2021 ◽  
pp. 102831532110270
Author(s):  
Ireena Nasiha Ibnu ◽  
Norzaini Azman

This paper explores the transnational trajectories of female Malaysian Muslim students through their commitment to piety-minded forms of Islam. In particular, it seeks to identify the reasons for their participation in piety movements and its importance to their lives. The ethnographic research, conducted over 8 months, involved 18 Malaysian female respondents who were studying and living in Manchester between 2016 and 2017. The findings show that the students’ involvement in piety movements was due to fictive kinship providing generous hospitality upon their arrival to the United Kingdom, pre-departure programs on preparation for studying abroad, family influence and sisterhood relationships. Participation in piety movements is said to help relieve stress and overcome loneliness, and is considered vital in guiding Muslim students to lead fulfilling and virtuous lives. The findings contribute significantly to transnational student mobility theories and the importance of sociality and religion in transnational migration.


2021 ◽  
pp. 009579842110026
Author(s):  
Edward D. Scott ◽  
Nancy L. Deutsch

This case study examines the way an adolescent Black boy extends his kinship network as a part of navigating and demonstrating agency in mentoring relationships with nonparental adults. We purposively selected one participant, Bodos, from the sample of a larger mixed-method study involving youth, aged 12 to 18 years, in the southeastern United States. Drawing on narrative methodology, we used a holistic-content approach to analyze Bodos’ responses to semistructured interviews. Bodos used several narratives to describe his experiences. We offer three findings: (a) Fictive kinship is a positive feature of Black adaptive culture that can be leveraged by Black youth as a tool for creating a distinct relational dynamic with their mentors, (b) adolescent Black boys possess skills and knowledge that both preexist and emerge within positive mentoring relationships, and (c) youth agency and expectations manifest in mentoring relationships to inform and influence those adults’ significance. This case study furthers the field’s understanding of how cultural practices can positively influence relational development and create a unique relational context and experience.


2004 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Christine Trevett

In the close-knit valleys communities of South Wales where I was brought up, some fingers are still pointed at ‘the scab’, the miner who, for whatever reason, did not show solidarity in the strike of 1984-5, cement the definition between ‘them’ and ‘us’. In trouble-torn Palestine of the twenty-first century, or among the paramilitary groups of Northern Ireland today, suspected informers are summarily assassinated. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee continues its work in the post-apartheid era. In second-century Rome and elsewhere, the ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ who made up the fictive kinship groups – the churches – in the growing but illicit cult of the Christians were conscious both of their own vulnerability to outside opinion and of their failures in relation to their co-religionists. The questions which they asked, too, were questions about reconciliation and/or (spiritual) death.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rhiannon E. Sandy

This thesis uses apprenticeship indentures to offer a novel insight into guilds and apprenticeship in medieval England. Indentures offer a unique view of idealised master-apprentice relationships, which are otherwise only visible in official records. A collection of 82 surviving indentures forms a starting point for exploring social, economic, and legal aspects of apprenticeship in medieval England, both within and outside the guild system. Chapter 1 outlines the content of indentures and provides a guide to their general form. Indentures developed gradually in response to social, economic and legal factors; these are explored in subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 discusses the enforceability and enforcement of legislation pertaining to apprenticeship, as well as exploring the legal complexities of indentures as binding legal agreements made by minors. Chapter 3 considers apprenticeship in three ways in the context of the guild system: as a means of exploitation, as a means of exclusion, and as a means of providing technical training. No single model prevails, but the influence of each depends on geographical, economic, and temporal factors. Subsequent chapters provide an overview of the reality of apprenticeship. Chapter 4 discusses the use of behavioural clauses in indentures, which controlled apprentices’ behaviour with the primary aim of protecting masters’ reputations. Chapter 5 explores apprentices’ expectations of the apprenticeship, including provision of training. Chapter 6 presents novel estimates, based on surviving records, of the cost of maintaining an apprentice, concluding that they were not ‘cheap’ labour. Historians have not previously considered this cost. Chapter 7 uses testamentary evidence to examine close master-apprentice relationships, highlighting the importance of fictive kinship. Civic enfranchisement and its relative importance is also discussed. Overall, this thesis provides an original survey of apprenticeship in medieval England, based mainly on evidence from a previously neglected document type.


Author(s):  
Jack Barbalet

A consensus holds that guanxi has three forms—family, friendship and acquaintance guanxi—distinguished by the strength of obligation. It is also assumed that through fictive kinship, friendship and family guanxi may merge. The chapter shows that kinship obligations and guanxi obligations are fundamentally dissimilar, thus the notion of family guanxi is redundant, and that pseudo-family ties do not provide access to kin relations but affirm the distinction between family and friendship ties. Because guanxi is cultivated by its participants, friendship guanxi and acquaintance guanxi are not distinct forms but rather different stages of guanxi formation. In considering the sources of these confusions the chapter goes on to discuss problems arising from employment of common-language terms in sociological analysis, untested assumptions concerning Chinese culture, and methodological commitments which privilege latent structures of strong ties. It is shown that the strength of guanxi ties, strategically pursued by participants, fluctuate through agentic practices.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-35
Author(s):  
Clodagh Tait

Wet-nursing and fosterage were widely used in early modern Ireland. Despite the difficulties of reconstructing practices surrounding the nourishment and care of infants and young children, the limited surviving sources provide some evidence for the practical arrangements involved, the role of these practices in extending families and creating long-lasting ties of ‘fictive kinship’, the emotional and economic connections they forged and deeply held concerns that they might inspire and extend political disloyalty and disaffection. While fosterage is mostly associated with Gaelic communities, by the sixteenth century, a distinct brand of fosterage was significant to Old English families as well. New English and Protestant families also increasingly participated in networks referred to as fosterage, and references in the 1641 depositions testify to the degree to which these practices linked settlers and natives and the horror inspired by their abandonment.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document