kinship
gregladen | April 26, 2013I gave a talk at the Brookdale Public Library last night as part of the celebration of DNA day. DNA Day, or DNAD for short, was created about the time of the "completion" (more or less) of the Human Genome in 2003, and is set to be on the date of the publication of the famous research on the structure of DNA.
The point of the talk was to link behavioral biology and the anthropological study of kinship with the practice of conducting personal genealogy. There was a time when I did a fair amount of genealogical research, in connection with historic archaeology, which in turn was part of…
gregladen | July 4, 2012Most people in a position to read this blog post probably think of marriage as a contract between two people that serves a few different purposes. Initially it may be an extension of the a tacit contract governing sexual access or fidelity that likely preceded marriage. Later on it may be an arrangement that facilitates the decision a couple makes to have one or more children. Along with this a marriage may be a framework for any subset of a longish list of social relations people tend to engage in such as friendship and mutual aid, financial cooperation and joint ownership of things, or…
sastyk | February 9, 2010This morning, during school time, Isaiah asked me just how many Aunts and Uncles he had. Asked to clarify what the parameters of the question were, Isaiah asked me how many people he would call by the title "Aunt" or "Uncle." Which led me to do some quick addition - and to a number that came out above 70.
Now Eric and I don't have that many siblings. In fact, I have two sisters, and until into adulthood, Eric was an only child. Nor do my parents make up for it at the great-level - each of them had one brother. So how on earth do I get 70 aunts and uncles for my kids?
Me, Eric and the…
gregladen | June 30, 2009This post was originally titled "Mail Order Brides and Hypergyny." I was prompted to revisit the post because it received a a rather astonishing comment that I chose not to allow, but I did post it on my Facebook page where any attention it would receive would be from the thoughtful people that make up my Facebook community rather than just anybody out there on the Internet. Also, I recently received a complaint from a reader that Scienceblogs.com has been showing a lot of ads for "mail order brides," and this post was originally partly a response to that.
I should also mention that in the…