Search

Matrilineal kinship systems—where descent is traced through mothers only—are present all over the world but are most concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. We explore the relationship between exposure to Africa's external slave trades, during which millions of people were shipped from the continent during a 400-year period, and the evolution of matrilineal kinship. Scholars have hypothesized that matrilineal kinship, which is well-suited to incorporating new members, maintaining lineage continuity and insulating children from the removal of parents (particularly fathers), was an adaptive response to the slave trades. Motivated by this, we test for a connection between the slave trades and matrilineal kinship by combining historical data on an ethnic group's exposure to the slave trades and the presence of matrilineal kinship following the end of the trades. We find that the slave trades are positively associated with the subsequent presence of matrilineal kinship. The result is robust to a variety of measures of exposure to the slave trades, the inclusion of additional covariates, sensitivity analyses that remove outliers, and an instrumental variables estimator that uses a group's historical distance from the coast as an instrument. We also find evidence of a complementarity between polygyny and matrilineal kinship, which were both social responses to the disruption of the trades. This article is part of the theme issue 'Social norm change: drivers and consequences'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to reveal Minang women’s music to find a common thread perspective on Minangkabau matrilineal women. The method used in this research is a women’s perspective research method (feminist perspective). This method produces a very distinctive report, which is obtained from data through feminist ethnography, which is a report on the results of field research. The findings are that women’s music based on Adat Salingka Nagari is a women’s music that blends with Adat (tradition) and provides an opportunity to actualize themselves in the societies; as a result of being a Anak Dendang they get more than enough benefits and as family breadwinners.

With the rise of ancient DNA studies in prehistoric archaeology, terms such as matriliny and patriliny are commonly used in scholarly literature. From a sociocultural anthropological perspective, however, the two terms are not as simple and unproblematic as is widely accepted among archaeogeneticists. Matriliny and patriliny are umbrella terms for societies with a wide range of political and kinship practices, with or without a state. Moreover, archaeogenetic literature has assumed specific associations with matrilineal and patrilineal descent that are not supported by sociocultural anthropology. To properly understand the diversity of human sociopolitical forms in both the deep and recent past, archaeology – in its broadest sense, including archaeogenetics – must avoid essentializing prehistoric communities without exploring the empirical nuances that are well documented ethnographically. Finally, the article calls for more engagement in debates on kinship and sociopolitical organization in prehistory from sociocultural anthropological perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to reveal Minang women's music to find a common thread perspective on Minangkabau matrilineal women. The method used in this research is a women's perspective research method (feminist perspective). This method produces a very distinctive report, which is obtained from data through feminist ethnography, which is a report on the results of field research. The findings are that women's music based on Adat Salingka Nagari is a women's music that blends with Adat (tradition) and provides an opportunity to actualize themselves in the societies; as a result of being a Anak Dendang they get more than enough benefits and as family breadwinners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In matrilineal societies, women had more status, power, and property than men. Most scholars of Islam believed that matrilineal cultures were against the ethos of the religion, which is patrilineal, patrilocal, and patriarchal. But millions of Muslims across the Indian Ocean littoral have been following matriliny for several centuries. It was also one of the most convenient ways to engage in Indian Ocean trade: men could voyage as merchants, sailors, and itinerants, while women stayed on land with the property and controlled households and wider social spheres. This economic and social stability gave women an upper hand in economic and personal choices, and within marriages, they could and did move about freely. The matrilineal system not only connected maritime Muslims but also raised serious questions about the Islamic jurisprudential tradition that evolved in the Middle East through its peculiar practices of ownership of property, kinship, and marital norms. From the late eighteenth century onward, the system has been subjected to significant internal and external criticisms. These especially targeted inheritance-related customs where men got no share in the property. With a special focus on debates over inheritance laws, this article explores the transregional and transtemporal ways in which matrilineal Muslims defended the system within Islamic legal epistemologies and maritime social systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on an Indigenous scholar's exploration of matriarchal worlding and Indigenous feminist writing within the context of Western-centric academia. Topics include matriarchal worlding as a response to colonial academic norms, the role of Indigenous women's literatures in decolonial feminism, and the use of storytelling as a tool for community building and cultural resurgence.

The author discusses matrilineal roles in face of colonial violence by colonizers and mentions fight against the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Topics discussed include the poem "What If I Told You," arrest of the author's sister Sleydo' Molly Wickham in 2019, and the anniversary of the Delgamuukw Gisday'wa Supreme Court decision.

This article applies customary law to the interpretation of Ukrainian variants of 'The Kind and the Unkind Girls' tale type (ATU 480) that are called 'The Mare's Head' (ATU 480 D*). In light of Ukrainian customary law, property matters may be understood as the focus of the tale, especially regarding actions that occur prior to marriage and serve as a guarantee of a profitable husband. This article identifies the stepmother's hatred and property conflict as the primary causes of the heroine's journey. Matrilineal inheritance, dowry, and the right to own property are central points in this study. The analysis reveals how local customs might influence both the reward and the motivation of the heroine's journey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participation of women in higher education is one of the important development indexes. In many national and international forum, women education has been regarded as one of the benchmarks to measure societal development. Compared to the developed countries the status of India in women participation in higher education is not satisfactory. The Northeastern states being landlocked and geographically isolated, the participation of women in higher education is highly challenging. This paper tries to explore the women participation in higher education among the eight northeastern states. The study further tries to explore whether matrilineal society has any role to play in deciding the participation of women in higher education. The analysis is done based on secondary data collected from the Ministry of higher education, India. Among the states, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Nagaland show higher gender parity index (GPI) which indicates GPI favouring females. Among the states, five states have GPI above the national average (.92). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sheila Heti, in her approach to motherhood, as orientated around inter-generational matrilineal relationships, models many of Melanie Klein's ideas about the mother being at the heart of an individual's identity. I read Motherhood as both autofiction and a testimony of Heti's experience of being mothered, which was shaped by her own mother's inherited trauma. I argue Heti's deep ambivalence toward motherhood and her uncertainty about her desire to be a mother, is a projection of the problematic bond with her own mother. Motherhood makes an important contribution to the genre of autofiction in linking the significance of the symbolic mother to making claims on one's own identity, and to the autobiographical genre more broadly by suggesting claims to identity are intimately linked to the mother. In returning to the bond with her mother and enacting this reparation through writing Motherhood, Heti demonstrates the centrality of the maternal bond to the individual's sense of self, also demonstrating Klein's idea that the subject must separate from the mother and achieve a separate identity. As Heti demonstrates, the writing of autofiction can be a means through which this separateness is attained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on racialized slavery in Creek country at the turn of the 19th century. Topics include how Creek women and their positions within matrilineages shaped this slavery, the relationships that developed between Creek women and slave owners, and how practices of marriage and adoption impacted the community.

Background: While well known for its Viking past, Norway's population history and the influences that have shaped its genetic diversity are less well understood. This is particularly true with respect to its demography, migration patterns, and dialectal regions, despite there being curated historical records for the past several centuries. In this study, we undertook an analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity within the country to elaborate this history from a matrilineal genetic perspective. Methods: We aggregated 1174 partial modern Norwegian mtDNA sequences from the published literature and subjected them to detailed statistical and phylogenetic analysis by dialectal regions and localities. We further contextualized the matrilineal ancestry of modern Norwegians with data from Mesolithic, Iron Age, and historic period populations. Results: Modern Norwegian mtDNAs fell into eight West Eurasian (N, HV, JT, I, U, K, X, W), five East Eurasian (A, F, G, N11, Z), and one African (L2) haplogroups. Pairwise analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) estimates for all Norwegians indicated they were differentiated from each other at 1.68% (p < 0.001). Norwegians within the same dialectal region also showed genetic similarities to each other, although differences between subpopulations within dialectal regions were also observed. In addition, certain mtDNA lineages in modern Norwegians were also found among prehistoric and historic period populations, suggesting some level of genetic continuity over hundreds to many thousands of years. Conclusions: This analysis of mtDNA diversity provides a detailed picture of the genetic variation within Norway in light of its topography, settlement history, and historical migrations over the past several centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the gender gap in political engagement and economic policy preferences? Many scholars point to material resources, while others credit cultural determinants. We identify and test an important link between these factors: cultural lineage norms that structure entitlements to resources. Studying the relationship between culture and resources is challenging in societies where both disadvantage women. We analyze a unique setting: northeast India, where matrilineal tribes live alongside patrilineal communities. Patriarchal cultures and political institutions are shared, but lineage norms are distinct: patrilineal groups distribute inherited wealth through men, while matrilineal tribes do so via women. We conduct survey and behavioral experiments with representative samples of both communities, alongside extensive qualitative research, and find that the gender gap reverses across patrilineal and matrilineal groups. Our results indicate that lineage norms—which determine who gets to make decisions about wealth and how—are key determinants of the political economy gender gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the ways in which the gender relations of matrilineal culture in inland northern Mozambique have influenced the culture of the coast, an area profoundly marked by Sufi Islam. The findings demonstrate that Islam has adapted to matrilineal culture in significant ways, in terms of male/female leadership of Sufi tariqas and norms associated with sexuality and marriage. Islamic tradition is respected in so far as the bride's virginity at first marriage is considered important. However, in line with the matrilineal culture of the hinterland, marriage is often a transitory arrangement, and divorce is easy. Extra-marital sex is accepted, or at least condoned – provided that norms of discretion are properly maintained. Drawing on data from cities farther north on the Swahili coast, the findings suggest that norms regarding female sexual autonomy, which have roots in the matrilineal culture brought to the coast by female slaves from the interior, have also had an impact on women's lives in Mafia Island, Zanzibar, and Mombasa. Women seem to have been first movers in the post-abolition erosion of class hierarchies and general change of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on millions of Muslims across the Indian Ocean littoral following matrilineal systems for several centuries. Topics include following different forms of mother-focused systems of lineage, habitation, property ownership, and power; and studying contemporary matrilineal Muslims in the Indian Ocean littoral providing insights into the entanglements of matrilineal traditions with Islam and the laws.

The national COVID-19 pandemic response presents a sharp contrast to the matrilineal social kinship and knowledge exchange systems that Métis women and girls rely on for safety, security, and wellbeing. In this article, we demonstrate that while Métis women and girls have been left out of the national pandemic response, they continue to carry intergenerational healing knowledges that have been passed down from the kokums (grandmas) to the iskwêsisisak (girls). We show how urban Métis girls and women are both managing and tackling COVID-19 through innovative and community-based initiatives like Well Living House and the Call Auntie Hotline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores matrilineal kinship in the Buka area, in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, from the perspective of saltwater people on Pororan Island. In Bougainville and elsewhere in Melanesia, anthropological research has highlighted the importance of joint work in the gardens, of sharing and exchanging garden food, and of negotiations of access to land for kinship and relatedness in the region. Where does this leave saltwater people, who often have only small areas of land of their own, take little interest in gardening and depend on traded sweet potatoes or imported rice for meeting their subsistence needs? In the first part of this paper, I indicate “landed” bias in anthropological research on kinship, including matrilineal kinship. I then suggest complementary descriptive and analytic terms that may be useful for researchers who want to understand kin relations among saltwater people, based on my experiences among Pororan Islanders in Bougainville. Finally, I indicate the theoretical contribution that these terms can make to research on kinship in landed settings, as well.

Although Islam has a long history in coastal northern Mozambique, the question of how Muslims manage family life there is little understood. Based on the analysis of historical, ethnographic and legal records, and a case study of a bairro (Port., ward) called Pacquitequete in the contemporary coastal city of Pemba in Cabo Delgado province, this article focuses on Muslim family and gender relations in northern Mozambique. It argues that Muslims of this region maintain concurrent legal identities as Muslims, matrilineal Africans and citizens of the modern state. While women benefitted from matriliny by accessing the land and support from their maternal side, upon widowhood and divorce they lost access to their husband's or common assets because the husbands' matriclan claimed them. The perseverance of matriliny made local Muslims seem to abide less by Islamic norms, but historically they have combined the Shāfiʿī madhhab (Islamic legal school) with matrilineal custom. In contemporary Pemba, family and gender relations are regulated not only by Sharīʿa or by African 'traditions', but by a blend of elements from these two alongside modern legislations. Moreover, it could be said that this arrangement is endorsed by a kind of popular consensus, which is particularly salient in the Community Courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay traces the life/works of Hoerijah Adam (1936–1971), known for her significance in co-shaping modern dance in Indonesia, providing a subversive discourse that decentres the conventional reading of Muslim women's bodies. Originating from Minangkabau, West Sumatra – the world's largest Muslim matrilineal society – exposed Adam to a hybrid upbringing of traditional home vis-a-vis localised progressive arts education combining Islamic teaching and Western-influenced artistic articulation. Her trajectory shows a woman's dancing body as paradoxical cultural processess, e.g., an interweaving of multiple discourses of Islam, matriliny, and modernism, informed by the innate resilience of Minangkabau culture in defending its core traits against the colonial powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social relationships in female mammals are usually determined by an interplay among genetic, endogenous, social and ecological factors that ultimately affect their lifetime reproductive success. However, few studies have attempted to control for, and integrate these factors, hampering our understanding of drivers underlying female sociality. Here, we used generalized affiliation indices, combined with social networks, reproductive condition, and genetic data to investigate drivers of associations in female southern Australian bottlenose dolphins. Our analysis is based on photo-identification and genetic data collected through systematic boat surveys over a two-year study period. Female dolphins formed preferred associations and social clusters which ranged from overlapping to discrete home ranges. Furthermore, matrilineal kinship and biparental relatedness, as well as reproductive condition, correlated with the strength of female affiliations. In addition, relatedness for both genetic markers was also higher within than between social clusters. The predictability of resources in their embayment environment, and the availability of same-sex relatives in the population, may have favoured the formation of social bonds between genetically related females and those in similar reproductive condition. This study highlights the importance of genetic, endogenous, social and ecological factors in determining female sociality in coastal dolphins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the play The Dilemma of a Ghost and the short story "Something to talk about on the way to a funeral", Ama Ata Aidoo addresses her concern for the loss of matrilineal traditions in Akan communities. Her works portray mothers-in-law who cannot exert their matrilineal role of selecting their daughters-in-law; instead it is their sons – representatives of the patriarchal traditions acquired since the colonial times – the ones who choose a wife without their mothers' consent or awareness. This article will examine these women's attempt to deal with dominant strategies and how their role transforms into that of surrogate mothers who leave aside the rejection of the community and / or their sons towards their daughters-in-law and embrace them in order to promote their acceptance and thus be able to maintain the matrilineal society they belong to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional leadership often coexists with modern political institutions; yet, we know little about how traditional and state authority cues—or those from male or female sources—affect public opinion. Using an original survey experiment of 1,381 Malawians embedded in the 2016 Local Governance Performance Index (LGPI), we randomly assign respondents into one of four treatment groups or a control group to hear messages about a child marriage reform from a female or male traditional authority (TA) or parliamentarian. In the sample as a whole, the female TA is as effective as the control (i.e., no endorsement), while other messengers elicit lower support (i.e., backfire effects). Endorsements produce heterogeneous effects across respondent sex and patrilineal/matrilineal customs, suggesting the need for tailored programs. Our paper adds an intersectional approach to the governance literature and offers a theoretical framework capable of explaining the impact of state and traditional endorsements across policy domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The authors study matrilineal settings in rural Malawi, a southeast African country, to assess if women experience better marital outcomes in the presence of daughters and if so whether daughter preference plays a role. Background: A provocative finding in family sociology is that couples with sons experience better marital outcomes relative to those with daughters. Sociologists contend that these marital benefits are attributable to the gender system fostering greater closeness between fathers and sons, a preference for sons, or economic, cultural, and social incentives for fathers to invest more in unions that have produced sons. Extrapolating these arguments beyond son‐inspired marital benefits in patriarchal settings suggests that the reverse process—daughter‐inspired marital benefits—could prevail in matrilineal contexts. Method: The authors analyze three rounds of the nationally representative Malawi Demographic and Health Survey. They estimate three series of parity‐specific, multivariable logistic regression models to assess the associations between child sex composition and marital outcomes (two forms of relationship abuse and polygyny) and model each outcome among the full sample of women with one to four children and control for number of children, thus conveying the average effect of sex composition across parities. Results: Women with daughters—particularly women with only daughters—in predominately matrilineal, rural communities in the central and southern regions of Malawi are more likely to be in monogamous versus polygynous unions and are less likely to have experienced emotionally abusive and controlling behaviors. We find little evidence that women and men explicitly prefer or pursue daughters. Conclusion: The study shows that a matrilineal gender system can influence marital dynamics in the presence of daughters even without fostering an overwhelming preference for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic studies of matrilineal societies in Africa, including the Asante society in Ghana, demonstrate that the practice of matriliny persistently conditions social relations and organisations insofar as individuals trace their descent through the female line. Some studies argue, however, that the influx of Western discourses in contemporary Asante society offers space for individuals to negotiate and renegotiate sociocultural relations at the intersection of discourse. How do the everyday, intelligible actions of men and women sustain or challenge the taken-for-granted ethnocentric view of matrilineal cultural discourse in Asante society? This article contributes to a better understanding of the cultural aspects of social practices and relations in Africa's developing societies and participates in cultural discourse studies by de-naturalising the ethnocentric and unproblematic view of matrilineal cultural discourse. This article is an ethnographic-based discourse study, which analyses actions and accounts from a focus group discussion of Asante men and women. It reveals that the Western view of matriliny provides a limited situated cultural understanding of Asante matrilineal cultural discourse, indicating that women actively negotiate authority over children in ways that reproduce the ethnocentric view of matrilineal discourse, while men problematise the actions of women and the ethnocentric view of Asante matrilineal discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article teases out elective affinities between Julia Kristeva's theorization of the abject and certain (Afro-)Caribbean writers' figurations of racialized alterity and violence in the (post)colony. It argues that whereas Kristeva relies on the tropes of refuse and the corpse to classify the volatile experience she calls abjection, Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant and others invoke tropes of bareness and monstrosity (i.e. zombies, cannibals) to characterize and denounce racialized violence. It argues that whereas Kristeva relies on an understanding of the abject as intimately tethered to the pre-Oedipal, writers such as Michelle Cliff and Edwidge Danticat offer us exemplary works that tend to the abject and semiotic praxis by imaginatively drawing on the pre-colonial, not least its valuations of matrilineal power and wisdom. The article registers these affinities and speculates on what the differences bespeak about violence vis-à-vis the (M)other and blackness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Alice Walker's essay In Search of Our Mother's Gardens the womanist writer observes creativity's potential to repair the past. By exploring the pluralized impact of transracial adoption and settler colonial nationalism on Black sociality, this essay exposes the creative kinships of Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Heidi Durrow, and Nella Larsen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intra-faith contestation in educational spaces such as religious schools constitutes an issue that has received relatively little academic attention. In response, this article explores the ways in which England's Jewish day schools have become bound up in broader debates regarding competing conceptualizations of Judaism and Jewish identity in a context of significant polarization in the Jewish community. The situation is centered on two recent developments within the Anglo-Jewish educational landscape: A Supreme Court ruling that has obligated oversubscribed Jewish schools to avoid selecting pupils based on matrilineal descent, and the establishment of a Jewish secondary school whose pluralistic approach to Judaism has been deemed antithetical to the Orthodox movement. The article argues that this pluralist school's relative inclusiveness has been accompanied by growing exclusivity amongst many Orthodox Jewish schools, in spite of the fact that the Supreme Court ruling theoretically facilitated greater access to pupils whose self-identification as Jews had historically been denied. Furthermore, although the relationship is evolving, much of the Orthodox community remains reluctant to validate the school's Jewish ethos. Consequently, although the school has sought to help reduce inter-denominational tensions within Anglo-Jewry, notions of Jewish ethnoreligious authenticity and perceptions of Jewish community boundaries remain highly contested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the first known occurrence of the Foulassi Screeching Frog, Arthroleptis adelphus (Perret, 1966), from Nigeria. A specimen of A. adelphus was collected during herpetological survey work conducted in Cross River National Park, south-eastern Nigeria. Morphometrics and mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene confirm identity of the specimen. Matrilineal genealogy reveals a sister relationship of A. adelphus from Nigeria with individuals from south-western Cameroon. Genetic analysis further shows geographic structuring and divergence among populations of A. adelphus from the Guineo--Congolian forest region. We offer updates to the IUCN geographic range of A. adelphus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies find that women are more risk averse than men. Why does such a gender gap exist, and how malleable is this gender gap in risk aversion? The paper takes advantage of a rare setting in which children of the matrilineal Mosuo and the traditionally patriarchal Han attend the same schools in Yunnan, China to shed light on these questions. In particular, we exploit the fact that children would experience a shock in gender norms when they start to intermingle with children from other ethnic groups with the opposite gender norms at school. Using survey and field experiments, we elicit risk attitudes from Mosuo and Han elementary and middle school students. We find that, at the time when they first enter school, Mosuo and Han children exhibit opposite gender norms—Mosuo girls take more risks than Mosuo boys, while Han girls are more risk averse than Han boys, reflecting cultural differences. However, after Mosuo students spend more time with Han students, Mosuo girls become more and more risk averse. By age 11, Mosuo girls are also more risk averse than Mosuo boys. We also observe a shrinking gap in risk aversion for Han over time. Using random roommate assignment for boarding middle school students, we find Mosuo boys who have fewer Mosuo roommates behave more similarly to Han boys. This shows that risk preferences are shaped by culture and malleable in response to new environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time, social scientists have used correlations in social status, measured by such characteristics as schooling, income, or occupation, across family members to capture family resemblance in social status. In this study, we use millions of records from a public registry to estimate the wealth correlations among Taiwanese kinship members, from the closest parent–child pairing to the farthest kinship ties, with only 1/32 genetic relatedness. Based on this wealth correlation, we present a complete picture of economic similarity among kin members. These correlations give us a better grasp of the hitherto obscure Chinese family structure than that of mechanical genetic relatedness. We obtain statistical evidence to support the following hypotheses: Family members’ wealth resemblance to male egos is stronger than to female egos, wealth correlations are larger along patrilineal lines than along matrilineal counterparts, wealthy families have larger correlations within the nuclear family members but smaller correlations outside it, and adopted children have weaker wealth resemblance with close relatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how culture and social structure influence bargaining behavior across gender, by exploring the negotiation culture in matrilineal and patriarchal societies using data from a laboratory experiment and a natural field experiment. One interesting result is that in both the actual marketplace and in the laboratory bargaining game, women in the matrilineal society earn more than men, at odds with years of evidence observed in the western world. We find that this result is critically driven by which side of the market the person is occupying: female (male) sellers in the matrilineal (patriarchal) society extract more of the bargaining surplus than male (female) sellers. In the buyer role, however, we observe no significant differences across societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper approaches the question of female identity in Willa Cather's My Antonia from a psychoanalytic perspective based on opposing Jacques Lacan's view of identity as a form of "masquerade" and Julia Kristeva's view of identity as a form of "jouissance." Though Antonia is a victim, she manages to establish herself as a desiring subject in the Symbolic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Matriline fragmentation is associated with more grooming communities, severe aggression and high rates of trauma. • Unrelated adult males with high social power police third party conflict stabilizing macaque social groups. • High ranking natal males disrupt the social power networks of unrelated males causing higher aggression in social groups. • Proactive management of the three major pathways can lead to greater social stability in macaque social groups. Abstract Biomedical facilities across the nation and worldwide aim to develop cost-effective methods for the reproductive management of macaque breeding groups, typically by housing macaques in large, multi-male multi-female social groups that provide monkey subjects for research as well as appropriate socialization for their psychological well-being. One of the most difficult problems in managing socially housed macaques is their propensity for deleterious aggression. From a management perspective, deleterious aggression (as opposed to less intense aggression that serves to regulate social relationships) is undoubtedly the most problematic behavior observed in group-housed macaques, which can readily escalate to the degree that it causes social instability, increases serious physical trauma leading to group dissolution, and reduces psychological well-being. Thus for both welfare and other management reasons, aggression among rhesus macaques at primate centers and facilities needs to be addressed with a more proactive approach.Management strategies need to be instituted that maximize social housing while also reducing problematic social aggression due to instability using efficacious methods for detection and prevention in the most cost effective manner. Herein we review a new proactive approach using social network analysis to assess and predict deleterious aggression in macaque groups. We discovered three major pathways leading to instability, such as unusually high rates and severity of trauma and social relocations.These pathways are linked either directly or indirectly to network structure in rhesus macaque societies. We define these pathways according to the key intrinsic and extrinsic variables (e.g., demographic, genetic or social factors) that influence network and behavioral measures of stability (see Fig. 1). They are: (1) presence of natal males, (2) matrilineal genetic fragmentation, and (3) the power structure and conflict policing behavior supported by this power structure. We discuss how these three major pathways leading to greater understanding and predictability of deleterious aggression in macaque social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vocal learning often results in distinct dialects among individuals or groups, but the forces selecting for these phenomena remain unclear. Female sperm whales, Physeter macrocephalus , and their dependent offspring live in matrilineally based social units, and the units associate within sympatric clans. The clans have distinctive dialects of codas (patterns of clicks), as do, to a lesser extent, the units within clans. We examined the similarity of coda repertoires of individuals and units from the eastern Caribbean and related these to patterns of kinship and social association. Similarity in coda repertoires was not discernibly correlated with close kinship or association rates for either individuals or units (matrix correlation coefficients <0.12 for all tests using whole repertoires and data from all units). This supports the prevailing hypothesis that these vocalizations are culturally transmitted. The lack of correlation also indicates that vocal learning may occur broadly within clans, rather than preferentially from close kin or close social associates within social units, or that biases in vocal learning at lower levels of social structure are diffused by clan-level processes, such as conformity. Finally, an absence of signals of kinship in vocalization patterns suggests that a different mechanism, perhaps familiarity through repeated association, mediates kin selection among sperm whales. Highlights • In social units of sperm whales, close kin do not have similar vocal dialects. • In social units of sperm whales, close associates do not have similar vocal dialects. • Closely kin-related social units do not have similar dialects. • Social units that often associate do not have similar dialects. • Clans have very different vocal dialects, but there may be kinship across clans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeogenomic studies of a burial crypt in Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, NewMexico, have demonstrated the presence of an elite matrilineal descent group that spanned most of the 300+ years the great house was occupied, confirming, among other things, the deep antiquity of matrilineal ideologies among the Ancestral Pueblos of the northern Southwest. This article explores the sociopolitical implications of matrilineal descent, matrilocal residence, and Iroquois-Crow alliance structures among the Ancestral Pueblos of Chaco and elsewhere. It argues that matrilineal ideologies helped shape community forms and intercommunity relations throughout the Pueblo Southwest. It argues further that kinship provides insights into Chaco's eleventh-century expansion that dispersed "outlier" great houses over much of the southeastern Colorado Plateau. The article concludes with a call for archaeologists and cultural historians to pay more attention to kinship, the principal idiom of social, economic, and political relations in nonstate societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite intensive study by John R. Swanton, in the early twentieth century, of social organization in the towns of the early Creek Confederacy, we are left with certain puzzling features. The article outlines two of them. First, despite the remarkable attention paid to clans and clanship, the nature of local, corporate kin groups was never clearly resolved. Second, despite evidence of a strong separation between the matrilineal organization, on the one hand, and the town council on the other, Swanton gives numerous examples where the two seem impossibly commingled. The article offers thoughts toward resolving both puzzles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This paper aims to examine the personal meanings of hosting experiences of first-generation immigrant families, particularly Filipino mothers in New Zealand, with their visiting relatives (VRs) from the Philippines by using the conceptual lens of hospitality.Design/methodology/approach Through a qualitative approach, a multi-sited fieldwork was carried out to examine kinship ties that bind immigrant-host families in New Zealand with their VRs from the Philippines. Results of in-depth interviews of immigrant-host mothers on their recollections of family visits were thematically analysed.Findings The main drivers that shape the hosting experiences of the research participants are modelling filial piety, fulfilling cultural expectations and strengthening family bonds. These main drivers enable sustaining intergenerational ties that unite the mother’s families in the Philippines and those in New Zealand.Research limitations/implications The study elucidates the complex dynamics of culturally connected and motivated domestic hospitality, where the mother is the main protagonist and orchestrator. This dominance is often subdued, and thus, marketing for family often misses the mark. While the study has a small sample size and therefore lacks representativeness, qualitative accounts have produced an enriched cognitive schema that would enable an interesting way of examining the phenomenon.Practical implications This study reveals that matrilineal influence on family tourism among migrant Filipinos in New Zealand is strong and culturally influenced. Further studies may be done with families from other cultures and families. From a practical perspective, the findings suggest the importance of marketing tourism or hospitality products that facilitate visiting friends and relatives’ travel through domestic hospitality.Social implications This research calls for reforms in the way family tourism is marketed. While commercial imperatives did not drive this research, findings indicate that certain cultures adhere to the wisdom of mothers on making the final decision on how hospitality has to be extended and manifested.Originality/value In the context of family tourism, inadequate research has been undertaken to examine the perspectives of women and their role as host in the travel of VFR. This study purports to fill in the gap in literature related to hosting experiences of women in the context of family tourism and VFR travel and to consider the voices of women in their new homeland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improved female control over land is often put forth as a means of raising the productivity of smallholder agriculture, enhancing female bargaining power and raising women’s incomes. The article uses some quantitative but primarily qualitative data on access to income and decision making, to analyse gender patterns related to welfare, incomes and control over resources in a context where women’s rights to land are particularly strong, that is in a matrilineal and uxorilocal setting. Women’s land rights are contextualized in relation to labour intensive, low productive smallholder systems and the paper assesses to what extent female control over land affects welfare outcomes, decision making and intra-household control over incomes and labour. While we find that female control over land does affect intra household relations it is clear that land reform is not enough to ensure gender equality. For any land use policy reform to have a profound affect it would have to also take into account control over other productive resources, e.g. labour, as well as the wider institutional and political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most modern-day forms of Judaism determine a child's genealogical identity through the status of his/her mother. The shift from a patrilineal descent in the pre-exilic narratives of the Hebrew Bible to the matrilineal principle found in rabbinic literature has led to much speculation about its inception. Following the first exile, it is apparent that the status of mothers began to play a significant role in determining the national/ethnic identity of their children. This article explores three pre-Mishnaic texts which may testify to the early development of the matrilineal principle. First, it examines the expulsion narrative in Ezra 9.1–10.4, which recounts the removal of foreign women and their children, thereby apparently linking the status of children with their mothers. Second, it focuses on the Shechemite narrative in Jub. 30.1–26 and considers the incorporation of Molech language in the prohibition against intermarriage. In turn, this article proposes that the association between intermarriage and idolatry may be rooted in the presumption that Dinah's progeny would be Jewish, yet raised as idolaters. Finally, it argues that the author of Luke-Acts portrayed Timothy as Jewish (Acts 16.1–3) in light of his mother's status and thus was required to undergo circumcision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]