Research in anthropology has shown that kin terminologies have a complex combinatorial structure and vary systematically across cultures. This article argues that universals and variation in kin terminology result from the interaction of (1) an innate conceptual structure of kinship, homologous with conceptual structure in other domains, and (2) principles of optimal, "grammatical" communicatio...

The classification of kin into structured groups is a diverse phenomenon which is ubiquitous in human culture. For populations which are organized into large agropastoral groupings of sedentary residence but not governed within the context of a centralised state, such as our study sample of 83 historical Bantu-speaking groups of sub-Saharan Africa, cultural kinship norms guide all aspects of ev...

Introduction There were 27 quality studies on looked after children as determined by the project categorisation. Studies included children who were placed with non-related foster parents as well as those in kinship care; these are currently the placements of choice in Anglophone jurisdictions (Ainsworth and Thoburn 2014). Surveys have compared children’s material resources in different forms of...

Donor conception challenges conventional kinship idioms: the involvement of a gamete donor culturally raises questions about parentage and also the meaning of genetic heritage. Although there is now a growing body of literature exploring how people resorting to donor conception negotiate kinship and connectedness, this predominantly focuses on heterosexual couples. Little is yet known about how...

Helgason et al. (Reports, 8 February 2008, p. 813) reported a positive association between kinship and fertility in the Icelandic population. We point out that the data further suggest that fertility initially increases with kinship and then decays. This is supported by another large study on the Danish population suggesting a superposition of effects of inbreeding and outbreeding depression on...

Non-timber forest products, such as wild mushrooms, are important in rural livelihoods worldwide. As resource pressures and environmental goals change, land tenure harvesting arrangements also create novel conditions influencing local communities’ access. When commons governance encourages (or discourages) cooperative harvesting, this may impact other social ties among community members. Attent...

People undeniably pay attention to faces, and facial resemblance may act as a kinship cue. However, previous studies have shown that the ability to detect kinship through facial resemblance is limited, and it has been suggested that this may be due to several types of perceptual factors. To further understand the processes that underpin kinship judgment, it is important to investigate which per...

Contextual cues of genetic relatedness to familiar individuals, such as cosocialization and maternal-perinatal association, modulate prosocial and inbreeding-avoidance behaviors toward specific potential siblings. These findings have been interpreted as evidence that contextual cues of kinship indirectly influence social behavior by affecting the perceived probability of genetic relatedness to ...