Thinking about kinship and thinking

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 404-416
Author(s):  
Doug Jones
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
Model System ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Taxonomic Distribution ◽  
Componential Analysis ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Recent Developments

AbstractThe target article proposes a theory uniting the anthropological study of kin terminology with recent developments in linguistics and cognitive science. The response to comments reaches two broad conclusions. First, the theory may be relevant to several current areas of research, including (a) the nature and scope of the regular, “grammatical” side of language, (b) the organization of different domains of conceptual structure, including parallels across domains, their taxonomic distribution and implications for evolution, and (c) the influence of conceptual structure on social structure. Second, the theory compares favorably with alternatives, including (a) the theory that kin terminology is not really that complicated, (b) the theory that kin terms mirror social categories, (c) componential analysis, and (d) kinship algebra. If further research in anthropology, linguistics, and other fields supports the theory, and confirms the psychological reality of proposed mechanisms, then kinship may emerge as a model system for the study of important issues in cognition and social organization.

Current Perspectives in Social Theory. Supplement 1: Recent Developments in the Theory of Social Structure.

1996 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 280
Author(s):  
Heinz-Gunter Vester ◽  
J. David Knottnerus ◽  
Christopher Prendergast
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Recent Developments

scholarly journals Racism in European Health Care: Structural Violence and Beyond

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (11) ◽  
pp. 1662-1673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hamed ◽  
Suruchi Thapar-Björkert ◽  
Hannah Bradby ◽  
Beth Maina Ahlberg
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Access To Health Care ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Subtle Racism ◽  
Access To Health ◽  
European Health ◽  
Unequal Access

Research shows how racism can negatively affect access to health care and treatment. However, limited theoretical research exists on conceptualizing racism in health care. In this article, we use structural violence as a theoretical tool to understand how racism as an institutionalized social structure is enacted in subtle ways and how the “violence” built into forms of social organization is rendered invisible through repetition and routinization. We draw on interviews with health care users from three European countries, namely, Sweden, Germany, and Portugal to demonstrate how two interrelated processes of unequal access to resources and inequalities in power can lead to the silencing of suffering and erosion of dignity, respectively. The strength of this article lies in illuminating the mechanisms of subtle racism that damages individuals and leads to loss of trust in health care. It is imperative to address these issues to ensure a responsive and equal health care for all users.

Sexuality and the Spatial Dynamics of Capitalism

1992 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 651-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
L Knopp
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Symbolic Space ◽  
Physical Mobility ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Gender Based

Sexuality, gender, and class (with race, ethnicity, physical mobility, and other social categories related to power) are deeply implicated in the constitution of each other as social relations. Spatial structures and conflicts that are constitutive of class relations are therefore also constitutive of sexuality. An examination of recent developments in feminist, lesbian and gay, and radical social theory, and certain elements of the historical geography of capitalism, reveals specific ways in which this is so. Urban spatial designs in Britain and the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries, for example, implicate hegemonic constructions of sexuality in gender-based and class-based spatial divisions of labor. Similarly, struggles over the social definitions of sexuality have involved individuals and groups recoding spaces that have been devalued by the market in potentially counterhegemonic ways. Thus, struggles over sexuality manifest themselves as struggles over sexual representations of, and sexual symbols in, space as well as over spatial organization. Indeed, these sorts of struggles may actually be more important in the contemporary era than those concerning the spatial organization of sexuality. This is because the sociospatial construction of otherness, which has as much to do with representational and symbolic space as with physical space, has become key to the survival of capitalism.

Adolescent social structure and the spread of linguistic change

1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penelope Eckert
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Phonological Variation ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Socioeconomic Class ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
Social Network Structure ◽  
Age Cohort

ABSTRACTDetailed participant observation among Detroit area adolescents provides explanations for the mechanisms of the spread of sound change outward from urban areas and upward through the socioeconomic hierarchy. The use of local phonological variables in adolescence is determined by a social structure within the age cohort, dominated by two opposed, and frequently polarized, school-based social categories. These categories, called “Jocks” and “Burnouts” in the school under study, embody middle-class and working-class cultures respectively, and articulate adolescent social structure with adult socioeconomic class. Differences between Jock and Burnout cultures entail differences in social network structure and in orientation to the urban area, and hence to urban sound changes. Parents' socioeconomic class is related to, but does not determine, category affiliation, and while category affiliation is a significant predictor in phonological variation, parents' socioeconomic class is not. (Variation, sound change, adolescents, urban dialects, suburban dialects, schools)

Social structure and peer terminology in a black adolescent gang

1982 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Labov
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Delinquency ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Street Gang ◽  
Black Adolescent ◽  
The Social ◽  
Adolescent Groups ◽  
Primary Groups

ABSTRACTStudies of the social organization of adolescent groups may not have always taken into account sufficiently the dual reality of the groups in which much of the youths' activities occur. Peer terminology is useful in locating and describing the associational patterns and activities of the youth, but only if the range of possible terms is considerably broadened. It was found in a study of a Harlem street gang that such language may appear ambiguous, but when studied systematically in the interaction between interviewer and members, the misunderstandings become transparent. Peer terminological practices can be used to provide further knowledge of the reality of the social organization of adolescent primary groups. (Peer terminology, primary groups, misunderstanding, interviewing, juvenile delinquency, urban black adolescent language; verbal tags.)

ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CLASSIC MAYA SOCIAL ORGANIZATION FROM CARACOL, BELIZE

2004 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Z. Chase ◽  
Arlen F. Chase
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Classic Maya ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Sociopolitical Organization ◽  
The Past ◽  
Segmentation Models

Inferring ancient social and political organization from the archaeological record is a difficult task. Generally, the models used to interpret the Classic-period Maya (a.d.250–900) have been borrowed from other societies and other times and thus also reflect etic conceptions of the past. Maya social and political organization has been interpreted as varying in complexity. Those who would model a less complex Classic Maya social structure have tended to employ lineage models and segmentation. Models of a more complex Classic Maya civilization focus on different social levels and on a breakdown of some kinship systems. Other models, such as that of the “noble house,” represent attempts to find a middle ground. Yet archaeological and epigraphic data that have been gathered for the Classic Maya place parameters on any interpretation that is generated. Data collected from Caracol, Belize, over the past 19 years can be used to illustrate the problems that arise in the strict application of “ideal” social models to the Classic Maya situation. These same data also provide parameters for the reconstruction of ancient sociopolitical organization.

A breakthrough of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries – reality or a myth? (On amnesia in ethnicity studies)

Ethnicities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146879682110470
Author(s):  
Marek Jakoubek
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
New Era ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Culture Difference ◽  
Famous Book ◽  
History Of ◽  
Breaking Work

There is universal agreement in the scholarly community on the crucial position of the book Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (ed. F Barth, 1969) in the modern study of ethnicity. General consensus goes that this work has a status of a founding work that developed a theoretical paradigm and model of ethnic groups, on which the study of ethnicity draws until today. This study critically reviews this reputation. The author, drawing on the works of authors who had published their works before Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, suggests that theoretical positions proposed by Barth and his colleagues in the famous book were not at all new by that time, neither were they considered novel by contemporary readers. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries acquired the status of a ground-breaking work, founding a new era of anthropological study of ethnicity only later, and not because of the results the book really provided, but rather thanks to statements about the contribution of this work to the study of ethnicity made by its editor, F Barth in his famous ‘Introduction’. This conceptualization of the history of ethnicity studies was, thanks to the immense influence of F Barth´s book, gradually accepted and the results of all work that had been previously done in the field of ethnicity studies, was covered by amnesia, continuing until today.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document