[Linganth] CHAGS Vienna September - -kinship session call

[Patrick McConvell]

Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies

Vienna, 7-11 September 2015



Deadline for abstract submissions is February 20th, using an on-line submission form in the section 'Call For Papers' on the conference website: http://chags.univie.ac.at/home/.



One of the sessions to which you can submit abstracts is the following on kinship, organized by Patrick.mcconvell at anu.edu.au<mailto:Patrick.mcconvell at anu.edu.au> , Bill McGregor (Aarhus) and Gertrud Boden (Cologne). If you have questions or comments, these can be directed to Patrick McConvell, but final abstracts must be submitted on-line on the conference website.



30. Is hunter-Gatherer Kinship Special and (how) Does It Change? Perspectives from Anthropology, Linguistics, History and Beyond



Conveners & Abstract
Pat McConvell, ANU, Canberra
Gertrud Boden, Cologne
Bill McGregor, Aarhus University
patrick.mcconvell at anu.edu.au

David Schneider's (1972) provocative question 'What is kinship all about?' has led to schisms in anthropology which echo in recent times. The opposite poles are cultural relativism, and the tradition of a human universal set of categories from which typologies of systems can be drawn. Intermediate positions include a hypothesis that links hunter-gatherers with 'universal kinship categorisation' in which members of a society or beyond classify everyone as specific kin.

The panel invites contributions on former and current ideologies, practices and categorizations in kinship in hunter-gatherer societies. How are kinship terms and systems used in hunter-gatherer societies and is this distinctive? Does hunter-gatherer kinship relate to an ideology of universal kinship and sharing as proposed by Alan Barnard (2002)? Are 'universal kinship' systems supported by other social naming systems such as age grades, 'namesakes' in Southern Africa and parts of Australia, or the systems of social categories (sections etc.) in Australia? Are hunter-gatherer kinship features relics of early human society or are they much more recent developments? Does the identification of particular features of hunter-gatherer kinship lead to "othering" (Shapiro 2005)? What are the consequences for attempts at historical reconstruction? How does hunter-gatherer kinship change when livelihoods change? How are kinship categories, ideologies and practices expressed in the hunter-gatherer mother tongues and in other languages encountered, and in the metalanguages used by anthropology and linguistics? What kind of data and data bases do we need to answer such questions? How do academic concepts of kinship in different disciplines, not only anthropology and linguistics, but also political economy or genetics affect academic and self-images as well as real lives of (former) hunter-gatherers, e.g. the use of genealogies and genetics in granting tribal rights and claiming native title? We invite both case studies and theoretical or methodological contributions.



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