Talk:Kinship and descent

message: :"Kinship and Descent" is a designation that makes the American POV cultural assumption that kinship is based on blood relationship (Schneider 1984) is one of many who critique this position. Its would be a major mistake to classify the category kinship under an exclusively American POV. German, French, and British anthropology, among others, define kinship as including marriage and descent, and this was the view of one of the founders of american anthropology, L.H. Morgan. Schneider's critique of kinship theory in his study of American kinship makes precisely this point. Don't go there: this category should be abolished for greater generality, and the best option is to merge with Kinship which was just rewritten with this greater generality in mind.Douglas R. White (talk) 14:52, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think such a merge would produce a jelly-like mass of quivering nonsense; entirely fragmented and unreadable. Each article that you are suggesting should be merged into this one should be expanded until they serve as stand-alone pieces. --Oldak Quill 11:40, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: (Re - matrilineal and patrilineal) I think that the articles should remain seperate. They are distinct and opposite to me. Such would be akin to having an article on black and white or something like that. Charles 18:23, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I think it's pretty well decided that the purpose of Wikipedia isn't to glom every bit of information on a subject into one article—else, why not just have one article titled "Knowledge"?  While some things should certainly be merged, I don't think there's a particularly good case for any of the suggestions on this article.  And as all those templates are an eyesore, I'll remove them for the time being. Czoller 14:14, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Douglas White that no article should provide solely an American POV.  However, I do not think that is relevant to the question of merger.  Let me put it another way: either this article should be renamed, Descent groups and should be one of a series of very focused articles on specific themes relating to kinship broadly conceived, or there should be one article on kinship, which explains ideas of kinship broadly conceived and then covers all major topics related to kinship, including descent groups.  I favor the merger, in part precisely because it makes it easier to explain debates over the relationship between kinship and biological relatedness. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 17:09, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: Hello folks,
Please consider linking my website www.kinshipstudies.org to the Wikipedia articles on kinship. It contains a comprehensive bibliography of kinship studies in various fields. Thanks for all your work. 171.64.39.35 03:03, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  www.kinshipstudies.org 

message: Caste is complex enough to merit a separate article, but should it be mentioned in this article as well? Castes (jati) in India seem to be, in most cases, groups of lineages that trace to a common ancestor (frequently mythological). The two systems (lineage and caste) are intertwined as the lineages and sub-lineages under castes are often arranged in a sort of hierarchy (which can, however, change). I'm not sure if this means that caste is a type of kinship term. Maybe caste is more of a social organization term, and in India it just happens to correspond with lineages or clans. I am a scholar of Indian history, so I don't know much about the anthropology view on these subjects. --152.3.85.160 04:57, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Caste 

message: What sort of social rank would one have to bear in their family, in order to be a descendent of either?  
How far up the totem pole, would you say?  
This is intended to have broad answers and based on gradients of time and population, not going into specifics about exact descendents.  About how common is their descent in the English or British genepool today?  
I've noticed that American Presidents don't descend from either king, but the most common recent royal ancestor shared by many of us is Edward III.  How common is it for anybody in the English or British genepool, to have a Protestant royal ancestor?  
There is a general cutoff, isn't there?  
Is it because of fratricide in the Wars of the Roses, the Tudors' "new men", or the Union of the Crowns, or the parliamentary union under Queen Anne (I can't think of any non-royal family descent from the Hanoverians within the UK)?  
I'm thinking that there is a big difference between Plantagenet and Tudor descents, that the commons in all likelihood have the former and the latter is held by the lords.  (just generally speaking)  Then again, Tudor descent in the Welsh must be higher in general.  I am further curious about pre-Royal Tudor blood in Anglo-British people today, since the status and/or concept of Welsh royalty/nobility is rather hazy in my mind.  I found the Blevins aka Ap Bleddyn family of Powys in my ancestry, but have no real idea on what to make of it--or any other Welsh "native aristocracy".  I might be able to find Stewart descent somewhere, from way back when.  What percentage of Hanoverian background do you think that German colonists had in America?  
On the British side, I have to go as far back as Welf himself...but any recent genetic relationship with the Hanoverians or the counts of Nassau are completely obscure.  How does one research those other colonial people, such as the Hessians?  
UK genealogy is relatively easy when focusing on English (and French) ancestries.  What would a "national person" of Jerusalem (or Antioch, for example) in Crusader times be known as?  
We say "American" for those Founders, but was there such a nationality-term for the Crusaders in their own domains?  
I guess the term is supposed to be Levantine/Outremer, or "Crusader" as our national heritage says "Colonist"...
IP Address 12:13, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Descendents of Edward IV and Henry VII 

message: I believe that this topic is unique enough to maintain as a separate article.  Linking to the other related articles is sufficient.
--68.221.51.114 19:55, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Since these mergers have been proposed for sometime, and there seems to be relative agreement against them, I'm going to remove all the proposals. Peyna 19:12, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vote against merger! 

message: deleted: "The notion of the nuclear family has been largely dismissed, as have other theories which argue for a universal core unit of kinship."
Benwing 02:18, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  huh? 

message: Ihave not looked at these articles in a long time, but I see no reasons for spearate articles on kinship, kinship terminologies, and kinship and descent.  I can see one article, "kinship," with sections on: kinship terminology, residence rules, descent groups, and marriage.  Or I could see four separate articles on these themes.  If others are interested in reopening this discussion I would participate. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 02:56, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Support: Kinship is a relatively weak article. It should be merged into this one (Kinship and descent). -Classicfilms (talk) 18:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Support:Kinship is currently an article that poorly (and sorely?) captures and represents the full breadth and dimensions of the subject .. It is an article that needs work and attention (see suggestion  here.. but this does not change the verifiable fact that within anthropology kinship is a concept larger, and different to the concept of descent .. and the one 'concept' should NOT be collapsed into the other.. each deserves it's own article. Bruceanthro (talk) 15:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Support:I agree--there's a lot of content that could be merged, so long as we preserve the differences between kinship and descent.  While I think we should focus on anthropological kinship, we still need to preserve the uses of the term "kinship" which lie outside of anthropology.--Pariah (talk) 19:18, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Comment what kind of uses are you referring to there, just so I can better understand what's needed? Robotforaday (talk) 00:40, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The Kinship article states: "The word kinship can refer more broadly to any emotional relationship. This can also refer to ideas which are mathematically related."  I think these are fair (if uncited) statements.  Just as long as there's a distinction made between everyday usage of the word, and technical usage.  I think we could do this in the introduction--say: "in common usage, the term kinship can refer to a X or Y.  In Anthropology, it refers to the many ways in which people of various cultures trace their ancestry and define family connections" (or something along that line).--Pariah (talk) 01:08, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, fair enough, I was just wondering if you meant anything that would be worth creating a disambiguation page for. Robotforaday (talk) 01:33, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh--no, probably not.--Pariah (talk) 05:55, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  merging/content-forking 

message: Kinship and Descent is an awkward entry because Descent is part of Kinship, along with Affinity. That is made clear in the rewrite of the Kinship page as part of the Anthropology of the month project. That rewrite goes only so far as to review the history of kinship studies. This page would make a good sequel.Douglas R. White (talk) 13:54, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello. My belief is that there should be a article for kinship (which is what the anthropology cotm is working on), which should provide an overview of kinship, and as such should include a section which briefly discusses descent as one dimension of kinship as conventionally understood. There should also be a an article with the title of descent (which is currently taken up with a disambiguation page), and in that article can into more specific detail about ways of understanding descent, etc. Robotforaday (talk) 14:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The thing is, within anthropological theory one could say that "descent" is a concept used to understand a wide range of behaviors ... it is not a "way of understanding descent" per se. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 17:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, this is why I used the plural, "ways". Anyway, what you're saying is perfectly reasonable, but doesn't change the essential point, which is that it's better to have an overview article for "kinship" with a section on descent, which also links to a more specific article on "descent" where we can describe that 'concept' or whatever other word you want to use for it. Robotforaday (talk) 23:15, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

text: (ec) Apparently, I did not express myself clearly.  "Descent" can refer to an observable phenomenon in the world, or set of phenomena, which is a legitimate object of scholarly study.  "Descent" can also refer to a concept, or set of concepts, which anthropologists use to analyze a variety of phenomena in the world.  My issue is not with singular versus plural, but between the first (object of analysis) and second (concept that may be used to analyze) sense of the word.  In the last sentence of your 14:43 post, it was not clear to me in which sense you meant the word "descent."  If you meant in the first sense, then I think this is actually a bad way to think about an article and would lead to a confused organization and coverage.  If however you mean the second usage, I am with you 100%. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 23:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I think we are basically in agreement, I just wanted to clear this up.  I suggest as a procedure working on the ominubus article first, because that will give us a global sense of how we are covering the range of concepts and objects of study - then we can create linked daughter articles. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 23:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, this is getting a little into a debate about signifier and signified. In essence, my motives were much more mundane, just making suggestions about how I saw the inter-article organisation working, without really going into any details about the content particularly of the descent article. I don't really want to get into that debate right at this second, because I'd like to focus on the kinship article for now, but let's just say that I envisaged the descent article starting with something along the lines of "The term descent is used to refer to..." ;) Which I suppose doesn't get us too much further, but still, let's come back to this after we've dealt with kinship. Good work on your structure proposal for the kinship article, I've left a reply. Robotforaday (talk) 05:37, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I have proposed a new outline at the bottom of the Kinship talk page, would love to know what you think about it/how you would tweak (I hope!) it, Slrubenstein   |  Talk 00:22, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Merger of this page into the new page for [[Kinship]]