Milk and Blood Kinship among Muslim Arabs in Qatar

Structure and Dynamics : e-Journal of Anthropological and Related Sciences, 2016

This paper builds on earlier analyses of primary data on kinship in Qatar. Its conceptualization centers kinship as a highly structured universal human phenomenon in the study of humankind. As lived practices, kinship forms a bounded, identifiable domain that is distinguishable from other societal relations. Going beyond reducing kinship to fitness (biology) or nurture (culture study), analysis of primary ethnographic data gathered as part of a grant-funded field research project on kinship practices in Qatar, including suckling practices along with kinship by birth and by marriage, is presented to demonstrate how complex anomalies emerging at the level of kinship experience reveal in analysis properties of kinship as a transformational triadic structure, here proposed as a universal feature of kinship and a dynamic aspect of its structure. Conceptual Beginnings This paper takes kinship study beyond the attempts from biology to explain societal in 1 stitutions as adaptive fitness or claims from culture studies of new directions that reduce kinship to nurture, which I contend leave out the significant core in kinship ethnography and theory. The fitness formula from biology has been shown to be of limited value in sociocultural contexts (El Guindi and Read 2012; Read and El Guindi 2013). One size does not 'fit' all. And kinship, contrary to views by some biological anthropologists, is not genetic relatedness. Whether genes are selfish or selfless, the focus of biological studies is the biological organism. Shifting from organisms to humans (whether as individuals or groups) does not automatically extend applicability of theoretical formulas. Humans organize themselves in society and live by culture, both generated by a uniquely human cognitive capacity. Opposing the now polarized debate, Agustin Fuentes calls for "[a]n integrative anthropology" which goes past dichotomous perspectives methodologically and theoretically toward understanding the human (Fuentes 2016). This call is not new. Pierre Bourdieu captured the intent of the founding ancestors of anthropology when he wished to 66 "see the unity of the sciences of man asserted under the banner of … Anthropology" (2003: 212), which is epistemologically and methodologically positioned to pull together all aspects of the study of humankind. Paths whether from biology or culture studies which dilute or reduce the meaningful whole to manageable pieces are strongly challenged empirically and theoretically. Reflecting on developments in anthropology, the integrative approach has been its core ideal. This was reflected when scientists from the humanities, social and natural sciences clustered around the Macy Conferences led by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson precisely because of their prevalent integrative approach. Granville Stanley Hall, American psychologist known for studies on adolescence (Hall 1904), was influenced by Margaret Mead's cross-cultural observations on growing up, and physicists such as Capra adopted Bateson's notion of patterns to develop a new scientific understanding of living systems as a web of life (Bateson 1958; 1963; 1972; Capra 1996). An integrative approach that brings together scientific finds from cross-cultural data to understand humankind is the path strived here. Neither the fitness formula nor the nurture claim can take anthropology along this path. Kinship study has been central to the polarized nature-culture debate. Claude Lévi-Strauss' (1958; 1963) would not accept the reduction of kinship to its natural beginnings. He reminded us of its cultural character when he stated that "what confers upon kinship its sociocultural character is not what it retains from nature, but, rather, the essential way in which it diverges from nature" (1963:: 50, emphasis added). Marcel Hénaff puts the emphasis differently: "We know that … biological reproduction supposes the union of two partners of opposite sex. Nature demands nothing else" (1998: 44, emphasis added). Without denying biology, these comments stress the qualitative difference of becoming human. It is the position taken here that kinship is founded on the natural and the cultural, and integratively entails the biological, the societal, and the cognitive. The demise of cultural studies is in subsuming kinship under gender, nurture, and relatedness (Carsten 2000; Stone 2001), with claims denying the universal logic built into kinship as borne out in cross-cultural ethnography and anthropological theory. A highly structured universal human phenomenon is overlooked along with social organizational features such as universal classification of relatives, shared corporateness of reputation, estate and responsibility, extended relations and kin terms vertically and horizontally beyond dyads, special kin terminology, rules of avoidance and prohibitions Neither does reality bear out assumptions of a kinship absence in people's lives. Lived kinship is validated in ethnography as a vital human sphere, which, if overlooked in the study of society, would mean that a good deal of what, as Robert Parkin put it, "any society explicitly recognizes" (Parkin 1997: ix) is disregarded. Denying kinship as an analytical construct undermines fundamentals of anthropological theory. Kinship study cannot be dismissed, nor is it viable to submerge kinship relations by other relations of sociality. A central character of systematics in the kinship sphere demonstrates the universality of its logic as a human domain.

2021

Between 1961-1964, an estimated number of 113’000 Nubians, who were living south of the site of the Aswan High Dam, the area now beneath Lake Nasser, and Wadi Halfa, north of Sudan, were displaced to an area near Kom Ombo, 20 kilometres away from the Nile and 50 kilometres north of Aswan. This major project of resettlement occurred for the construction of the Aswan High Dam, Nasser’s signature mega-project. The 1961-1964 displacement was the culmination of earlier waves of relocation that Nubians witnessed during their recent history. In 1902 the British constructed the Aswan (lower) Dam by the first cataract in order to maximise the benefit from regulating the water of the Nile. This smaller dam and its subsequent heightening in 1912 and again in 1933 resulted in population relocation which fed into a pattern of Nubian emigration towards the cities of Cairo and Alexandria. Such pattern was already a feature of Nubian social life during the 19th century, and was mainly motivated by ...

CADMUS (Flagship Journal of World Academy of Art & Science, 2023

While the overall theme selected by the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) for the 2023 6 th Future Education Conference was that of Human Security, the particular panel * in which I contributed the presentation upon which this article is based focused more explicitly on Education and less obviously on Security, with a particular emphasis on experimental ways in which anthropology can contribute better to education. However, the link between anthropology and human security may not be immediately obvious. I contend that the very character of anthropology, being the study of humankind, cannot but be related to a notion labelled human security † , albeit such a relationship must be more clearly stated. Human Security Goals concern Humans, but the way by which Human Goals can be aligned to Humans needs to be specified. The most effective path, or bridge, towards such alignment would be one carved by anthropology that weaves the anthropological gaze and its iconic perspective, which requires immersion in and full engagement with people's lives. It must be stressed, however, that anthropology does not stop with immersion and engagement but necessarily moves to analysis, which cumulatively produces knowledge that increases understanding of humans as a whole-in the sense of the German notion of Gestalt, that a whole is more than the sum of its parts. Anthropology is, after all, the study of humankind, its past, present, and future. It is, I contend, the physics of the human universe. Its building blocks, however, come from humans themselves, not their physical universe, their lives, their biology, their developmental history, or their shared cognitive ability. This article recounts two real-life cases of higher education classroom teaching for the purpose of seeking insights for future education, and clarifies what is meant by the phrase 'anthropological gaze and perspective'. * In my own doctoral training in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin, known for its stellar Latin American Studies focus and having the best Latin American Collection at a US University, established itself as a four-field anthropology department. As students, we were expected to be examined in all four subfields in written and oral defence examinations, in addition to a minimum of a whole year in the field immersed to gather data, in order to successfully obtain a doctorate. In those days, the average number of years of study and research required to obtain a doctorate was 10 years.

Dotawo: A Journal of Nubian Studies

This paper presents insights into gender issues among the Dongolawi and Kenzi Nubians, and specifically Dongolawi and Kenzi Nubian women's lives, as provided by their proverbs and sayings, touching on related areas where helpful. 1 At the time of writing (May 2017) the corpus consists of nearly 300 wise sayings and proverbs in the Dongolawi language, and nearly 350 wise sayings and proverbs in the Kenzi language, with some of them occurring in both. Dongolawi and Kenzi are two related Nubian languages spoken in the Nile valley of northern Sudan and southern Egypt. The speak-1 I want to thank the following Dongolawi speakers who presented me with wise sayings and proverbs relating to gender: 'Abd al-Raūf (Old Dongola), Aḥmad Hamza (Lebeb), Aḥmad Sāti (Buunaarti), El-Shafie El-Guzuuli (Khannaag), Muḥammad Ḥasan (Tura'), Sāmi 'Abdallah (Aartigaasha), Shawqi 'Abd al-'Azīz (Haminaarti). Some further Dongolawi speakers helped me to correct hearing and writing the proverbs, and understand their meanings: 'Abd al-Qādir Samiltood, al-Sir 'Abd al-Jalīl, Fagīri Muḥammad, Ibrāhīm Muḥammad, Idrīs Aḥmad, Kamāl Ḥisayn, Mu'amr al-Fīl, family of the late Maḥmūd Sa'īd Maḥmūd Sāti, Muḥammad Sharīf, Samīra al-Malik. Amna Muṣṭafa and her relatives (Binna) were also very active in collecting Dongolawi proverbs. I want to thank the following Kenzi speakers who presented me with wise sayings and proverbs relating to gender: Wife and sister of 'Abd al-Qādir 'Abd al-Raūf (Dakke), female relatives of the late 'Az Aldīn Qāsim (Dabood), 'Abd al-Ṣabūr Hāsim (Dakke), Fatḥi 'Abd al-Sayid (Dakke), Khālid Karār (Siyaala), Muḥammad Ṣubḥi (Elephantine Island), Ramaḍān Muḥammad (Allaaqi), from Sa'īd Zāki (Awaad Island), Sayid al-Ḥasan (Aniiba), Umm 'Umar Ḥasan (Dabood). Some further Kenzi speakers helped me to correct hearing and writing the proverbs, and understand their meanings:

Master's Thesis, 2020

ABSTRACT In the mid 1960s, almost 100,000 Egyptian Nubians, people Indigenous to the Nile River Valley, were removed from their ancestral homeland due to the creation of the Aswan High Dam. In the years surrounding their displacement, Nubian musicians in Cairo and villages in new settlement areas gathered traditional Nubian songs and composed new songs to form a distinctive Nubian musical repertoire. This thesis addresses contemporary Nubian musical performance and the role of these reclaimed and newly-written songs in maintaining and revitalizing not only Nubian languages and culture, but especially senses of self in relation to place and, above all, to the Nile River. Using frameworks of Arabization, settler colonialism and Bhaba’s concept of re-membering (1994), I show how songs re-create Nubian communal ways of knowing and being that reconnect Egyptian Nubians to the material homeland they left behind, or, in the case of so many young disenfranchised Nubians, have never even known.