Dossier “New Perspectives on Kinship Terminology in Tupian and Cariban Languages”

Abstract

Understanding the diversity of kinship systems and their respective terminology in indigenous lowland South American societies has been hampered in the past by a lack of descriptive and comparative work by ethnographers and linguists. This has resulted in the few particularly well-described indigenous societies having had a profound influence on our conception of ' Amazonian' kinship systems 1. However, a recent increase in the production and availability of new data on kinship systems in indigenous societies has opened new potential for advancing our understanding of the cultural diversity of Amazonia. This dossier brings together linguistic experts in Tupian and Cariban languages with ethnographers working to carefully describe the social relations of individual indigenous societies in South America. The articles range from detailed ethnographic accounts of previously undescribed kinship systems, to linguistic reconstructions of kin terms and their systems in subgroups of the Tupian and Cariban language families. We argue that it is necessary to explore these systems from both an ethnological and linguistic perspective since much of the ethnographic subtleties of how kinship works is often lost on researchers primarily concerned with language data; while at the same time, much of the linguistic nuance present in these systems is often outside the purview of ethnographers. This tension has characterised kinship studies since Kroeber (1909) and Rivers (1914), and while some recent volumes (e.g. McConvell et al., 2013) have worked to bring these perspectives together, none have focused intensively on the kinship diversity of a single region. In order to fully understand the composition and development of kinship systems as both linguistic and social systems, a multidisciplinary and integrative approach is required. This project has its genesis in a British Academy International Partnership Mobility Award (PM160281) awarded to Joshua Birchall and Fiona Jordan in 2016. Amongst knowledge-sharing activities, this funding allowed the editors to organise a workshop at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Belém, Brazil, that brought together the authors of this volume's chapters in February of 2017. The stimulating combination of linguistic and anthropological expertise across a defined cultural area allowed for fruitful development of contributor's ideas. We are grateful to the Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas for providing a publication venue for these papers, many of which present novel findings and unpublished data for the first time.

Pama–Nyungan grandparent systems change with grandchildren, but not cross-cousin terms or social norms

“…This tension has characterised kinship studies since Kroeber (1909) and Rivers (1914). Some recent scholars have re-visited these questions with richly nuanced ethnographic and linguistic data (see for example studies in McConvell et al, 2013; and Birchall & Jordan, 2019), and here we advocate that an evolutionary cross-cultural approach can help to detect potential relationships between cognition, language and culture.…”