Anthropology kinship - Essay Example

The topic is about the kinship and bonds formed between foreign of the same ethni or background that met at in the unitedstates. I wanted to talk about how foreign students from the same country or ethnicity have the tendency to immediately form their own group of people due to ethnicity and kinship. Culture and Classification One of the goals of social anthropology is to acquire gain an understanding of how and why human beings interact with each other and with their environment. And Kinship is what deals with interaction oh humans with each other. One important idea that contributes to this understanding of kinship is what anthropologists term as culture. One of the many ways that anthropologists use culture is to refer to systems of shared ideas among a group of people.By system we mean that there is some similarity or regularity to the way that ideas, and concepts are shared. There are various possible ways this sharing could happen.The same language, spirituality or religious belief can be a system that connects two minds. KINSHIP The study of kinship is the greatest common denominator across the various parts of social anthropology. Kinship was one of the first fields where anthropologists discovered social structure and logical patterns The unparalleled pioneer in the field of kinship studies was the 19th century American anthropologist, Lewis Henry Morgan; later, French structuralists and British structural functionalist carried on the tradition. Kinship brought about opportunities to map cultural variation within a relatively well-bounded empirical field, and hence, it was a perfect point for making comparative conclusions. In societies which are egalitarian, kinship often works as a kind of universal institution, which organizes everything from economy to religion. Before embarking upon a discussion on "why kinship and bonds are formed between foreign students of the same ethnicity or background that met at university in the United States. " , lets revise the definitions of ethnic group, ethnicity, nationalism. Ethnicity "Ethnicity seems to be a new term", state Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan (1975: 1).Both of them also pointed to the fact that the term appeared in dictionary for the first time in 1972 in Oxford English Dictionary. In 1953,American sociologist David Riesman,first used this word. The word "ethnic" is much older. Derived from the Greek ethnos (which in turn derived from the word ethnikos), "ethnic" which originally meant heathen or pagan (R. Williams, 1976: 119). But from mid 19th century, it gradually began to be associated with "racial" characteristics. It was around Second World War, that the United States started using the word as a polite term to refer to Jews Italians, Irish and other people considered inferior to the dominant group of largely British descent. While, in everyday language, "ethnicity" carries a meaning of " minority issues" and "race relations", but in social anthropology, "ethnicity"means aspects of relationships between groups which consider themselves, and are regarded by others, as being culturally distinctive. While,it is true that "the discourse concerning ethnicity tends to concern itself with subnational units, or minorities of some kind or another" (Chapman et al., 1989: 17),majorities are no less"ethnic " than minorities. In the United States, "ethnics" came to be used around the Second World War as a polite term referring to Jews, Italians, Irish and other people considered inferior to the dominant group of largely British descent. None of the founding fathers of sociology and social anthropology - with the partial exception of Max Weber - granted ethnicity much attention. WHY FOREIGN STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITY IN AMERICA MINGLE Ethnic groups tend to possess myths of common origin, and they nearly always have ideologies promoting endogamy(marrying within the same social group, class or ethnicity), which may nevertheless be of highly varying practical importance. When students from a foreign country meet another student of the same group , has a natural tendency of grouping and mingling with each other. Its how human psychology works. When someone is in a foreign land, and meets another person who looks similar(considering skin and hair color), dresses similar or acts similar or is from a similar background, it 's human nature to have an unconscious comfort level with that person having same features. Others are alien to him in an alien land(foreign land to be precise)For, example when an African American student enters a class room, on his first day and he finds another Afro American, he generally would be comfortable talking to that person. Not only do they may have common topics to talk about but unconsciously, he has it in his mind that he is a kin, that he is related to him somehow. When he sees another blonde student, he unknowingly might feel alienated from him. This is completely at the subconscious level of the human brain. Difference in racism and ethnicity AMERICA Well, its interesting to note that America would be the most confusing country to choose for case study , when one is dealing with ethnic groups and their behavioral pattern. It was only after 1492, that Christopher Columbus could discover her and people from all nook and corner of the world migrated to see a new dream. Among others, America is the country who encourages immigrants among other countries the most. It has blossomed into a nation of 103 cultures from around the world. While Governement America provides scholarship for foreign students, Corporate America reaps the harvest of good business with the multicultural society. It can also be called the role model for globalisation. Ethnic groups have moved to cities where they come in contact with people of other "ethnic group", but purely for business purpose, mostly.The relationship is competitive.Very often, the ones who migrate maintain their old kinship and neighborhood social networks .But,it should be noted that inspite of such multiculturalism, people tend to retain their ethnic identity, even after moving into a new country. This kind of social change has been investigated in a series of studies in Southern Africa from the early 1940s and North American cities from the 1920s .The Indian Clubs or the Afro Americans ghettos , are prove of it.There are also people who call themselves "Italians", "Poles" etc., in addition to being Americans - two generations or more after their ancestors left the country of origin. In fact, Glazer and Moynihan (1963) stated that the most important point to be made about the "American melting-pot" is that it never really occurred. They argue, that instead of eradicating ethnical differences, modern American Society has generated awareness in people about origin and race. Moreover, some Americans still practice endogamy or use their ethnic networks while job hunting. Ethnicity and class We referred to ethnicity as relationships between groups whose members consider themselves to be distinctive, and this distinction, does not have to be racial or national, it can also be social or financial. In that case groups may be ranked hierarchically within a society.For example, the lower income group marry within themselves , and celebrities mostly marry celebrities alike or mammoth entrepreneurs. There may be a correlation between ethnicity and class, which means that there is a likelihood that students belonging to particular ethnic groups also belong to particular social classes. There can be an interrelationship between class and ethnicity, both class and ethnicity can be criteria for rank, and ethnic membership can be an important factor for class membership. Both class and ethnic differences can be pervasive features of societies, but they are not the same thing and must be distinguished from each another analytically. Theories of social class always refer to systems of social ranking and distribution of power. On the contrary, Ethnicity, does not necessarily refer to rank; ethnic relations may be egalitarian in this regard. Still, many poly-ethnic societies are ranked according to ethnic membership. The criteria for such ranking are nevertheless different from class ranking: they refer to imputed "races" or cultural differences ,not to bank balance or status. The above discussion hints that in case two students from the same country in the United States be friends, but they are not of the same social standing, in that case there might be comparatively a lesser kinship between them. Very naturally, differences in social status brings about differences in thought pattern among them and a sense of alienation between both students too. The current concern with ethnicity If one runs a word search programme through a representative sample of English-language anthropological publications since 1950, he or she will note significant changes in the frequency of a number of keywords. From around 1965,words like "structure" and "function", for example, had gradually grown unfashionable, whereas Marxist terms like "base and superstructure", "means of production" and "class struggle" were popular until the early 1980s. Terms like "ethnicity", "ethnic" and "ethnic group", have steadily grown in currency since the mid- to late 1960s. There may be two main reasons for this. One of them is change in the social world, while the other is concerned with changes in the dominant way of thinking in social anthropology. As exemplified in the works of Malinowski, Boas, Radcliffe-Brown, Lvi-Strauss, Evans-Pritchard and others, classical social anthropology, would characteristically focus on single "tribal" societies, changes in the world after the Second World War have brought many of these societies into increased proximity and increased communication with each other, with the state and with global society. Many of the people studied by social anthropologists have become involved in ethnic conflicts or national liberation movements in post-colonial countries . Many of them, formerly regarded as "aboriginals" or "tribes", have become "ethnic minorities". Many former members of traditional groups or tribals have also migrated to Europe or North America as students or professionals , where their relationships with the indigenous societies have been studied extensively by sociologists, social psychologists and social anthropologists. And none can deny the natural tendency of the same ethnic groups to immediately form their own group of people due to ethnicity or kinship . Concepts of race and ethnic groups can nevertheless be important to the extent that they inform people's actions; at this level, race exists as a cultural construct, irrespective of its "biological reality". While racism, obviously, builds on the assumption that personality is somehow linked with hereditary characteristics which differ systematically between "ethnic groups ", and in this way ethnic groups may assume sociological importance even if it has no "objective" existence. Social scientists who research on race relations in Great Britain and the United States need not themselves believe in the existence of ethnic group, since their object of study is the social and cultural relevance of the notion that ethnic groups exists. If in a society, influential people had developed a similar theory about the hereditary personality traits of redhaired students, and if that theory gained social and cultural significance, "redhead studies" would for similar reasons have become a field of academic research, even if the researchers themselves did not agree that redheads were different from others in any relevant way. CONCLUSION An important reason for the current academic interest in ethnicity and nationalism is the fact that such phenomena have become so evident in many societies that it has become impossible to ignore them. social theorists, in the early twentieth century, believed that ethnicity and nationalism would decrease in importance and eventually vanish as a result of modernization, industrialization and individualism. This never came about. On the contrary, ethnicity and nationalism have grown in political importance in the world, particularly since the Second World War. Present day globalization also does not seem to bring any effect in this regard. The world has shrunk for sure, every place in this world is just a mouse click away, but still physical realities of color, social realities of bank balances and religious realities of different beliefs would not vanish just like that . citations kinshipstudies.com anthropreneur.com directessays.com 123helpme.com Read More