Close Kin And Distant Relatives

Download or read book Close Kin and Distant Relatives written by Susana M. Morris and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "black family" in the United States and the Caribbean often holds contradictory and competing meanings in public discourse: on the one hand, it is a site of love, strength, and support; on the other hand, it is a site of pathology, brokenness, and dysfunction that has frequently called forth an emphasis on conventional respectability if stability and social approval are to be achieved. Looking at the ways in which contemporary African American and black Caribbean women writers conceptualize the black family, Susana Morris finds a discernible tradition that challenges the politics of respectability by arguing that it obfuscates the problematic nature of conventional understandings of family and has damaging effects as a survival strategy for blacks. The author draws on African American studies, black feminist theory, cultural studies, and women’s studies to examine the work of Paule Marshall, Jamaica Kincaid, Edwidge Danticat, and Sapphire, showing how their novels engage the connection between respectability and ambivalence. These writers advocate instead for a transgressive understanding of affinity and propose an ethic of community support and accountability that calls for mutual affection, affirmation, loyalty, and respect. At the core of these transgressive family systems, Morris reveals, is a connection to African diasporic cultural rites such as dance, storytelling, and music that help the fictional characters to establish familial connections.

Download or read book Risky Transactions written by Frank K. Salter and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2002-07-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trust is a central feature of relationships within the Mafia, oppressed minorities, kin groups everywhere, among dissidents, nationalist freedom fighters, ethnic tourists, ethnic middlemen, exchange networks of Kalahari Bushmen, and families subjected to Stalinist social control. Each of these types of trust is examined by a leading scholar and compared with the expectations of neo-Darwinian theory, in particular the theories of kin selection and ethnic nepotism. The result is a fascinating, theoretically focused yet empirically eclectic contribution to the overlapping fields of human ethnology, evolutionary psychology, and bio-politics. The common thread uniting these diverse phenomena is a trusting relationship predicated on altruism. Chapters examine the strengths and limits of human trust under various stressers and temptations to defect. By exploring the relationship between kin and ethnic altruism and showing its sensitivity to culture, Risky Transactions recasts the evolutionary approach to ethnicity as a blend of primordial and instrumental factors.

Download or read book Essays on Genetic Evolution and Economics written by Terence C. Burnham and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 1997 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, genetic evolutionary theory has increasingly served as the foundation for fields that deal with organisms that arose by natural selection. This thesis argues that economic theory should integrate with Darwinian theory through the creation of a "genetic evolutionary economics". The promise of genetic evolutionary economics is a better understanding of human nature and, consequently, a more accurate and comprehensive economic science. Economic theory rests on a set of assumptions about human nature. These economic axioms concern human genes, but there is no explicit connection between genetic evolution and economic theory. As a result, human behavior and economic predictions of that behavior diverge in a variety of important settings. Why, for example, do most people save too little for the future when economics assumes that they will save enough? Chapter 2 discusses the difficulties inherent in the standard economic approach. Natural selection theory, the chapter argues, is the best tool for refining the axioms of economics. Genetic evolutionary economics allows the derivation of parameters that are intractable with standard economic techniques. There is, for instance, an ancient debate within economics about the role of self-interest in human affairs. Chapter 3 builds a genetic evolutionary model relevant to this issue, and concludes that a Darwinian lens removes many of the apparent paradoxes. Genetic evolutionary economics is a scientific endeavor. As such, it produces specific, testable hypotheses concerning behavior in economically relevant situations. Chapter 4 reports on a theoretical and experimental investigation of gift giving. A genetic evolutionary model organizes the existing data on gift giving and makes novel, testable predictions. Laboratory experiments, performed to test the theory, confirm the evolutionary model's predictions.

Download or read book Aboriginal Family and the State written by Sally Babidge and published by Gower Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2010 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the contemporary relations and history of indigenous families in Australia, specifically referencing issues of government control and recent official recognition of Aboriginal traditional owners. Author from University of Queensland, Australia.

Download or read book Perspectives on nomadism, ed written by William G. Irons and published by Brill Archive. This book was released on 1972-01-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Family Psychology written by Catherine Salmon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-27 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Family Psychology focuses on the psychology behind people's familial behavior, an understanding of which can illuminate our understanding of modern, ancient, and animal families.

Download or read book The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age written by Beatrice Gottlieb and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994-07-28 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents aspects of family life in the preindustrial Western world, including households of the wealthy and the poor, courtship and marriage, and the care and training of children.