization have affected the practice of filial
piety, with care being given more in financial ways rather than
personal.
But as of 2009, care-giving of the young to elderly people had not
undergone any revolutionary changes in Mainland China, and family
obligations still remained strong, still "almost automatic". Respect to elders remains a central value for East Asian people.
Comparing data from the 1990s from Taiwan and PRC, sociologist Martin Whyte
concludes that Taiwan, despite this being an economically more modern
nation than China, the elderly often received less government support,
but received more assistance from their children than in China.
Work ethos and business practices
In
mainland China business culture, the culture of filial piety is
decreasing in influence. As of 2003, western-style business practices
and managerial style were promoted by the Chinese government to modernize the country.
However, in Japan, employees usually regard their employer as a sort of
father, to which they feel obliged to express filial devotion.
Relation with law
In some societies with large Chinese communities, legislation has
been introduced, to establish or uphold filial piety. In the 2000s,
Singapore introduced a law that makes it an offense to refuse to support
one's elderly parents; Taiwan has taken similar punitive measures. Hong
Kong, on the other hand, has attempted to influence its population by
providing incentives for fulfilling their obligations. For example,
certain tax allowances are given to citizens that are willing to live
with their elderly parents.
Some scholars have argued that medieval China's reliance on
governance by filial piety formed a society that was better able to
prevent crime and other misconduct than societies that did so through
only legal means.
East Asian immigrants
Chinese who immigrate to the United States generally continue to send money to their parents out of filial piety.
A multi-generational extended family in Chagcharan Ghowr province, Afghanistan.
In anthropology, kinship
is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the
lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even
within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox
states that "the study of kinship is the study of what man does with
these basic facts of life – mating, gestation, parenthood, socialization,
siblingship etc." Human society is unique, he argues, in that we are
"working with the same raw material as exists in the animal world, but
[we] can conceptualize and categorize it to serve social ends." These social ends include the socialization of children and the formation of basic economic, political and religious groups.
Kinship can refer both to the patterns of social relationships
themselves, or it can refer to the study of the patterns of social
relationships in one or more human cultures (i.e. kinship studies). Over
its history, anthropology has developed a number of related concepts
and terms in the study of kinship, such as descent, descent group, lineage, affinity/affine, consanguinity/cognate and fictive kinship. Further, even within these two broad usages of the term, there are different theoretical approaches.
Broadly, kinship patterns may be considered to include people
related by both descent – i.e. social relations during development – and
by marriage. Human kinship relations through marriage
are commonly called "affinity" in contrast to the relationships that
arise in one's group of origin, which may be called one's descent group.
In some cultures, kinship relationships may be considered to extend out
to people an individual has economic or political relationships with,
or other forms of social connections. Within a culture, some descent
groups may be considered to lead back to gods or animal ancestors (totems). This may be conceived of on a more or less literal basis.
Kinship can also refer to a principle by which individuals or groups of individuals are organized into social groups, roles, categories and genealogy by means of kinship terminologies. Family
relations can be represented concretely (mother, brother, grandfather)
or abstractly by degrees of relationship (kinship distance). A
relationship may be relative (e.g. a father in relation to a child) or
reflect an absolute (e.g. the difference between a mother and a
childless woman). Degrees of relationship are not identical to heirship or legal succession. Many codes of ethics consider the bond of kinship as creating obligations between the related persons stronger than those between strangers, as in Confucianfilial piety.
In a more general sense, kinship may refer to a similarity or affinity between entities on the basis of some or all of their characteristics that are under focus. This may be due to a shared ontological
origin, a shared historical or cultural connection, or some other
perceived shared features that connect the two entities. For example, a
person studying the ontological roots of human languages (etymology) might ask whether there is kinship between the English word seven and the German word sieben. It can be used in a more diffuse sense as in, for example, the news headline "Madonna feels kinship with vilified Wallis Simpson", to imply a felt similarity or empathy between two or more entities.
In biology, "kinship" typically refers to the degree of genetic relatedness or coefficient of relationship between individual members of a species (e.g. as in kin selection
theory). It may also be used in this specific sense when applied to
human relationships, in which case its meaning is closer to consanguinity or genealogy.
Basic concepts
Family types
Family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity (by recognized birth), affinity (by marriage), or co-residence/shared consumption.
In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization
of children. As the basic unit for raising children, Anthropologists
most generally classify family organization as matrifocal (a mother and her children); conjugal (a husband, his wife, and children; also called nuclear family); avuncular (a brother, his sister, and her children); or extended family in which parents and children co-reside with other members of one parent's family.
However, producing children is not the only function of the family; in societies with a sexual division of labor, marriage, and the resulting relationship between two people, it is necessary for the formation of an economically productive household.
Different societies classify kinship relations differently and
therefore use different systems of kinship terminology – for example
some languages distinguish between affinal and consanguine
uncles, whereas others
have only one word to refer to both a father and his brothers. Kinship
terminologies include the terms of address used in different languages
or communities for different relatives and the terms of reference used
to identify the relationship of these relatives to ego or to each other.
Kin terminologies can be either descriptive or classificatory.
When a descriptive terminology is used, a term refers to only one
specific type of relationship, while a classificatory terminology groups
many different types of relationships under one term. For example, the
word brother in English-speaking societies indicates a son of one's same parent; thus, English-speaking societies use the word brother
as a descriptive term referring to this relationship only. In many
other classificatory kinship terminologies, in contrast, a person's male
first cousin ( whether mother's brother's son, mother's sister's son,
father's brother's son, father's sister's son) may also be referred to
as brothers.
The major patterns of kinship systems that are known which Lewis Henry Morgan identified through kinship terminology in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family are:
The six types (Crow, Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Omaha, Sudanese)
that are not fully classificatory (Dravidian, Australian) are those
identified by Murdock (1949) prior to Lounsbury's (1964) rediscovery of
the linguistic principles of classificatory kin terms.
Descent
Descent rules
In
many societies where kinship connections are important, there are
rules, though they may be expressed or be taken for granted. There are
four main headings that anthropologists use to categorize rules of
descent. They are bilateral, unilineal, ambilineal and double descent.
Bilateral
descent or two-sided descent affiliates an individual more or less
equally with relatives on his father's and mother's sides. A good
example is the Yakurr of the Crossriver state of Nigeria.
Unilineal
rules affiliates an individual through the descent of one sex only,
that is, either through males or through females. They are subdivided
into two: patrilineal (male) and matrilineal (female). Most societies are patrilineal. Examples of a matrilineal system of descent are the Nyakyusa of Tanzania and the Nair of India. Many societies that practise a matrilineal system often have a matrilocal residence but men still exercise significant authority.
Ambilineal (or Cognatic) rule affiliates an individual with kinsmen
through the father's or mother's line. Some people in societies that
practise this system affiliate with a group of relatives through their
fathers and others through their mothers. The individual can choose
which side he wants to affiliate to. The Samoans
of the South Pacific are an excellent example of an ambilineal society.
The core members of the Samoan descent group can live together in the
same compound.
Double descent
refers to societies in which both the patrilineal and matrilineal
descent group are recognized. In these societies an individual
affiliates for some purposes with a group of patrilineal kinsmen and for
other purposes with a group of matrilineal kinsmen. The most widely
known case of double descent is the Afikpo
of Imo state in Nigeria. Although patrilineage is considered an
important method of organization, the Afikpo considers matrilineal ties
to be more important.
Descent groups
A descent group is a social group whose members talk about common ancestry. A unilineal
society is one in which the descent of an individual is reckoned either
from the mother's or the father's line of descent. With matrilineal descent
individuals belong to their mother's descent group. Matrilineal descent
includes the mother's brother, who in some societies may pass along
inheritance to the sister's children or succession to a sister's son.
With patrilineal descent, individuals belong to their father's descent group. Societies with the Iroquois kinship system, are typically unilineal, while the Iroquois proper are specifically matrilineal.
In a society which reckons descent bilaterally (bilineal),
descent is reckoned through both father and mother, without unilineal
descent groups. Societies with the Eskimo kinship system, like the Inuit, Yupik, and most Western societies, are typically bilateral. The egocentric kindred group is also typical of bilateral societies.
Some societies reckon descent patrilineally for some purposes,
and matrilineally for others. This arrangement is sometimes called
double descent. For instance, certain property and titles may be
inherited through the male line, and others through the female line.
Lineages, clans, phratries, moieties, and matrimonial sides
A lineage is a unilineal descent group that can demonstrate their common descent from a known apical ancestor.
Unilineal lineages can be matrilineal or patrilineal, depending on
whether they are traced through mothers or fathers, respectively.
Whether matrilineal or patrilineal descent is considered most
significant differs from culture to culture.
A clan
is generally a descent group claiming common descent from an apical
ancestor. Often, the details of parentage are not important elements of
the clan tradition. Non-human apical ancestors are called totems. Examples of clans are found in Chechen, Chinese, Irish, Japanese, Polish, Scottish, Tlingit, and Somali societies.
A phratry is a descent group composed of two or more clans each of whose apical ancestors are descended from a further common ancestor.
If a society is divided into exactly two descent groups, each is called a moiety, after the French word for half. If the two halves are each obliged to marry out, and into the other, these are called matrimonial moieties.
Houseman and White (1998b, bibliography) have discovered numerous
societies where kinship network analysis shows that two halves marry one
another, similar to matrimonial moieties, except that the two
halves—which they call matrimonial sides—are
neither named nor descent groups, although the egocentric kinship terms
may be consistent with the pattern of sidedness, whereas the sidedness
is culturally evident but imperfect.
The word deme refers to an endogamous local population that does not have unilineal descent. Thus, a deme is a local endogamous community without internal segmentation into clans.
House societies
In some societies kinship and political relations are organized
around membership in corporately organized dwellings rather than around descent groups or lineages, as in the "House of Windsor". The concept of a house society was originally proposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss who called them "sociétés à maison". The concept has been applied to understand the organization of societies from Mesoamerica and the Moluccas to North Africa and medieval Europe.
Lévi-Strauss introduced the concept as an alternative to 'corporate
kinship group' among the cognatic kinship groups of the Pacific region.
The socially significant groupings within these societies have variable
membership because kinship is reckoned bilaterally (through both
father's and mother's kin) and come together for only short periods.
Property, genealogy and residence are not the basis for the group's
existence.
Marriage (affinity)
Marriage is a socially or ritually recognized union or legal contract between spouses that establishes rights and obligations between them, between them and their children, and between them and their in-laws. The definition of marriage varies according to different cultures, but it is principally an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged. When defined broadly, marriage is considered a cultural universal. A broad definition of marriage includes those that are monogamous, polygamous, same-sex and temporary.
The act of marriage usually creates normative
or legal obligations between the individuals involved, and any
offspring they may produce. Marriage may result, for example, in "a
union between a man and a woman such that children born to the woman are
the recognized legitimate offspring of both partners."
Edmund Leach argued that no one definition of marriage applied to all
cultures, but offered a list of ten rights frequently associated with
marriage, including sexual monopoly and rights with respect to children
(with specific rights differing across cultures).
There is wide cross-cultural variation in the social rules
governing the selection of a partner for marriage. In many societies the
choice of partner is limited to suitable persons from specific social
groups. In some societies the rule is that a partner is selected from an
individual's own social group – endogamy,
this is the case in many class and caste based societies. But in other
societies a partner must be chosen from a different group than one's own
– exogamy, this is the case in many societies practicing totemic religion where society is divided into several exogamous totemic clans, such as most Aboriginal Australian societies. Marriages between parents and children, or between full siblings, with few exceptions, have been considered incest and forbidden. However, marriages between more distant relatives
have been much more common, with one estimate being that 80% of all
marriages in history have been between second cousins or closer.
Alliance (marital exchange systems)
Systemic forms of preferential marriage may have wider social
implications in terms of economic and political organization. In a wide
array of lineage-based societies with a classificatory kinship system,
potential spouses are sought from a specific class of relative as
determined by a prescriptive marriage rule. Insofar as regular marriages
following prescriptive rules occur, lineages are linked together in
fixed relationships; these ties between lineages may form political
alliances in kinship dominated societies. French structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss developed alliance theory to account for the "elementary" kinship structures created by the limited number of prescriptive marriage rules possible.
Claude Lévi-Strauss argued in The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), that the incest taboo
necessitated the exchange of women between kinship groups. Levi-Strauss
thus shifted the emphasis from descent groups to the stable structures or relations between groups that preferential and prescriptive marriage rules created.
History of kinship studies
One of the foundational works in the anthropological study of kinship was Morgan'sSystems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family
(1871). As is the case with other social sciences, Anthropology and
kinship studies emerged at a time when the understanding of the Human
species' comparative place in the world was somewhat different from
today's. Evidence that life in stable social groups is not just a
feature of humans, but also of many other primates, was yet to emerge and society
was considered to be a uniquely human affair. As a result, early
kinship theorists saw an apparent need to explain not only the details
of how human social groups are constructed, their patterns, meanings and obligations, but also why they are constructed at all. The why explanations thus typically presented the fact of life in social groups (which appeared to be unique to humans) as being largely a result of human ideas and values.
Morgan's explanation for why humans live in groups was largely based on the notion that all humans have an inherent natural valuation
of genealogical ties (an unexamined assumption that would remain at the
heart of kinship studies for another century, see below), and therefore
also an inherent desire to construct social groups around these ties.
Even so, Morgan found that members of a society who are not close genealogical relatives may nevertheless use what he called kinship terms (which he considered to be originally based on genealogical ties). This fact was already evident in his use of the term affinity within his concept of the system of kinship. The most lasting of Morgan's contributions was his discovery of the difference between descriptive and classificatory kinship
terms, which situated broad kinship classes on the basis of imputing
abstract social patterns of relationships having little or no overall
relation to genetic closeness but instead cognition about kinship,
social distinctions as they affect linguistic usages in kinship terminology, and strongly relate, if only by approximation, to patterns of marriage.
Kinship networks and social process
A more flexible view of kinship was formulated in British social anthropology. Among the attempts to break out of universalizing assumptions and theories about kinship, Radcliffe-Brown (1922, The Andaman Islands;
1930, The social organization of Australian tribes) was the first to
assert that kinship relations are best thought of as concrete networks
of relationships among individuals. He then described these
relationships, however, as typified by interlocking interpersonal roles.
Malinowski
(1922, Argonauts of the Western Pacific) described patterns of events
with concrete individuals as participants stressing the relative
stability of institutions and communities, but without insisting on
abstract systems or models of kinship. Gluckman
(1955, The judicial process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia)
balanced the emphasis on stability of institutions against processes of
change and conflict, inferred through detailed analysis of instances of
social interaction to infer rules and assumptions. John Barnes, Victor Turner,
and others, affiliated with Gluckman's Manchester school of
anthropology, described patterns of actual network relations in
communities and fluid situations in urban or migratory context, as with
the work of J. Clyde Mitchell (1965, Social Networks in Urban Situations). Yet, all these approaches clung to a view of stable functionalism, with kinship as one of the central stable institutions.
"Kinship system" as systemic pattern
The
concept of “system of kinship” tended to dominate anthropological
studies of kinship in the early 20th century. Kinship systems as defined
in anthropological texts and ethnographies were seen as constituted by
patterns of behavior and attitudes in relation to the differences in
terminology, listed above, for referring to relationships as well as for
addressing others. Many anthropologists went so far as to see, in these
patterns of kinship, strong relations between kinship categories and patterns of marriage, including forms of marriage, restrictions on marriage, and cultural concepts of the boundaries of incest.
A great deal of inference was necessarily involved in such
constructions as to “systems” of kinship, and attempts to construct
systemic patterns and reconstruct kinship evolutionary histories on
these bases were largely invalidated in later work. However,
anthropologist Dwight Read later argued that the way in which kinship
categories are defined by individual researchers are substantially
inconsistent.
This occurs when working within a systemic cultural model that can be
elicited in fieldwork, but also allowing considerable individual
variability in details, such as when they are recorded through relative
products.
Conflicting theories of the mid 20th century
In trying to resolve the problems of dubious inferences about kinship "systems", George P. Murdock
(1949, Social Structure) compiled kinship data to test a theory about
universals in human kinship in the way that terminologies were
influenced by the behavioral similarities or social differences among
pairs of kin, proceeding on the view that the psychological ordering of
kinship systems radiates out from ego and the nuclear family to different forms of extended family. Lévi-Strauss (1949, Les Structures Elementaires), on the other hand, also looked for global patterns to kinship, but viewed the “elementary” forms of kinship as lying in the ways that families were connected by marriage in different fundamental forms resembling those of modes of exchange: symmetric and direct, reciprocal delay, or generalized exchange.
Recognition of fluidity in kinship meanings and relations
Building on Lévi-Strauss's (1949) notions of kinship as caught up with the fluid languages of exchange, Edmund Leach
(1961, Pul Eliya) argued that kinship was a flexible idiom that had
something of the grammar of a language, both in the uses of terms for
kin but also in the fluidities of language, meaning, and networks. His
field studies criticized the ideas of structural-functional stability of
kinship groups as corporations with charters that lasted long beyond
the lifetimes of individuals, which had been the orthodoxy of British Social Anthropology.
This sparked debates over whether kinship could be resolved into
specific organized sets of rules and components of meaning, or whether
kinship meanings were more fluid, symbolic, and independent of grounding
in supposedly determinate relations among individuals or groups, such
as those of descent or prescriptions for marriage.
From the 1950s onwards, reports on kinship patterns in the New
Guinea Highlands added some momentum to what had until then been only
occasional fleeting suggestions that living together (co-residence)
might underlie social bonding, and eventually contributed to the general
shift away from a genealogical approach (see below section). For
example, on the basis of his observations, Barnes suggested:
[C]learly, genealogical connexion
of some sort is one criterion for membership of many social groups. But
it may not be the only criterion; birth, or residence, or a parent's
former residence, or utilization of garden land, or participation in
exchange and feasting activities or in house-building or raiding, may be
other relevant criteria for group membership.”(Barnes 1962,6)
Similarly, Langness' ethnography of the Bena Bena also emphasized the primacy of residence patterns in 'creating' kinship ties:
The sheer fact of residence in a Bena Bena group can and does determine kinship.
People do not necessarily reside where they do because they are
kinsmen: rather they become kinsmen because they reside there.”
(Langness 1964, 172 emphasis in original)
In 1972 David M. Schneider raised deep problems with the notion that human social bonds and 'kinship' was
a natural category built upon genealogical ties and made a fuller
argument in his 1984 book A critique of the study of Kinship which had a major influence on the subsequent study of kinship.
Schneider's critique of genealogical concepts
Before the questions raised within anthropology about the study of 'kinship' by David M. Schneider and others from the 1960s onwards, anthropology itself had paid very
little attention to the notion that kinship bonds were anything other
than connected to consanguineal (or genealogical) relatedness (or its
local cultural conceptions). Schneider's 1968 study
of the symbolic meanings surrounding ideas of kinship in American
Culture found that Americans ascribe a special significance to 'blood
ties' as well as related symbols like the naturalness of marriage and
raising children within this culture. In later work (1972 and 1984)
Schneider argued that unexamined genealogical notions of kinship had
been embedded in anthropology since Morgan's early work because American anthropologists (and anthropologists in western Europe) had made the mistake of assuming these particular cultural values
of 'blood is thicker than water', common in their own societies, were
'natural' and universal for all human cultures (i.e. a form of
ethnocentrism). He concluded that, due to these unexamined assumptions,
the whole enterprise of 'kinship' in anthropology may have been built on
faulty foundations. His 1984 book A Critique of The Study of Kinship gave his fullest account of this critique.
Certainly for Morgan (1870:10) the
actual bonds of blood relationship had a force and vitality of their own
quite apart from any social overlay which they may also have acquired,
and it is this biological relationship itself which accounts for what
Radcliffe-Brown called "the source of social cohesion". (Schneider 1984,
49)
Schneider himself emphasised a distinction between the notion of a social relationship as intrinsically given and inalienable (from birth), and a social relationship as created, constituted and maintained by a process of interaction, or doing
(Schneider 1984, 165). Schneider used the example of the citamangen /
fak relationship in Yap society, that his own early research had
previously glossed over as a father / son relationship, to illustrate the problem;
The crucial point is this: in the relationship between citamangen and fak the stress in the definition of the relationship is more on doing than on being. That is, it is more what the citamangen does for fak and what fak does for citamangen
that makes or constitutes the relationship. This is demonstrated,
first, in the ability to terminate absolutely the relationship where
there is a failure in the doing, when the fak fails to do what he is supposed to do; and second, in the reversal of terms so that the old, dependent man becomes fak, to the young man, tam.
The European and the anthropological notion of consanguinity, of blood
relationship and descent, rest on precisely the opposite kind of value.
It rests more on the state of being... on the biogenetic relationship
which is represented by one or another variant of the symbol of 'blood'
(consanguinity), or on 'birth', on qualities rather than on performance.
We have tried to impose this definition of a kind of relation on all
peoples, insisting that kinship consists in relations of consanguinity
and that kinship as consanguinity is a universal condition.(Schneider
1984, 72)
Schneider preferred to focus on these often ignored processes of
"performance, forms of doing, various codes for conduct, different
roles" (p. 72) as the most important constituents of kinship. His
critique quickly prompted a new generation of anthropologists to
reconsider how they conceptualized, observed and described social
relationships ('kinship') in the cultures they studied.
Post-Schneider
Schneider's critique is widely acknowledged to have marked a turning point in anthropology's study of social
relationships and interactions. Some anthropologists moved forward with
kinship studies by teasing apart biological and social aspects, prompted
by Schneider's question;
The question of whether kinship is a
privileged system and if so, why, remains without a satisfactory
answer. If it is privileged because of its relationship to the
functional prerequisites imposed by the nature of physical kinship, this
remains to be spelled out in even the most elementary detail.
(Schneider 1984, 163)
Schneider also dismissed the sociobiological account of biological
influences, maintaining that these did not fit the ethnographic evidence
(see more below). Janet Carsten employed her studies with the Malays to reassess kinship. She uses the idea of relatedness
to move away from a pre-constructed analytic opposition between the
biological and the social. Carsten argued that relatedness should be
described in terms of indigenous statements and practices, some of which
fall outside what anthropologists have conventionally understood as
kinship;
Ideas about relatedness in Langkawi
show how culturally specific is the separation of the 'social' from the
'biological' and the latter to sexual reproduction. In Langkawi
relatedness is derived both from acts of procreation and from living and
eating together. It makes little sense in indigenous terms to label
some of these activities as social and others as biological. (Carsten
1995, 236)
Philip Thomas' work with the Temanambondro of Madagascar
highlights that nurturing processes are considered to be the 'basis'
for kinship ties in this culture, notwithstanding genealogical
connections;
Yet just as fathers are not simply
made by birth, neither are mothers, and although mothers are not made
by "custom" they, like fathers, can make themselves through another
type of performatively constituted relation, the giving of "nurture".
Relations of ancestry are particularly important in contexts of ritual,
inheritance and the defining of marriageability and incest; they are
in effect the "structuring structures" (Bourdieu 1977) of social
reproduction and intergenerational continuity. Father, mother and
children are, however, also performatively related through the giving
and receiving of "nurture" (fitezana). Like ancestry, relations of
"nurture" do not always coincide with relations by birth; but unlike
ancestry, "nurture" is a largely ungendered relation, constituted in
contexts of everyday practical existence, in the intimate, familial and
familiar world of the household, and in ongoing relations of work and
consumption, of feeding and farming. (Thomas 1999, 37)
Similar ethnographic accounts have emerged from a variety of cultures since Schneider's intervention. The concept of nurture kinship
highlights the extent to which kinship relationships may be brought
into being through the performance of various acts of nurture between
individuals. Additionally the concept highlights ethnographic findings
that, in a wide swath of human societies, people understand,
conceptualize and symbolize their relationships predominantly in terms
of giving, receiving and sharing nurture. These approaches were somewhat
forerun by Malinowski, in his ethnographic study of sexual behaviour on the Trobriand Islands which noted that the Trobrianders did not believe pregnancy to be the result of sexual intercourse between the man and the woman, and they denied that there was any physiological relationship between father and child.
Nevertheless, while paternity was unknown in the "full biological
sense", for a woman to have a child without having a husband was
considered socially undesirable. Fatherhood was therefore recognised as a
social and nurturing role; the woman's husband is the "man whose role
and duty it is to take the child in his arms and to help her in nursing
and bringing it up";
"Thus, though the natives are ignorant of any physiological need for a
male in the constitution of the family, they regard him as indispensable
socially".
Biology, psychology and kinship
Like Schneider, other anthropologists of kinship have largely
rejected sociobiological accounts of human social patterns as being both
reductionistic and also empirically incompatible with ethnographic data
on human kinship. Notably, Marshall Sahlins strongly critiqued the sociobiological approach through reviews of ethnographies in his 1976 The Use and Abuse of Biology
noting that for humans "the categories of 'near' and 'distant' [kin]
vary independently of consanguinal distance and that these categories
organize actual social practice" (p. 112).
Independently from anthropology, biologists studying organisms'
social behaviours and relationships have been interested to understand
under what conditions significant social behaviors can evolve to become a
typical feature of a species (see inclusive fitness
theory). Because complex social relationships and cohesive social
groups are common not only to humans, but also to most primates,
biologists maintain that these biological theories of sociality should
in principle be generally applicable. The more challenging question
arises as to how such ideas can be applied to the human species whilst
fully taking account of the extensive ethnographic evidence that has
emerged from anthropological research on kinship patterns.
Early developments of biological inclusive fitness theory and the derivative field of Sociobiology, encouraged some sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists to approach human kinship with the assumption that inclusive fitness theory predicts that kinship relations in humans are indeed expected to depend on genetic relatedness, which they readily connected with the genealogy
approach of early anthropologists such as Morgan (see above sections).
However, this is the position that Schneider, Sahlins and other
anthropologists explicitly reject.
Nonreductive biology and nurture kinship
In agreement with Schneider, Holland argued
that an accurate account of biological theory and evidence supports the
view that social bonds (and kinship) are indeed mediated by a shared
social environment and processes of frequent interaction, care and
nurture, rather than by genealogical relationships per se (even if genealogical relationships frequently correlate with such processes). In his 2012 book Social bonding and nurture kinship
Holland argues that sociobiologists and later evolutionary
psychologists misrepresent biological theory, mistakenly believing that inclusive fitness theory predicts that genetic relatedness per se is the condition that mediates social bonding and social cooperation in organisms. Holland points out that the biological theory (see inclusive fitness) only specifies that a statistical relationship between social behaviors and genealogical relatedness is a criterion for the evolution of social behaviors. The theory's originator, W.D.Hamilton considered that organisms' social behaviours were likely to be mediated by general conditions that typically correlate with genetic relatedness, but are not likely to be mediated by genetic relatedness per se.
Holland reviews fieldwork from social mammals and primates to show that
social bonding and cooperation in these species is indeed mediated
through processes of shared living context, familiarity and attachments, not by genetic relatedness per se. Holland thus argues that both the biological theory and the biological evidence
is nondeterministic and nonreductive, and that biology as a theoretical
and empirical endeavor (as opposed to 'biology' as a cultural-symbolic
nexus as outlined in Schneider's 1968 book) actually supports the nurture kinship
perspective of cultural anthropologists working post-Schneider (see
above sections). Holland argues that, whilst there is nonreductive
compatibility around human kinship between anthropology, biology and
psychology, for a full account of kinship in any particular human
culture, ethnographic methods, including accounts of the people
themselves, the analysis of historical contingencies, symbolic systems,
economic and other cultural influences, remain centrally important.
Holland's position is widely supported by both cultural
anthropologists and biologists as an approach which, according to Robin
Fox, "gets to the heart of the matter concerning the contentious
relationship between kinship categories, genetic relatedness and the
prediction of behavior".
Evolutionary psychology
The other approach, that of Evolutionary psychology, continues to
take the view that genetic relatedness (or genealogy) is key to
understanding human kinship patterns. In contrast to Sahlin's position
(above), Daly and Wilson argue that "the categories of 'near' and
'distant' do not 'vary independently of consanguinal distance', not in
any society on earth." (Daly et al. 1997,
p282). A current view is that humans have an inborn but culturally
affected system for detecting certain forms of genetic relatedness. One
important factor for sibling
detection, especially relevant for older siblings, is that if an infant
and one's mother are seen to care for the infant, then the infant and
oneself are assumed to be related. Another factor, especially important
for younger siblings who cannot use the first method, is that persons
who grew up together see one another as related. Yet another may be
genetic detection based on the major histocompatibility complex. This kinship detection system in turn affects other genetic predispositions such as the incest taboo and a tendency for altruism towards relatives.
One issue within this approach is why many societies organize
according to descent (see below) and not exclusively according to
kinship. An explanation is that kinship does not form clear boundaries
and is centered differently for each individual. In contrast, descent
groups usually do form clear boundaries and provide an easy way to
create cooperative groups of various sizes.
According to an evolutionary psychology hypothesis that assumes
that descent systems are optimized to assure high genetic probability of
relatedness between lineage members, males should prefer a patrilineal
system if paternal certainty is high; males should prefer a matrilineal
system if paternal certainty is low. Some research supports this
association with one study finding no patrilineal society with low
paternity confidence and no matrilineal society with high paternal
certainty. Another association is that pastoral societies are relatively more often patrilineal compared to horticultural societies. This may be because wealth in pastoral societies in the form of mobile cattle can easily be used to pay bride price which favor concentrating resources on sons so they can marry.
The evolutionary psychology account of biology continues to be rejected by most cultural anthropologists.
Extensions of the kinship metaphor
Detailed terms for parentage
As
social and biological concepts of parenthood are not necessarily
coterminous, the terms "pater" and "genitor" have been used in
anthropology to distinguish between the man who is socially recognised
as father (pater) and the man who is believed to be the physiological
parent (genitor); similarly the terms "mater" and "genitrix" have been
used to distinguish between the woman socially recognised as mother
(mater) and the woman believed to be the physiological parent
(genitrix).
Such a distinction is useful when the individual who is considered the
legal parent of the child is not the individual who is believed to be
the child's biological parent. For example, in his ethnography of the Nuer, Evans-Pritchard notes that if a widow,
following the death of her husband, chooses to live with a lover
outside of her deceased husband's kin group, that lover is only
considered genitor of any subsequent children the widow has, and her
deceased husband continues to be considered the pater. As a result, the
lover has no legal control over the children, who may be taken away from
him by the kin of the pater when they choose.
The terms "pater" and "genitor" have also been used to help describe
the relationship between children and their parents in the context of
divorce in Britain. Following the divorce and remarriage of their
parents, children find themselves using the term "mother" or "father" in
relation to more than one individual, and the pater or mater who is
legally responsible for the child's care, and whose family name
the child uses, may not be the genitor or genitrix of the child, with
whom a separate parent-child relationship may be maintained through
arrangements such as visitation rights or joint custody.
It is important to note that the terms "genitor" or "genetrix" do
not necessarily imply actual biological relationships based on consanguinity,
but rather refer to the socially held belief that the individual is
physically related to the child, derived from culturally held ideas
about how biology works. So, for example, the Ifugao may believe that an illegitimate child might have more than one physical father, and so nominate more than one genitor.
J.A. Barnes therefore argued that it was necessary to make a further
distinction between genitor and genitrix (the supposed biological mother
and father of the child), and the actual genetic father and mother of the child.
Composition of relations
The study of kinship may be abstracted to binary relations between people. For example, if x is the parent of y, the relation may be symbolized as xPy. The converse relation, that y is the child of x, is written yPTx. Suppose that z is another child of x: zPTx. Then y is a sibling of z as they share the parent x: zPTxPy → zPTPy. Here the relation of siblings is expressed as the composition PTP of the parent relation with its inverse.
The relation of grandparent is the composition of the parent relation with itself: G = PP. The relation of uncle is the composition of parent with brother, while the relation of aunt composes parent with sister. Suppose x is the grandparent of y: xGy. Then y and z are cousins if yGTxGz.
The symbols applied here to express kinship are used more generally in algebraic logic to develop a calculus of relations with sets other than human beings.