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 **Other reading:** Carsten (1995)
+===== Are genetic relatives your “roots”? =====
+You can buy at-home DNA testing kits to discover your relatives and supposedly your ancestral origins.
+Would you be interested in a “heritage” vacation in the land of your ancestors?
+Valle, Gaby Del. 2019. “Airbnb Is Partnering with 23andMe to Send People on ‘Heritage’ Vacations.” //Vox//. May 22, 2019. https:%%//%%www.vox.com/2019/5/22/18635829/airbnb-23andme-heritage-vacations-partnership.
+===== Nature and culture =====
+DNA-based ancestry reports want users to believe that they have a fixed, natural essence. In their philosophy,
+  * Kinship is an essence that one shares with one’s genealogical relatives. Kinship and family are relationships based on sameness.
+  * This essence is passed down unchanged over time. Kinship is continuous with one’s ethnicity and origins.
+Do we in fact have natural relationships? What is the line between natural existence and social membership in a community?
+  * Everyone who has ever lived was already part of a larger social order, and had ties to other people when they were born.
+    * Children are dependent on adults and need to have an intensive relationship with adults over many years.
+    * There are no societies in which some form of kinship is not recognized.
+  * In each society and in every community, people organize kinship relationships differently, and each society assigns different degrees of importance to these ties.
+Kinship is universal, but takes variable forms. A classic problem for anthropology. Which matters more?
+===== Biological kinship and social kinship =====
+Reproduction and birth are universal, but whether they count as kinship is different everywhere.
+==== A useful distinction ====
+  * Genitor (is to) Pater (as) Biological (is to) Social
+  * Genetrix (is to) Mater (as) Biological (is to) Social
+Everyone has a //genitor// and a //genetrix//, but //pater// and //mater// are positions in a social system.
+In societies with temporary marriages,
+  * a child is created by a //genetrix// and //genitor//,
+  * and has a //mater// and maternal relatives,
+  * **but** does **not** have a //pater// and paternal relatives.
+Some historical and contemporary examples are:
+  * Nayar (Nair) people of Kerala state, India (Gough 1961)
+  * Musuo (Na), Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, China (Hua 2001)
+===== Many forms of family =====
+I expect that the idea that family comes in many forms, and that people in different cultures have different ideas of families, is not surprising and controversial.
+Yet do we see this diversity in family form the right way?
+We need to see it from the inside, not from the outside.
+  * Terms like “extended” or “multigenerational” imply that the normal family is compact (?) and has less generations. Who says that’s normal?
+  * Nayar and Musuo families only “lack fathers” in eyes of others.
+    * Imagine what your own family looks like from another culture’s perspective: What’s it like to live in a multiple-parent household, //hmm//?
+===== Kinship is a system of categories =====
+Compare these two different languages and their words for relatives ({{:auhelawa-english-kin-terms.pdf|PDF version}}):
+{{:auhelawa-english-kin-terms.jpg|A table comparing several English terms for relatives with several incommensurable terms in Auhelawa}}
+Learning terms for relatives in Auhelawa is not just a matter of translating.
+===== What is a cousin? =====
+In English, several different people in different genealogical positions are called //cousin//. In Auhelawa, terms exist to make a very specific distinction among these people ({{:cousin-cross-cousin.pdf|PDF version}}):
+{{:cousin-cross-cousin.jpg|An analysis of the range of the English word cousin compared to the several precise terms used in Auhelawa for the same people.}}
+[Column headings are parents and row headings are parents’ siblings.]
+The distinctions made in Auhelawa are not unique. Many other languages make the same distinctions.
+  * Children of cross-sex siblings (M–F, F–M) are **cross-cousins**. Cross-cousins are called //nibai// in Auhelawa
+  * Children of same-sex siblings (F–F, M–M) are **parallel cousins**. In Auhelawa, parallel cousins are in the same category as children of one's parents, or siblings (//tahi//, //tuwa//, //nuhu//, or //gelu// as a cover term).
+===== Categories of kin, groups of people, structures of societies =====
+For many societies, tracing one’s kinship through either a mother or a father locates one in space, and in a comprehensive system of exclusive groups. One’s descent is one’s primary social identity (Fortes 1953).
+  * People of Nuer communities in South Sudan trace kinship relationships through mothers and fathers, but assign each child—and every person—to a group in which all members are related through their fathers, and descend through men from a single ancestor (Evans-Pritchard 1940, 6–7, 135–37, 142–47; see also Evans-Pritchard [1940] 2002).
+  * Auhelawa people do likewise, but through women. I am a member of Lucy’s lineage which connects me to her sisters, their children and to other people related to Lucy’s maternal line of descent through their mothers.
+In societies whose kinship is used to construct groups based on unilineal descent, either matrilineal or patrilineal, everyone in the society belongs to exactly one group. Everyone has a place in a distinct group.
+===== Kinship’s weak link: The proliferation of technical terms =====
+Naming something does not mean we understand it.
 ===== References and further reading =====
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 Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2015. “Kinship as Descent.” In //Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology//, 4th ed., 117–35. London: Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183p184.11.
+Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. //The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People//. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
+———. (1940) 2002. “Nuer Politics: Structure and System.” In //The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique//, edited by Joan Vincent, 34–38. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
+Fortes, Meyer. 1953. “The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups.” //American Anthropologist// 55 (1): 17–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/664462.
+Gough, Kathleen. 1961. “Nayar: Central Kerala.” In //Matrilineal Kinship//, edited by David Murray Schneider and Kathleen Gough, 298–384. Berkeley: University of California Press.
+Hua, Cai. 2001. //A Society Without Fathers Or Husbands: The Na of China//. New York: Zone Books.