The system is widely used in non-unilineal societies, where the dominant relatives are the immediate family. In most Western societies, the nuclear family represents an independent social and economic group, which has caused the emphasis on the immediate kinship. The tendency of families in Western societies to live apart also reinforces this.


The term  Eskimo  is considered pejorative in Canada, and has been replaced there by  the term  Inuit . [ 3 ]  The former remains in use in Alaska, though less so than in past decades, [ 4 ]  because the term includes both Inuit and non-Inuit  Native Alaskans . In Canada, the term  Inuit kinship  is therefore widely used instead of  Eskimo kinship .


Ethnogenesis  (from  Ancient Greek     ἔθνος  ( éthnos )  'group of people,  nation ' and    γένεσις  ( génesis )  'beginning, coming into being';  pl.   ethnogeneses ) is the formation and development of an  ethnic group . [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
This can originate by group self-identification or by outside identification.


The term  ethnogenesis  was originally a mid-19th-century neologism [ 3 ]  that was later introduced into 20th-century academic  anthropology . In that context, it refers to the observable phenomenon of the emergence of new social groups that are identified as having a cohesive identity, i.e. an "ethnic group" in anthropological terms. Relevant social sciences not only observe this phenomenon but also search for explanations for its causes. The term  ethnogeny  is also used as a variant of  ethnogenesis . [ 4 ]


Ethnogenesis can occur passively or actively.


A passive ethnogenesis is an unintended outcome, which involves the spontaneous emergence of various markers of group identity through processes such as the group's interaction with unique elements of their physical environment, cultural divisions (such as dialect and religious denomination), migrations and other processes. A  founding myth  of some kind may emerge as part of this process.


Active ethnogenesis is the deliberate, direct planning and engineering of a separate identity. However, it is clear that active ethnogenesis may augment passive ethnogenesis. Active ethnogenesis is usually inspired by emergent political issues, such as a perceived, long-term, structural economic imbalance between regions or a perceived discrimination against elements of local culture (e.g., as a result of the promotion of a single dialect as a standard language at the national level). With regard to the latter, since the late 18th century, such attempts have often been related to the promotion (or demotion) of a particular  dialect ; nascent nationalists have often attempted to establish a particular dialect (or group of dialects) as a separate language, encompassing a " national literature ", out of which a founding myth may be extracted and promoted.


In the 19th and 20th centuries, societies challenged by the obsolescence of those  narratives  that previously afforded them coherence have fallen back on ethnic or racial narratives to maintain or reaffirm their collective identity or  polis . [ 5 ]


Language has been a critical asset for authenticating ethnic identities. The process of reviving an antique ethnic identity often poses an immediate language challenge, as obsolescent languages lack expressions for contemporary experiences.


In the 1990s, proponents of ethnic revivals in Europe included those from the  Celtic  fringes in  Wales  and nationalists in the  Basque Country . Activists' attempts since the 1970s to revive the  Occitan language  in  Southern France  are a similar example.


Similarly, in the 19th century, the  Fennoman movement  in the  Grand Duchy of Finland  aimed to raise the  Finnish language  from peasant status to an official national language, which had been solely  Swedish  for some time. The Fennomans also founded the  Finnish Party  to pursue their nationalist aims. The publication in 1835 of the Finnish  national epic ,  Kalevala , was a founding stone of Finnish nationalism and ethnogenesis. Finnish was recognized as the  official language  of Finland only in 1892. Fennomans were opposed by the  Svecomans , headed by  Axel Olof Freudenthal  (1836–1911). He supported continuing the use of  Swedish  as the official language; it had been a minority language used by the educated elite in government and administration. In line with contemporary  scientific racism  theories, Freudenthal believed that Finland had two  races , one speaking Swedish and the other Finnish. The Svecomans claimed that the Swedish Germanic race was superior to the majority Finnish people.


In the late 19th and early 20th century,  Hebrew  underwent a revival from a  liturgical language  to a  vernacular language  with native speakers. This process began first with  Eliezer Ben-Yehuda  and the creation of the  Ben-Yehuda Dictionary [ 6 ]  and later facilitated by Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine during the waves of migration known as the  First-  and  Second Aliyot .  Modern Hebrew  was made one of three official languages in  Mandatory Palestine , and later one of two official languages in  Israel  along with  Arabic . [ 7 ]  In addition to the modernization of the language, many Jewish immigrants changed their names to ones that originate from Hebrew or align with  Hebrew phonology , a process known as  Hebraization [ 8 ]  This indicates that Hebrew revival was both an ethnogenic and linguistic phenomenon.


In  Ireland , the revival of the  Irish language  and the creation of Irish national literature was part of the reclamation of an  Irish  identity beginning at the end of the 19th century.


Since its independence from the Netherlands in 1830, language has been an important but divisive political force in  Belgium  between the Dutch and Germanic  Flemings  and Franco-Celtic  Walloons . [ 9 ]   Switzerland  has four national languages—German, French, Italian, and Romansh—each concentrated in four regions of the country. The Alemannic  German-speaking  ( die Deutschschweizer )  region is in the north and east, the  French-speaking  ( Romandie ) region in the west, the  Italian / Lombard  ( la Svizzera italiana ) region in the south, and the small  Romansh -speaking population in the south-eastern corner of the country in the Canton of Graubüen. [ 10 ] [ 11 ]


Anthony D. Smith  notes that, in general, there is a lack of evidence that hampers the assessment of the existence of nations or nationalisms in antiquity. The two cases where more evidence exists are those of ancient Greece and Israel. In Ancient Greece, cultural rather than political unity is observed. Yet, there were ethnic divisions within the wider Hellenic ethnic community, mainly between Ionians, Aeolians, Boeotians, and Dorians. These groups were further divided into city-states. Smith postulates that there is no more than a semblance of nationalism in ancient Greece. [ 12 ]   Jonathan M. Hall 's work “Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity” (1997), was acclaimed as the first full-length modern study on Ancient Greek ethnicity. According to Hall, Ancient Greek ethnic identity was much based on kinship, descent and genealogy, which was reflected in elaborate genealogy myths. In his view, genealogy is the most fundamental way any population defines itself as an ethnic group. There was a change in the way Greeks constructed their ethnic identity in the Persian Wars period (first half of 5th c BC). Before that (archaic period), Greeks tended to connect themselves through genealogical assimilation. After the Persian invasion, they began defining themselves against the enemy they perceived as the barbarian “other”. An indication of this disposition is the Athenians' speech to their allies in 480 BC, mentioning that all Hellenes are bound with the  homaimon  ("same blood"),  homoglosson  ("same language"), and common religious practices. Hall believes that Hellenic identity was envisaged in the 6th century BC as being ethnic in character. Cultural forms of identification emerged in the 5th century, and there is evidence that by the 4th century, this identity was conceived more in cultural terms. [ 13 ]


In the 2015 Community Survey of the  United States Census , 7.2% of the population identified as having  American ancestry , mainly people whose ancestors migrated from Europe after the 1400s to the southeastern United States. Larger percentages from similarly long-established families identified as  German Americans ,  English Americans , or  Irish Americans , leaving the distinction between "American" and specific European ethnicity largely as a matter of personal preference.


The ethnogenesis of African Americans begins with slavery, specifically in the  United States of America . Between 1492 and 1880, 2 to 5.5 million Native Americans were enslaved in the Americas in addition to 12.5 million African slaves. [ 14 ]  The concept of race began to emerge during the mid-17th century as a justification for the enslavement of Africans in colonial America. Later, scientists developed theories to uphold the system of forced labor. [ 15 ]
Native Americans of darker skin tones were included in this construct with the arrival of African slaves. Some Native Americans of lighter complexions, however, owned slaves, participating in race-based slavery alongside Europeans. [ 16 ]  American society evolved into a two-caste system, with two broad classes: white and non-white, citizen and non-citizen (or semi-citizen). Non-white, non/semi-citizens were regarded as "Black" or "Negro" as a general term, regardless of their known ethnic/cultural background. [ 17 ]


The lives and identities of African Americans have been shaped by systems of race and slavery, resulting in a unique culture and experience. [2]  Cultural aspects like music, [ 18 ]  food, [ 19 ]  literature, [ 20 ]  inventions, [ 21 ]  dances, [ 22 ]  and other concepts [ 23 ]  prominently stem from the combined experience of enslaved African American people and free African Americans who were still subject to racist laws in the United States.


Ethnicity is not solely based on race. However, due to the race-based history, system, and lifestyle of American society, African Americans tend to prefer to identify racially, rather than ethnically. [ 24 ]  This racialized identity has created the common misconception that African Americans are virtually a mono-racial African-descendant ethnic group in the United States. Still, the genetic architecture of African Americans is distinct from that of non-American Africans. [ 25 ]  This is consistent with the history of Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans intermixing during the transatlantic slave trade and race being a social construct created in the United States. [ 26 ] [ 27 ]  But ethnogenesis is an ongoing process as shown by the 2.1 million African immigrants that resided in America in 2019, it is in no way accurate to say the ethnogenesis of Black Americans ended with slavery because Black people from other islands and the African continent continue to migrate to America. "Sub-Saharan African Immigrants in the United States" .


Despite typically carrying segments of DNA shaped by contributions from peoples of Indigenous America, Europe, Africa, and the Americas, [ 28 ]  the genetics of African Americans can span across more than several continents. [ 29 ]  Within the African American population, there are no mono-ethnic backgrounds from outside of the U.S., and mono-racial backgrounds are in the minority. Through forced enslavement and admixing, the African American ethnicity, race, lineage, culture, and identity are indigenous to the United States of America. [ 30 ] [ citation needed ]


Herwig Wolfram  offers "a radically new explanation of the circumstances under which the  Goths  were settled in  Gaul ,  Spain  and  Italy ". [ 31 ]  Since "they dissolved at their downfall into a myth accessible to everyone" at the head of a long history of attempts to lay claim to a "Gothic" tradition, the ethnogenesis by which disparate bands came to self-identify as "Goths" is of wide interest and application. The problem is in extracting a  historical ethnography  from sources that are resolutely Latin and Roman-oriented.


Clayton Anderson observed that with the arrival of the Spanish in southwestern North America, the  Native Americans  of the  Jumano  cultural sphere underwent social changes partly as a reaction, which spurred their ethnogenesis. [ 32 ]  Ethnogenesis in the  Texas Plains  and along the coast occurred in two forms. One way involved a disadvantaged group being assimilated into a more dominant group that they identified with, while the other way involved the modification and reinvention of cultural institutions. Nancy Hickerson argued that the disintegration of 17th-century Jumano, caused in part by the widespread deaths from introduced diseases, was followed by their reintegration as  Kiowa . [ 33 ]  External stresses that produced ethnogenetic shifts preceded the arrival of the Spanish and their horse culture. Drought cycles had previously forced non-kin groups to either band together or disband and mobilize. Intertribal hostilities forced weaker groups to align with stronger ones.


From 1539 to 1543, a Spanish expedition led by  Hernando de Soto  departed  Cuba  for  Florida  and the  American Southeast . Although asked to practice restraint, Soto led 600 men on a violent rampage through present-day Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and East Texas. Frustrated with not finding gold or silver in the areas suspected to contain such valuable materials, they destroyed villages and decimated native populations. Despite his death in 1542, Soto's men continued their expedition until 1543 when about half of their original force reached Mexico. Their actions introduced European diseases that further weakened native populations. The population collapse forced natives to relocate from their cities into the countryside, where smaller villages and new political structures developed, replacing the older chiefdom models of tribal governance. By 1700, the major tribal settlements Soto and his men had encountered were no more. Smaller tribes began to form loose confederations of smaller, more autonomous villages. From that blending of many tribes, ethnogenesis led to the emergence of new ethnic groups and identities for the consolidated natives who had managed to survive the incursion of European people, animals, and diseases. After 1700, most North American Indian "tribes" were relatively new composite groups formed by these remnant peoples who were trying to cope with epidemic illnesses brought by and clashes with the Europeans who were exploring the area. [ 34 ]


European encroachment caused significant demographic shifts in the size and geographic distribution of the indigenous communities, leading to a rise in mortality rates due to conflict and disease. Some Aboriginal groups were destroyed, while new groups emerged from the cultural interface of pre-existing groups. One example of this ethnogenesis is the  Métis  people. [ 35 ]


During the Middle Ages in  Italy , the  Italo-Dalmatian languages  differentiated from Latin, leading to the distinction of Italians from neighboring ethnic groups within the former Roman Empire. Over time, ethnological and linguistic differences between regional groups also developed, from the  Lombardians  of the North to the  Sicilians  of the South. Mountainous terrain allowed the development of relatively isolated communities and numerous dialects and languages before  Italian unification  in the 19th century.


In classical antiquity, Jewish, Greek, and Roman authors frequently referred to the  Jewish people  as an  ethnos , one of the numerous  ethne  that lived in the  Greco-Roman world . Van Maaren demonstrates why ancient Jews may be regarded as an ethnic group in current terms by using the six characteristics that co-ethnics share as established by Hutchinson and Smith: [ 36 ]


The separate  Moldovan  ethnic identification was promoted under Soviet rule when the Soviet Union established an autonomous  Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic  in 1924. This republic was situated between the  Dniester  and  Southern Bug  rivers ( Transnistria ), distinct from the  Ukrainian SSR . Scholar Charles King concluded [ 37 ]  that this action was partly support for Soviet propaganda and help for a potential communist revolution in Romania. Initially, people of Moldovan ethnicity supported territorial claims to the regions of  Bessarabia  and  Northern Bukovina , which were part of Romania at the time. The claims were based on the fact that the territory of eastern Bessarabia with Chisinau had belonged to the Russian Empire between 1812 and 1918. After having been part of the Romanian Principality of Moldova for 500 years, Russia was awarded the East of Moldova as compensation for its losses during the Napoleonic Wars. This marked the beginning of the 100 years of Russian history in East Moldova. After the  Soviet occupation of the two territories in 1940 , potential reunification claims were offset by the  Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic . When the Moldavian ASSR was established, Chișinău was named its capital, a role it continued to play even after the formation of the  Moldavian SSR  in 1940.


The recognition of  Moldovans  as a separate ethnicity, distinct from  Romanians , remains today a controversial subject. On one hand, the Moldovan Parliament adopted "The Concept on National Policy of the Republic of Moldova" in 2003. This document states that Moldovans and Romanians are two distinct peoples and speak two different languages. It also acknowledges that Romanians form an ethnic minority in Moldova, and it asserts that the Republic of Moldova is the legitimate successor to the Principality of Moldavia. On the other hand, Moldovans are only recognized as a distinct ethnic group by former Soviet states.


Moreover, in Romania, people from Wallachia and Transylvania call the Romanians inhabiting western Moldavia, now part of Romania, as Moldovans. People in Romanian Moldova call themselves Moldovans, as subethnic denomination, and Romanians, as ethnic denomination (like Kentish and English for English people living in Kent). Romanians from Romania call the Romanians of the Republic of Moldova Bessarabians, as identification inside the subethnic group, Moldovans as subethnic group and Romanians as ethnic group. The subethnic groups referred to here are historically connected to independent Principalities. The Principality of Moldavia/Moldova founded in 1349 had various extensions between 1349 and 1859 and comprised Bucovina and Bessarabia as regional subdivisions. That way, Romanians of southern Bukovina (today part of Romania and formerly part of the historical Moldova) are called Bukovinians, Moldovans and Romanians.


In the  2004 Moldovan Census , of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova, 16.5% (558,508) chose Romanian as their mother tongue, and 60% chose Moldovan. While 40% of all  urban  Romanian/Moldovan speakers indicated Romanian as their mother tongue, in the countryside, barely one out of seven Romanian/Moldovan speakers indicated Romanian as their mother tongue. [ 38 ]


Prior to the  dissolution of the Ottoman Empire , the term "Palestinian" referred to any resident of the region of  Palestine , regardless of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, or religious affiliation. Similarly, during the  League of Nations   Mandate of Palestine , the term referred to a citizen as defined in the  1925 Citizenship Order . Starting in the late 19th century, Arabic-speaking people of Palestine began referring to themselves as "Arab" or by the endonym "Palestinian Arab" when referencing their specific subgroup.


Following the foundation of the State of  Israel , the  Jews of the former Mandatory Palestine  and the Arabs who received Israeli citizenship developed a distinct national identity. Consequently, the meaning of the word shifted to a demonym referring to the Arabs who did not receive citizenship in Israel,  Jordan  ( West Bank  residents), or  Egypt  ( Gaza  residents). [ 39 ]


In  Singapore , most of its country's policies have been focused on the cohesion of its citizens into a united  Singaporean  national identity. Singapore's cultural norms, psyche, and traditions have led to the classification of "Singaporean" as a unique  ethnocultural  and socio-ethnic group that is distinct from its neighboring countries. [ 40 ]


In 2013, Singapore's Prime Minister  Lee Hsien Loong  stated that "apart from numbers, that a strong Singapore core is also about the spirit of Singapore, who we are, what ideals we believe in and what ties bind us together as one people." [ 40 ]  According to a 2017 survey by the  Institute of Policy Studies , 49% of Singaporeans identify with both Singaporeans and their ethnic identity equally, while 35% would exclusively identify as "Singaporeans." [ 41 ]


Within the historical profession, the term "ethnogenesis" has been borrowed as a  neologism  to explain the origins and evolution of so-called  barbarian  ethnic cultures, [ 42 ]  stripped of its metaphoric connotations drawn from biology, of "natural" birth and growth. That view is closely associated with the Austrian historian  Herwig Wolfram  and his followers, who argued that such ethnicity was not a matter of genuine genetic descent ("tribes").


Rather, using Reinhard Wenskus' term  Traditionskerne  ("nuclei of tradition"), [ 43 ]  ethnogenesis arose from small groups of aristocratic warriors carrying ethnic traditions from place to place and generation to generation. Followers would coalesce or disband around these nuclei of tradition; ethnicities were available to those who wanted to participate in them with no requirement of being born into a "tribe". Thus, questions of race and place of origin became secondary.


Proponents of ethnogenesis may claim it is the only alternative to the sort of  ethnocentric  and  nationalist scholarship  that is commonly seen in disputes over the origins of many ancient peoples such as the  Franks ,  Goths , and  Huns . [ 44 ]  It has also been used as an alternative to the Near East's "race history" that had supported  Phoenicianism  and claims to the antiquity of the  Assyrian people , including their  various names .


" Traitor to the Motherland family members " ( Russian :  ЧСИР: члены семьи изменника Родины ,  romanized :  ChSIR: chleny sem'i izmennika Rodiny ,  lit.   'members of the family of a traitor of the Motherland') was a term in  Article 58  of the Criminal Code of  Russian SFSR  (as amended on 8 June 1934 from the original wording of 1927). The amended Article dealt with the criminal prosecution of wives and children ( kin punishment ) of all people who were arrested and convicted as  "traitors of the Motherland"  in the  Soviet Union  during  Stalinist purges of the 1930s  and later.


The  NKVD  Order No. 00486 [ 1 ]  instructed about  repression  of wives and children of  enemies of the people  convicted  to execution or imprisonment . It was dated August 15, 1937 and signed by  Nikolai Yezhov  acting both as chief of NKVD and General Commissar of State Security (chief of  GUGB ). The order implemented a resolution by  Politburo . [ 2 ]  The corresponding parts of  Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)  were modified accordingly. [ 3 ]


As an element of the rollback of the  Great Purge , on October 17, 1938, the later  NKVD Order No. 00689 , signed by  Lavrenty Beria , said not to arrest wives automatically, together with their husbands, but only after consideration by a single NKVD officer. Only wives that were deemed "politically untrustworthy or socially dangerous" or who knew about the "counter-revolutionary activity" of their husbands were to be arrested.


In 1940, a Politburo decree  "On prosecution of traitors to the Motherland and their family members"  and some other documents specified exile to the  Far North  of the family members of "traitors of the Motherland" who fled across the border. It primarily concerned the population of the territories newly acquired by the Soviet Union during the early years of  World War II : the  Baltic States ,  Western Belarus  and  Western Ukraine  taken from  Poland , and  Northern Bukovina  taken from  Romania .


On June 24, 1942 the  State Defense Committee  issued top secret resolution No. 1926SS "On the Family Members of Traitors of the Motherland" that was signed by Stalin and restored some of the original wording. [ 4 ]


All cases were to be considered by the  Special Council of the NKVD .


Wives were subject to imprisonment into  labor camps  for terms of "at least 5–8 years".


"Socially dangerous" children were to be placed in  labor camps , corrective  labor colonies , or special-regimen  orphanages  (see also:  Orphans in the Soviet Union ). The remaining orphaned children were to be placed in ordinary orphanages or with non-convicted relatives (if the latter wished). Personnel of the orphanages to house the children of the convicted were to be purged and refitted with politically reliable staff to properly supervise the "correction" of the children. [ 5 ] [ 6 ]


The Family of Man  was an ambitious [ 1 ] [ 2 ]  exhibition of 503  photographs  from 68 countries curated by  Edward Steichen , the director of the New York City  Museum of Modern Art 's (MoMA) department of photography. According to Steichen, the exhibition represented the "culmination of his career". [ 3 ]  The title was taken from a line in a  Carl Sandburg  poem.


The Family of Man  was exhibited in 1955 from January 24 to May 8 at the New York MoMA, then toured the world for eight years to record-breaking audience numbers. Commenting on its appeal, Steichen said, "The people in the audience looked at the pictures, and the people in the pictures looked back at them. They recognized each other." [ 4 ]  The physical collection is archived and displayed [ 5 ]  at  Clervaux Castle  in Edward Steichen's home country of  Luxembourg , where he was born in 1879 in  Bivange . It was first exhibited there in 1994 after restoration of the prints. [ 6 ]


In 2003, the  Family of Man  photographic collection was added to  UNESCO 's  Memory of the World Register  in recognition of its historical value. [ 7 ]


As part of the Museum of Modern Art's International Program, the exhibition  The Family of Man  toured the world, making stops in thirty-seven countries on six continents.  More than 10 million people viewed the exhibit, [ 8 ]  which is in excess of the largest audience for any other photographic exhibition. The photographs in the exhibition focused on the commonalities that bind people and cultures around the world, the exhibition serving as an expression of  humanism  in the decade following World War II. [ 9 ]


The recently-formed  United States Information Agency  was instrumental in touring the photographs throughout the world in five different versions for seven years, [ 10 ]  under the auspices of the Museum of Modern Art International Program. [ 11 ]  Notably, it was not shown in  Franco 's Spain, in Vietnam, nor in China.


Copy 1 (503 photo panels, 50 text panels) was organized by Edward Steichen. Duplication, with minor changes, of the exhibition presented at MoMA, Jan 24-May 8, 1955 and subsequently circulated in the United States (1956–57). Commissioned by the USIA for circulation in Europe (circulated 1955-1962. Dispersed 1962). It was shown in:


Copy 2, a duplicate of Copy 1 was commissioned by the USIA, circulated 1955–1963 and dispersed in 1963. It was shown in:


Copy 3, a duplicate of Copy 1 commissioned by the USIA. Circulated 1957–1965 and at Steichen's request, this version of the exhibition was presented to the Government of Luxembourg for permanent display at Common Market Headquarters, Luxembourg, 1965. Previously, it was shown in:


Copy 4, a duplicate of Copy 1. Commissioned by the U.S.I.A. Circulated 1957–62. Dispersed 1962. It was shown in:


A revised version of the original shown at MoMA 1955. Circulated in the United States, 1957–59, then acquired by the USIA for circulation abroad (1957–58; dispersed 1958), and shown in  Tel Aviv , Israel and  Beirut , Lebanon


Copy 5: Following a bilateral agreement between the USA and USSR, in 1959 the American National Exhibition was to be held in Moscow and the Soviets were to have had the use of New York City's  Coliseum . This Moscow trade fair at  Sokolniki Park  was the scene of Soviet Premier  Nikita Khrushchev  and United States Vice President  Richard Nixon 's ' Kitchen Debate ' over the relative merits of communism and capitalism.


The Family of Man  was a late inclusion that had not been originally envisaged in MoMA's itinerary. With a grant to the Museum of $15,000 (less than half of what it requested) and funding from the plastics industry for the radical pre-fabricated translucent pavilion design to house it, a fifth copy of the show was salvaged from what was left of the Beirut and Scandinavia showings, augmented with new prints. [ 15 ]


In Moscow, in the context of a trade show 'supermarket' meant to demonstrate lavish  consumerism , and a  multimedia  display assembled by  Charles Eames , the collection's overtones of peace and human brotherhood symbolized a lifting of the imminent threat of an  atomic war  for  Soviet  citizens in the midst of the  Cold War . [ 16 ] [ 17 ]  This meaning seemed to be grasped especially by Soviet students and intellectuals. [ 16 ]  Recognising the importance of the Moscow exhibition as "the high spot of the project," [ 4 ]  Steichen attended its opening and made copious photographs of the event. [ 15 ]


The original prints from Copy 3 exhibited in the permanent collection at  Clervaux Castle  in Luxembourg have been  restored  twice, once in the 1990s and more comprehensively during a closure of the museum in the years 2010-2013. [ 18 ]


The physical installation and layout of the Family of Man exhibition were designed to enable the visitor to view it as if it were a  photo-essay [ 19 ]  about human development and cycles of life, that affirmed a common human identity and destiny against the contemporary  Cold War  threats of  nuclear war .


Architect  Paul Rudolph  designed a series of temporary walls set amongst the existing structural columns, [ 20 ]  which guided visitors past the images, [ 21 ]  which he described as "telling a story", [ 22 ]  encouraging them to pause at those that attracted their attention. His layout and display features were adapted as much as possible to the international venues, which varied considerably from the original space at MoMA.


Open spaces within the layout encouraged viewers' interaction; to choose their own path through the exhibition, and to gather to discuss it. The layout and placement of prints and their variation in size encouraged the bodily participation of the audience, who would have to bend down to examine a small print displayed below eye level and then to step back to view a mural image, and to negotiate both narrow and expansive spaces. [ 23 ]


The prints range in size from 24 cm × 36 cm (9.4 in × 14.2 in) to 300 cm × 400 cm (120 in × 160 in) and were made, in the case of the contemporary images, by assistant Jack Jackson, [ 24 ]  from the negative supplied to Steichen by each photographer. Also included were copies of historical images, for example a  Mathew Brady  civil war documentation, and a  Lewis Carroll  portrait. [ 15 ]  Blown-up, often mural scale images, angled, floated or curved, some inset into other floor-to-ceiling prints, even displayed on the ceiling (a canted view of a silhouetted axeman and tree), on posts like finger-boards (in the final room), and the floor (for a  Ring o' Roses  series), were grouped together according to diverse themes. Repeated prints of Eugene Harris' portrait of a Peruvian flute-player formed a coda, or acted as ' Pied Piper ' to the audience, in the opinion of some reviewers, [ 23 ] [ 25 ]  and according to Steichen himself, expressed "a little bit of mischief, but much sweetness—that's the song of life." [ 26 ]  Lighting intensities varied throughout the series of ten rooms in order to set the mood.


The exhibition opened with an entrance archway papered with a blow-up of a crowd in London by Pat English framing  Wyn Bullock 's Chinese landscape of sunlight on water into which was inset an image of a truncated nude of a pregnant woman in an evocation of  creation myths . Subjects then ranged in sequence from lovers, to childbirth, to household, and careers, then to death and, on a topical and portentous note, the  hydrogen bomb  (an image from LIFE magazine of the test detonation  Mike,   Operation Ivy ,  Enewetak Atoll , October 31, 1952) which was the only full-colour image; a room-filling backlit 1.8 m × 2.43 m (5.9 ft × 8.0 ft)  Eastman   transparency , replaced for the travelling version of the show with a different view of the same explosion in black and white.


Finally, full cycle, visitors returned once more to children in a room in which the last picture was  W. Eugene Smith 's iconic 1946  A Walk to Paradise Garden . As the centrepiece of the exhibition a hanging sculptural installation of photographs including Vito Fiorenza's  Sicilian  family group and  Carl Mydans ' of a Japanese family (both from nations which were recent enemies of the Allies in WW2), another from  Bechuanaland  by  Nat Farbman  and a rural family of the United States by  Nina Leen , encouraged circulation to view double-sided prints and invited reflection on the universal nature of the family beyond cultural differences.


Photos were chosen according to their capacity to communicate a story, or a feeling, that contributed to the overarching  narrative . Each grouping of images builds upon the next, creating an intricate story of human life. The design of the exhibition built on trade displays and Steichen's 1945  Power In The Pacific  exhibition which was designed by  George Kidder Smith  for MoMA, Steichen's commissioning of  Herbert Bayer  for the presentation of his curatorship of other exhibitions and his own long history of initiation of innovative exhibits dating back to his association with  Gallery 291  early in the century. [ 23 ] [ 27 ]  In 1963 Steichen elaborated on the special opportunities offered by the exhibition format;


In the cinema and television, the image is revealed at a pace set by the director. In the exhibition gallery, the visitor sets his own pace. He can go forward and then retreat or hurry along according to his own impulse and mood as these are stimulated by the exhibition. In the creation of such an exhibition, resources are brought into play that are not available elsewhere. The contrast in scale of images, the shifting of focal points, the intriguing perspective of long- and short- range visibility with the images to come being glimpsed beyond the images at hand —all these permit the spectator an active participation that no other form of visual communication can give. [ 28 ]


The enlarged prints by the multiple photographers were displayed without explanatory captions, and instead were intermingled with quotations by, among others,  James Joyce ,  Thomas Paine ,  Lillian Smith , and  William Shakespeare , chosen by photographer and social activist  Dorothy Norman . [ 29 ]   Carl Sandburg , Steichen's brother-in-law, 1951 recipient of the  Pulitzer Prize for Poetry  and known for his biography of  Abraham Lincoln , inspired the title of the exhibition with a line from his poem  The Long Shadow of Lincoln: A Litany  (1944); [ 30 ]


There is dust alive
With dreams of the Republic,
With dreams of the family of man
Flung wide on a shrinking globe;


It was Sandburg who added an accompanying poetic commentary also displayed as text panels throughout the exhibition and included in the publication, of which the following are samples;


There is only one man in the world and his name is All Men. There is only one woman in the world and her name is All Women. There is only one child in the world and the child's name is All Children.


People! flung wide and far, born into toil, struggle, blood and dreams, among lovers, eaters, drinkers, workers, loafers, fighters, players, gamblers. Here are ironworkers, bridge men, musicians, sandhogs, miners, builders of huts and skyscrapers, jungle hunters, landlords, and the landless, the loved and the unloved, the lonely and abandoned, the brutal and the compassionate — one big family hugging close to the ball of Earth for its life and being. Everywhere is love and love-making, weddings and babies from generation to generation keeping the Family of Man alive and continuing.


If the human face is "the masterpiece of God" it is here then in a thousand fateful registrations. Often the faces speak that words can never say. Some tell of eternity and others only the latest tattings. Child faces of blossom smiles or mouths of hunger are followed by homely faces of majesty carved and worn by love, prayer and hope, along with others light and carefree as thistledown in a late summer wing. Faces have land and sea on them, faces honest as the morning sun flooding a clean kitchen with light, faces crooked and lost and wondering where to go this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Faces in crowds, laughing and windblown leaf faces, profiles in an instant of agony, mouths in a dumbshow mockery lacking speech, faces of music in gay song or a twist of pain, a hate ready to kill, or calm and ready-for-death faces. Some of them are worth a long look now and deep contemplation later.


Jerry Mason (1913–1991) contemporaneously edited and published a complementary book [ 31 ]  of the exhibition through Maco Magazine Corporation, [ 32 ]  formed for the purpose in 1955 in partnership with Fred Sammis.It was the first time hard-cover and soft-cover editions were published simultaneously. [ 33 ]  The book, which has never been out of print, was designed by  Leo Lionni  (May 5, 1910 – October 11, 1999). Many of Lionni’s book covers, like that of  The Family of Man , incorporate playful modernist collages of apparently cut or torn coloured paper, which he repeats, for example in his 1962 design for  The American Character  and for children’s books, an aesthetic also used in exhibitions from his parallel career as a fine artist. [ 34 ]  The publication was reproduced in a variety of formats (most popularly a soft-cover volume) [ 35 ]  in the 1950s, and reprinted in large format for its 40th anniversary, and in its various editions has sold more than four million copies. Most images from the exhibition were reproduced with an introduction by  Carl Sandburg , whose prologue reads, in part:


The first cry of a baby in Chicago, or Zamboango, in Amsterdam or Rangoon, has the same pitch and key, each saying, "I am! I have come through! I belong! I am a member of the Family. Many the babies and grownup here from photographs made in sixty-eight nations round our planet Earth. You travel and see what the camera saw. The wonder of human mind, heart wit and instinct is here. You might catch yourself saying, 'I'm not a stranger here.' [ 36 ]


However, an omission from the book, highly significant and contrary to Steichen's stated pacifist aim, was the image of a hydrogen bomb test explosion; audiences of the time were highly sensitive to the threat of universal nuclear annihilation. [ 37 ]  In place of the huge colour transparency to which a space was devoted in the MoMA exhibition, and the black-and-white mural print that toured countries other than Japan, only this quotation of  Bertrand Russell 's anti-nuclear warning, in white type on a black page, appears in the book; [ 38 ]


[...] The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with hydrogen bombs is quite likely to put an end to the human race [...] There will be universal death — sudden for only a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.


Absent also from the book, and removed by week eleven of the initial MoMA exhibition, was the distressing photograph of the aftermath of a  lynching , of a dead young African American man, tied to a tree with his bound arms tautly tethered with a rope that stretches out of frame. [ 39 ]


For most purchasers, this was their first encounter with a book that gave priority to the photographic image over text. [ 15 ]


In 2015, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the inaugural exhibition,  MoMA reissued the book as a hardcover edition, with the original jacket design from 1955 (albeit without the signature of designer Leo Lionni) and  duotone  printing from new copies of all of the photographs. [ 40 ]


Steichen's stated objective was to draw attention, visually, to the universality of human experience and the role of photography in its documentation. The exhibition brought together 503 photos from 68 countries, the work of 273 photographers (163, or 59.3% of whom were Americans) [ 41 ]  which, with 70 European photographers, means that the ensemble represents a primarily Western viewpoint. [ 42 ]  That forty were women photographers can in some part be attributed to  Joan Miller 's contribution to the selection, and to  Dorothea Lange  who assisted her friend Edward Steichen in recruiting photographers. [ 43 ]  She contacted her  FSA  and  Life  connections who in turn promoted the project to their colleagues. In 1953 she circulated a letter; "A Summons to Photographers All Over the World," calling on them to;


show Man to Man across the world. Here we hope to reveal by visual images Man's dreams and aspirations, his strength, his despair under evil. If photography can bring these things to life, this exhibition will be created in a spirit of passionate and devoted faith in Man. Nothing short of that will do. [ 44 ]


The letter then listed topics that photographs might cover and these categories are reflected in the show's final arrangement. Lange's work features in the exhibition.


Steichen and his team drew heavily on  Life  archives for the photographs used in the final exhibition, [ 45 ]  seventy-five by Abigail Solomon-Godeau's count, more than 20% of the total (111 out of 503), while some were obtained from other magazines;  Vogue  was represented by nine,  Fortune  (7),  Argosy  (seven, all by Homer Page),  Ladies Home Journal  (4);  Popular Photography  (3), and others  Seventeen ,  Glamour ,  Harper's Bazaar ,  Time ,  the British  Picture Post  and the French  Du , by one. From picture agencies American, Soviet, European and international, which also supplied the above magazines, came about 13% of the content, with  Magnum  represented by 43 of the pictures,  Rapho  with thirteen,  Black Star  with ten,  Pix  with seven,  Sovfoto , which had three and Brackman with four, with around half a dozen other agencies represented by one photo. [ 46 ]


Steichen travelled internationally to collect images, through 11 European countries including France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. [ 47 ]  In total, Steichen procured 300 images from European photographers, many from the  humanist group , which were first shown in the  Post-War European Photography  exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1953. [ 47 ]  Due to the incorporation of this body of work into the 1955  The Family of Man  exhibition,  Post-War European Photography  is thought of as a preview to  The Family of Man . [ 47 ]  The international tour of the definitive 1955 exhibition was sponsored by the now defunct  United States Information Agency , whose aim was to counter  Cold War   propaganda  by creating a better world image of American policies and values. [ 47 ]


Though most photographers were represented by a single picture, some had several included; Robert Doisneau, Homer Page, Helen Levitt, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Bill Brandt, Édouard Boubat, Harry Callahan (with two), Nat Farbman (five of Bechuanaland, and more from  Life ),  Robert Frank (four), Bert Hardy and Robert Harrington (three). Steichen himself supplied five photos, while his assistant Wayne Miller had thirteen chosen; by far the greatest number. [ 46 ]


The following lists notable participating photographers, excluding those with no professional or exhibiting history (see original 1955 MoMA checklist): [ 48 ]


Photography, said Steichen, "communicates equally to everybody throughout the world. It is the only universal language we have, the only one requiring no translation." [ 49 ]  When the exhibition opened most reviewers—and  Eleanor Roosevelt  who wrote in her column  My Day , "I could not have enjoyed anything more .... "—loved the show. Some embraced the idea of this 'universal language', as with Don Langer's response in the  New York Herald Tribune :" It can truly be said that with this show, photography has come of age as a medium of expression and as an art form," [ 50 ]  and even  The New York Times  art critic  Aline B. Saarinen , in an article titled "The Camera versus the Artist" asked "Has photography replaced painting as the great visual art of our time?” [ 50 ]  Others lauded Steichen as a sort of author and the exhibition as a text or essay. Photographer  Barbara Morgan , in  Aperture , connected this concept with the show's universalising theme;


In comprehending the show the individual himself is also enlarged, for these photographs are not photographs only — they are also phantom images of our co-citizens; this woman into whose photographic eyes I now look is perhaps today weeding her family rice paddy, or boiling a fish in coconut milk. Can you look at the polygamist family group and imagine the different norms that make them live happily in their society which is so unlike — yet like — our own? Empathy with these hundreds of human beings truly expands our sense of values. [ 51 ]


Expressing the contrary view, Cora Alsberg and George Wright, partners and freelance writers, co-wrote a response ‘One Family’s Opinion’ in the same  Aperture  issue devoted to the show, that;


Any really great photographer, like a great painter, creates his own visual universe...You can distinguish a Gene Smith from a Cartier Bresson without a signature. You can instantly recognize an Adams, a Weston, a Laughlin print, or that of any mature worker whose previous work you've seen...But mixed with others in a show, he surrenders this individuality-just as a writer might if he gave permission for single paragraphs to be quoted by an editor in any sequence and in any context. [ 52 ]


Hilton Kramer , then managing editor of the magazine  Arts , asserted a negative view, one taken up by more recent critics, that  The Family of Man  was a;


self-congratulatory means for obscuring the urgency of real problems under a blanket of ideology which takes for granted the essential goodness, innocence, and moral superiority of the international 'little man; 'the man in the street: the active, disembodied hero of a world-view which regards itself as superior to mere politics. [ 53 ]


Roland Barthes  too was quick to criticise the exhibition as being an example of his concept of myth - the dramatization of an ideological message. In his book  Mythologies , published in France a year after the exhibition in Paris in 1956, Barthes declared it to be a product of "conventional humanism," a collection of photographs in which everyone lives and "dies in the same way everywhere." "Just showing pictures of people being born and dying tells us, literally, nothing." [ 54 ]


Many other noteworthy reactions, both positive and negative, have been proffered in social/cultural studies and as part of artistic and historical texts. The earliest critics of the show were, ironically, photographers, who felt that Steichen had downplayed individual talent and discouraged the public from accepting photography as art. The show was the subject of an entire issue of  Aperture ; "The Controversial 'Family of Man.'" [ 55 ]   Walker Evans  disdained its "human familyhood [and] bogus heartfeeling" [ 56 ]  Phoebe Lou Adams complained that "If Mr. Steichen's well-intentioned spell doesn't work, it can only be because he has been so intent on [Mankind's] physical similarities that...he has utterly forgotten that a family quarrel can be as fierce as any other kind." [ 57 ]


Some critics complained that Steichen merely transposed the magazine photo-essay from page to museum wall; in 1955  Rollie McKenna  likened the experience to a ride through a funhouse, [ 58 ]  while  Russell Lynes  in 1973 wrote that Family of Man "was a vast photo-essay, a literary formula basically, with much of the emotional and visual quality provided by sheer bigness of the blow-ups and its rather sententious message sharpened by juxtaposition of opposites — wheat fields and landscapes of boulders, peasants and patricians, a sort of 'look at all these nice folks in all these strange places who belong to this family.'" [ 59 ]  Jacob Deschin, photography critic for  The New York Times , wrote, "the show is essentially a picture story to support a concept and an editorial achievement rather than an exhibition of photography." [ 60 ]


From an optic of struggle, [ 61 ]  echoing Barthes,  Susan Sontag  in  On Photography  accused Steichen of sentimentalism and oversimplification: "... they wished, in the 1950s, to be consoled and distracted by a sentimental humanism. ... Steichen's choice of photographs assumes a human condition or a human nature shared by everybody." Directly quoting Barthes, without acknowledgement, [ 29 ]  she continues; "By purporting to show that individuals are born, work, laugh, and die everywhere in the same way,  The Family of Man  denies the determining weight of history - of genuine and historically embedded differences, injustices, and conflicts." [ 62 ]


Allan Sekula  in "The Traffic in Photographs" (1981) [ 63 ]  posits  The Family of Man  as a capitalist cultural tool levering world domination at the height of the Cold War; [ 64 ]  "My main point here is that  The Family of Man , more than any other single photographic project, was a massive and ostentatious bureaucratic attempt to universalize photographic discourse," an exercise in hegemony which, "In the foreign showings of the exhibition, arranged by the United States Information Agency and co-sponsoring corporations like Coca-Cola, the discourse was explicitly that of American multinational capital and government–the new global management team–cloaked in the familiar and musty garb of patriarchy." Sekula revises and expands this notion in relation to his ideas about economic globalisation in an article in  October  entitled "Between the Net and the Deep Blue Sea: Rethinking the Traffic in Photographs". [ 65 ]


Others attacked the show as an attempt to paper over problems of race and class, including Christopher Phillips,  John Berger , and  Abigail Solomon-Godeau , who in her 2004 essay, while describing herself as among "those who intellectually came of age as  postmodernists ,  poststructuralists ,  feminists ,  Marxists ,  antihumanists , or, for that matter,  atheists , this little essay of Barthes's efficiently demonstrated the problem — indeed the bad faith — of sentimental humanism", concedes that "as photography exhibitions go, it is perhaps the ultimate "bad object" for progressives or critical theorists", but "good to think with". [ 66 ]  Many of these critics, including Solomon-Godeau who openly admits it, [ 66 ]  had not viewed the exhibition but were working from the published catalogue which notably excludes the initially shown but soon removed picture of the lynched Robert McDaniels and the image of the atomic explosion as the apex at the end of the exhibition. [ 29 ] [ 15 ]


While  The Family of Man  was being exhibited there at its last venue in 1959 several pictures were torn down in  Moscow  by the Nigerian student Theophilus Neokonkwo. An  Associated Press  report of the time [ 67 ]  suggests that his actions were in a protest at colonialist attitudes to black races. [ 68 ]


Conversely, other critics defended the exhibition, referring to the political and cultural environment in which it was staged. Among these were  Fred Turner , [ 19 ]  Eric J. Sandeen, [ 15 ]  Blake Stimson [ 69 ]  and Walter L. Hixson. [ 70 ]  Most recently, a compilation of essays [ 71 ]  by contemporary critics supported by newly translated writings contemporary to the exhibition's appearances collected and edited by  Gerd Hurm , Anke Reitz and Shamoon Zamir presents a revised reading of Steichen's motivations and audience reactions, and a reassessment of the validity of Roland Barthes' influential criticism in "La grande famille des hommes" in his  Mythologies .


A number of photographers and artists refer to their experience of  The Family of Man  exhibition or publication as formative or influential on them and some, including Australian Graham McCarter, being motivated by it to take up photography. [ 72 ]  These include;  Ans Westra , [ 73 ]   Marti Friedlander , [ 74 ]   Larry Seigel ,  John Cato , [ 72 ]   Paul Cox , [ 75 ]   Jan Yoors , [ 76 ]   Pentti Sammallahti , [ 77 ]   Robert McFarlane (photographer) , [ 72 ]   John Blakemore , [ 78 ]  Robert Weingarten, [ 79 ] [ 80 ]  and painter  Francisco Toledo . [ 81 ]


In the years since  The Family of Man , several exhibitions stemmed from projects directly inspired by Steichen's work and others were presented in opposition to it. Still others were alternative projects offering new thoughts on the themes and motifs presented in 1955. These serve to represent artists', photographers' and curators' responses to the exhibition beside those of the cultural critics, and to track the evolution of reactions as societies and their self-images change.


Following  The Family of Man  by 10 years, the 1965  Weltausstellung der Fotografie  (World Exhibition of Photography) was based on an idea by Karl Pawek and, supported by the German magazine he edited,  Stern ,  toured the world. [ 82 ]  It presented 555 photographs by 264 authors from 30 countries, outweighing the numbers in Steichen's exhibition. In the preface to the catalogue entitled "Die humane Kamera" ('The human Camera'),  Heinrich Boll  wrote:


"There are moments in which the meaning of a landscape and its breath become felt in a photograph. The portrayed person becomes familiar or a historical moment happens in front of the lens; a child in uniform, women who search the battlefield for their dead. They are moments in which crying is more than private as it becomes the crying of mankind. Secrets are not revealed, the secret about human existence becomes visible."


The exhibition, wrote Pawek, "would like to keep alive the spirit of Edward Steichen's wonderful ideas and of his memorable collection,  The Family of Man ". [ 83 ]  His exhibition posed the question 'Who is Man?' in 42 topics. It focused on issues that were sublimated in  The Family of Man  by the idea of universal brotherhood between men and women of different races and cultures. Racism, which in Steichen's show was represented by a lynching scene (replaced in the European showings by an enlargement of the famous picture of the  Nuremberg trials ), is confronted in the  Weltausstellung der Fotografie  section VIII "Das Missverständnis mit der Rasse" ('The Misunderstanding about Race') by the black man in the photograph by  Gordon Parks  who seems to view from his window two scenes of attacks on black people (photographed by  Charles Moore ). Another photograph by Henri Leighton shows two children walking together in public holding hands, one black, one white.


Though reference to the content of the older exhibition in the new is evident, the unifying idealism of  The Family of Man  is here replaced with a much more fragmented and sociological one. [ 84 ]  Sarah E. James points to its use of harsh juxtaposition to create a "stereoscopic vision" to entrain viewers reactions. [ 85 ]  The exhibition met with rejection by the press and functionaries in the photographic profession in Germany and Switzerland, and was described by Fritz Kempe, photographer, photo historian and board member of a prominent photo company, as "tasty fodder to stimulate the aggressive instincts of semi—intellectual young men.". [ 86 ]  Nevertheless, it went on to tour 261 art museums in 36 countries and was visited by 3,500,000 people.


In 1968, a second  Weltausstellung der Photographie  (2nd World Exhibition of Photography) was devoted to images of women [ 87 ]  with 522 photographs from 85 countries by 236 photographers, of whom barely 10% were female (compared to 21% for  The Family of Man ), though there is evidence of the effect of feminist consciousness in images of men in domestic environments cleaning, cooking and tending babies. In his introduction, Karl Pawek writes: "I had approached the first exhibition with my entire theological, philosophical and sociological equipment. 'What is Man?'; the question had to awaken ideological ideas. [...] I also operated from a philosophical point of view when presenting the[se] photos. As far as woman was concerned, the theme of the second exhibition, I knew nothing. There I was, without any philosophy about woman. Perhaps woman is not a philosophical theme. Perhaps there is only mankind, and woman is something unique and special? Thus I could only hold on to what was concrete in the pictures." The exhibition tour included the  Institute of Contemporary Art  (ICA), which at the time rarely showed photography, and her experience of installing it was in part the inspiration for  Sue Davies  to start  The Photographers Gallery , London.


UNESCO  named 1977 The Year of Children and in response the book  The Family of Children  was dedicated to Steichen by editor Jerry Mason, and imitated the original catalogue in its layout, in the use of quotations and in the colours used on the cover. [ 88 ]  As for Steichen's show there was a call-out for imagery but 300,000 entries were received compared to the 4 million at the MoMA show, resulting in a selection of 377 photos by 218 participants from 70 countries.


Independent curator  Marvin Heiferman 's  The Family of Man 1955·1984  was a floor to ceiling collage of over 850 images and texts from magazines, newspapers and the art world shown in 1984 at PSI, The Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc. (now  MoMA PS1 ) Long Island City N.Y. [ 89 ]   Abigail Solomon-Godeau  described it as a reexamination of the themes of the 1955 show and critique of Steichen's arrangement of them into a "spectacle";


...a grab bag of imagery and publicity ranging from baby food and sanitary napkin boxes to hard-core pornography, from detergent boxes to fashion photography, a cornucopia of consumer culture much of which, in one way or another, could be seen to engage the same themes purveyed in  The Family of Man . In a certain sense, Heifferman's [sic] riposte to Steichen's show made the useful connection between the spectacle of the exhibition and the spectacle of the commodity, suggesting that both must be understood within the framing context of late capitalism. [ 46 ]


In 1990 the second  Rotterdam  Biennale lead exhibition was  Oppositions: We are the world, you are the third world - Commitment and cultural identity in contemporary photography from Japan, Canada, Brazil, the Soviet Union and the Netherlands . [ 90 ]  The cover of the catalogue imitates the layout and colour of the original but replaces the famous image of the little flute player by Eugene Harris with six images, four photographs of young women from different cultural backgrounds and two excerpts from paintings. In the exhibit scenes of an endangered ecology and the threat to cultural identity in the  global village  predominate, but there are intimations that nature and love may prevail, despite everything artificial that surrounds it, notably so in family life. [ 84 ]


In 1992 the American photographer and critic  Larry Fink  published a collection of photographs under the heading of  New Relations. The Family of Man Revisited  in the Photography Center Quarterly. [ 91 ]  His approach updated Steichen's vision by integrating aspects of human existence which Steichen had omitted both because of his wish for coherence and of his innermost convictions. Fink provides only the following commentary: "Rather than a fawn pretence to anthropological/sociologic analysis of the events depicted; rather than categorise and choose democratically for social relevance. I took the path of least resistance and most reward. I simply selected quality images with the belief that the path of strong visual energies would visit equal strong social presences". He concludes:


The show is a compendium of visual hints. It is not an answer or even a full question, but cognitive clues....


In September/October 1996 the NGBK ( Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende kunst Berlin  - New Society for the Visual Arts Berlin) in the context of  Haus der Kulturen der Welt  (House of World Cultures Berlin) conceived and organised the project  family, nation, tribe, community: SHIFT  with direct reference to the historical MoMA exhibition. In the catalogue, five authors;  Ezra Stoller ,  Max Kozloff , Torsten Neuendorff, Bettina Allamoda and  Jean Back  analyse and comment on the historical model and twenty-two artists offer individual approaches around the following themes: Universalism/Separatism, Family/Anti-family, Individualisation, Common Strategies, Differences. The works are predominantly from artist photographers rather than photojournalists; Bettina Allamoda,  Aziz + Cucher ,  Los Carpinteros ,  Alfredo Jaar ,  Mike Kelley ,  Edward  and  Nancy Reddin Kienholz , Lovett/Codagnone, Loring McAlpin,  Christian Philipp Müller , Anna Petrie,  Martha Rosler , Lisa Schmitz,  Elaine Sturtevant ,  Mitra Tabizian  and Andy Golding,  Wolfgang Tillmans , Danny Tisdale, Lincoln Tobler, and  David Wojnarowicz  reflect major contemporary issues: identity, the information crisis, the illusion of leisure, and ethics. In his introduction to the exhibition, Frank Wagner writes that Steichen had offered a vision of an harmonious, neat and highly structured world which, in reality, was complex, often unintelligible and even contradictory, but by contrast, this Berlin exhibition highlights 'first' and 'third' world tensions and is eager to concentrate on a variety of attitudes. [ 92 ]


The following year Enrico Lunghi directed the exhibition  The 90s: A Family of Man?: images of mankind in contemporary art , held 2 October–30 November 1997 in Luxembourg, Steichen's birthplace and by then the repository of the archive of a full version of his  The Family of Man.  Aside from their understanding of Steichen's efforts to present commonalities amongst the human race, curators Paul di Felice and Pierre Stiwer interpret Steichen's show as an effort to make content of Museum of Modern Art accessible to the public in an era when it was regarded as the elitist supporter of 'incomprehensible' abstract art. They point to their predecessor's success in having his show embraced by a record audience and emphasise that dissenting voices of criticism were heard only amongst 'intellectuals'. However, Steichen's success, they caution, was to manipulate the message of his selected imagery; "After all," they write, "wasn't he the artistic director of  Vogue  and  Vanity Fair  ... ?". [ 93 ]  They proclaim their desire to retain the exhibiting artists' 'autonomy' while not posing their work as the antithesis of Steichen's concept, but to respect, and echo, its arrangement while "raising questions"<it does not become clear, if the above words in simple '..' are actual quotations or just relativise the terms themselves.--> as indicated by the question mark in their quotation of the original title. The exhibition and catalogue 'quote' from Steichen, setting pages of the book of his exhibition with their quotations around groupings of images (in monochrome) beside the works of contemporary artists (predominantly in colour) collected in themes used in the original, though the correlation fails for some contemporary ideas, which digital imaging, installation and montage works effectively convey. The thirty-five artists include  Christian Boltanski ,  Nan Goldin ,  Inez van Lamsweerde ,  Orlan  and  Wolfgang Tillmans .


From 1999 to 2005,  Leica Users Group  members: Alastair Firkin, Satoshi Oka, Tim Spragens, Tom Smart and Stanislaw Stawowy organized  The Family of Man 2  project to celebrate new millennium, 50 years of the  Leica M  system, and the Edward Steichen project anniversary. As with Steichen's project, the thousands of photos received were edited to 500, 100 annually during the project. It was exhibited online [ 94 ]  and an album [ 95 ]  with winning photos was privately published.


The  Photographic Society of America (PSA)  drew on their archives to stage  Reconsidering The Family of Man  during April and May 2012. [ 96 ]  Not hung and mounted as an installation, Artspace at Untitled executive director<--Artspace at Burris' display? unintelligible. +  Untitled (publication) --> Jon Burris' linear display was based on the concept of Steichen's original exhibit but concentrated on his sub-theme of the passage from birth to death. From the close to 5,000 photographs in the PSA collection, a selection of 50 original prints was made for their show. One work in common with the original exhibition was  Ansel Adams '  Mount Williamson from Manzanar  which in  The Family of Man  was presented at  mural  scale, while the PSA used a vintage, 11" x 14" Adams print from their collection, displaying it while a first edition copy of  The Family of Man  publication opened to a double-page spread of Adams photograph. [ 97 ]


As part of the 2015-2016 France-Korea year, curators of the  Centre national des arts plastiques  (Cnap) and the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain of Aquitaine (Frac Aquitaine), Pascal Beausse (Cnap), Claire Jacquet (Frac Aquitaine), and Magali Nachtergael, Assistant Professor at the  Sorbonne , collaborated to produce the exhibition  The Family of the Invisibles  at the  Seoul Museum of Art  (SeMA) and the Ilwoo Space in Seoul, from 5 April to 29 May 2016. [ 98 ]  The show was devoted to invisible and minority figures, their demands for identity, and the possibility of reconfiguring a politics of representation to the ideal of giving a place to each member of the human community as represented in more than 200 emblematic photographs. The works from the 1930s to 2016, drawn from the Cnap and Frac Aquitaine collections were selected on the principle of Roland Barthes' deconstruction identified by the curators in his  Mythologies  and in  Camera Lucida , the latter being treated as a visual manifesto for minorities. The exhibition was presented in the Seoul Museum of Art in four sections, culminating in provocative contemporary photography including the 2009 series of deceased migrants wrapped in cloth in  Les Proscrits  ('The Outcasts') by Mathieu Pernot, and  Sophie Calle ’s 1986  Les Aveugles  in which she photographed those things that her blind subjects described as the most beautiful. The "Prologue" of the exhibition at the Ilwoo Space, provided a critical and historical counterpoint. Texts by Pascal Beausse, Jacqueline Guittard, Claire Jacquet and Magali Nachtergael, Suejin Shin (Ilwoo Foundation) and Kyung-hwan Yeo (SeMA) were presented in a catalogue. [ 99 ]


The Family Of No Man: Re-visioning the world through non-male eyes , held July 2–8, 2018 in Arles brought together responses to an open call by Cosmos Arles Books, a satellite space of the Rencontres d'Arles, by 494 female and inter-gender artists from all around the world, in a revisitation of Edward Steichen’s original. Works were displayed in interactive installations outdoors and indoors, and uploaded to an online platform as they were received.


The permanent installation of the exhibition today at  Chateau Clervaux  in Luxembourg follows the layout of the inaugural exhibition at MoMA in order to recreate the original viewing experience, though of necessity, it is adapted to the unique space of two floors of the restored Castle. Since the 2013 restoration it has incorporated a library (that includes some of the catalogues of the sequel exhibitions above) and contextualises  The Family of Man  with historical material and interpretation. [ 100 ]


Father absence  occurs when parents separate and the father no longer lives with his children and provides no  parental investment . Parental separation has been proven to affect a child's development and behavior. Early parental  divorce  (during primary school) has been associated with greater   internalizing  and   externalizing  behaviors in the child, [ 1 ] [ 2 ]  while divorce later in childhood or adolescence may dampen academic performance.


Whilst father's absence mainly results from parental divorce and separation, [ 3 ] [ 4 ]  including  parental alienation , other factors such as family poverty and developmental difficulties have been associated with father absence, [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ]  the effects of which have been explained by various theoretical approaches.


Despite limited agreement among researchers regarding the exact significance of  fathering , [ 5 ]  fathers are traditionally deemed a provider of protection and support for the child's development. [ 10 ]  Through a number of pathways, father absence may influence child behavior, especially in early and middle childhood. [ 6 ] [ 7 ]  Father absence often results in a decline in household income, and ineffective parenting arising from continued conflicts between parents and psychological distress in the aftermath of the separation.


Research has shown that children who have experienced parental separation in early life often face developmental and behavioural difficulties through their childhood. [ 11 ]  For example, the separation of parents/guardians impacts children's relationship with their parents, their education, their health, and their well being. [ 3 ]  Many of the studies that have shown the negative effects of a father's absence on children have not taken into account other factors that potentially contribute such as the child's characteristics and relationship with the parents before the separation, the child's gender, and the family environment before the separation. [ 1 ]


In regard to the effects of father absence, a recent British study [ 1 ]  assessed child problem behaviour in over 15,000 families using the clinical cut-offs of the  Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) , controlling for household factors such as resources, parental mental health and inter-parental relationship. [ 12 ] [ 13 ]  The study found that father absence at a given age, similar to poverty and parental psychological distress, predicted a high probability of the child scoring above the cut-off score for total difficulties two years later. Likewise, the father's absence predicted several specific difficulties including  borderline personality disorder , severe  hyperactivity , and abnormal emotional problems. [ 1 ]  Reciprocally, a child's severe externalizing and social during their preschool years were also associated with a greater probability of the father being absent two years later. The authors concluded that the father's absence seemed to be more of a cause than a consequence of the child's problem behavior. [ 1 ]


Through direct interaction, fathers' involvement in children's development has a positive influence on their social, behavioral, and psychological outcomes. In general, the engagement of a fatherly figure reduces the frequency of behavioral problems and  delinquency  in sons and psychological problems in daughters, all the while facilitating children's  cognitive development . [ 8 ] [ 9 ]


Evolutionary life-history theory  postulates that women may  invest  more in their offspring than men due to a slower rate of reproduction in females. [ 14 ]  Some theorists add that the assured maternal relatedness to one's offspring may also make women invest more than men. [ 15 ] [ 16 ]  This is because some men may have variable paternity confidence that the child is his offspring.


The  psychodynamic approach  posits that behavior is motivated by  basic needs  and  drives  and is sometimes shaped by  unconscious  childhood experiences. The psychodynamic approach suggests that for a child to develop a "normal" gender identity, they will have to be raised in a conventional family where there is a father and a mother.  Freud  believed that being parented by a single mother could confuse the child's identity or lead them to become  homosexual . [ 17 ]  Father absence may hinder the son's acquisition of the traditional masculine role, as he is not able to model his own behavior and attitude on his fathers'. Along similar lines, sons with absent fathers could have confused gender identities – if the son was separated from his father by age four, he would be less assertive, less involved in sport, less masculine than other boys and more dependent on his peers. [ 18 ]  Nevertheless, findings of certain empirical studies on psychosexual gender identification have been deemed contradictory and inconclusive. [ 19 ]  A number of studies have highlighted such negative consequences of the two-parent heterosexual household on children. Contrarily, others have pointed out that being reared in  lesbian  and single-parent households where the father was absent did not affect the psychosexual development of children, despite higher aggressiveness and submissiveness and lower assertiveness. [ 20 ]


Genes and hormones may account for the tendency of fathers to be absent. Certain DNA patterns have been shown to affect an individual's degree of  fidelity  and investment in their offspring. In particular, a study in  prairie voles  indicates that the gene  AVPR1A  affects the activity of  vasopressin  receptors in brain regions and thus predicts less cheating on their partners. [ 21 ]  Similar to  oxytocin , the hormone vasopressin can facilitate trust, empathy and social bonding. Injection of vasopressin in  polygamous   montane voles  significantly increased their likelihood of becoming  monogamous . [ 21 ]  This may, in turn, decrease their likelihood of being an absent father.


A meta-analysis [ 22 ]  based on 56  twin  and  adoption studies  totaling over 200,000 families has revealed that genetic makeup significantly affects the individual's parenting behavior. Genes in the father's reliability predict up to 40% of his positive or negative emotions toward his children. In this sense, genes contribute to a father's liking or repulsion for his children, the latter of which may result in the father's absence. However, genes are not the sole predictors of whether a father will like or dislike his child.


There is mixed empirical evidence on the relative impact of a father's absence on the development of male and female offspring. A recent study in rural  Ethiopia , where a father's absence could mean a significant decrease in household income, revealed a considerable difference between the well-being of male and female offspring. [ 23 ]  In particular, the author found that a male infant's risk of dying per month was doubled if the biological father was absent – a 30% greater risk than that for females. For female infants, father absence (as opposed to presence) was associated with a lower risk of dying, as well as higher nutritional status. That is to say, father absence was only a statistical predictor of infant death only for male infants. Such a sex difference has been observed despite a strong  cultural preference for sons  in the area. On the other hand, in developed countries such as the United Kingdom, where father absence may not inflict as much harm on the family's income, the effects of father absence are not noticeably different between the sexes of their offspring. [ 1 ]  This suggests that other factors, such as household income and cultural norms, are significant in the well-being and development of a child.


When a young man matures without his biological male role model, this can result in violent reactions to stress and emotions, resistance and hate towards authority, aggression, early rates of sexual encounters,  transferences of the mother's negative talk about the father, and pressured ideologies to become the breadwinner. [ 24 ]


Commonly agreed across authors within the literature on Fatherhood is the idea that "[a] girl's relationship with her father serves as the model for all her relationships with men in her life, romantic and otherwise". [ 25 ]  Many studies conducted produce the same result: that the absence of a father in a daughter's life can lead to increased promiscuity and sexualized activity. Ellis conducted one such study  et al. , "Does Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual Activity and Teenage Pregnancy?" Ellis provides a greater focus on the timing of the father's absence in their daughter's life but still the results of promiscuity prove contingent on the father being present. [ 26 ]  From here, researchers have identified a commonality of 5 factors that work to explain how fatherlessness affects development in women, psychologically.


Based on the 2018  U.S. Census Bureau : [ 29 ]  out of 11 million single parent households, 80% of them are fatherless, breaking down to 1 in every 4 children born; totaling to a percentage of 81.5%. Out of that 81.5% who were raised by single mothers, 34% were poor, [ 30 ]  26.8% were jobless the entire year, [ 30 ]  and 30.3% had food insecurity; [ 30 ]   2 ⁄ 3  of these families were white, [ 31 ]   1 ⁄ 3  were black, and  1 ⁄ 3  were Hispanic-defined. [ 31 ]  It did not take into account the 53% of American-Indian and Alaskan-Native as well as the 17% Asian-American and Pacific-Islander children recorded within these single-parent homes. [ 31 ]


In 2005, the  United States Department of Health and Human Services  reported that the average experience of the American teenager includes living in the absence of their father. [ 32 ]  This leads to multiple negative impacts on youth in which 85% are reported to have behavioral issues (Center for Disease Control); [ 33 ]  71% of high school dropouts and teen moms come from fatherless homes, which is 9 times the national average (National Principals Association Report); [ 33 ]  85% of all children who show behaviour disorders come from fatherless homes, which is 20 times the national average (Center for Disease Control); [ 33 ]  85% of youth in prison come from fatherless homes, which is 20 times the national average; (Fulton County, Georgia, Texas Department of Correction), [ 33 ]  and 63% of youth suicides are of children who come from fatherless homes, which is 5 times the national average (US Department of Health/Census). [ 33 ]


Early  pubertal  timing, or  precocious puberty , is associated with negative outcomes in both genders. Early maturing girls have been found to be at risk for teenage pregnancy, [ 34 ]  drinking [ 35 ]  and weight problems, [ 36 ] [ 37 ]  and giving birth to low birth weight infants. [ 38 ]  Early maturing boys are at risk for sexual promiscuity and  delinquency [ 39 ]  and  testicular [ 40 ]  and  prostate cancer . [ 41 ]  Individual difference in pubertal timing may be influenced by weight, physical activity, and genetics. [ 42 ]


Menarche , a central event of female puberty, is associated with the father's absence. [ 43 ] [ 44 ] [ 45 ] [ 46 ] [ 47 ] [ 48 ]  According to the evolutionary explanation, an unstable home environment (e.g. father absence) discourages a long-term  mating  life history, leading girls to adopt a short-term reproductive strategy, such as early menarche. [ 49 ]  This is because they perceive resources they have as scarce and, possibly, their lifespan to be shorter, under the influence of father absence. Early menarche can increase the chance of  fertility , while other short-term reproductive strategies can diversify the genes inherited in offspring. These could lift up a higher success rate of rearing children to adolescence. Moreover, the stress of father absence prompts girls to develop a variety of internalizing disorders, such as  bulimia  and  depression , which may lower the person's  metabolism  leading to excessive weight gain which precipitates early menarche. [ 37 ] [ 50 ]  A study shows that there are fewer monitored meals in the father-absent household. [ 51 ]


Having meals in the family is arguably more beneficial to children than eating alone (i.e. solitary eating), as the former lowers the chance of  obesity . It has been disputed whether the environmental stress of a father's absence stimulates weight gain, and thus accelerates early puberty. [ 52 ] [ 53 ]  Likewise, the stress arising from the absence of mother has been shown to have little influence on the child's body weight. Since mother absence does not predict weight gain in children, it seems that the increase in the child's body weight observed is due to the isolated genetic influence of an absent father, rather than the global environmental stress caused by the absence of either parent. [ 54 ]  This is possible because in ancestral times the survival rate of children with mother being absent was extremely low. A specialized mechanism to deal with a mother's absence has never been developed.


In addition, recent findings seem to regard genes, rather than the environment, as the mechanism underlying the positive correlation between high  body mass index  and earlier first menarche onset. [ 55 ] [ 54 ] [ 56 ]   Androgen receptor  gene may predispose a father to  impulsive  and externalising behaviours (e.g. family  abandonment ) and his offspring to early puberty. [ 2 ]  The essentialness of androgen receptors to female fertility and ovary development has been proven by  rodent studies .


Father absence in a household can result in children (of both sexes) having earlier average ages of first sexual intercourse than those raised in father-present households. There is also the effect of increased rates of teenage  pregnancy . Some evolutionary theories propose that early childhood is vital for encoding information that shapes future reproductive strategies [ 57 ]  in regulating physical and motivational pathways of sexual behavior. Conflicting and stressful parental relationships can lead children to believe that resources are limited, people are untrustworthy, and relationships are opportunistic. As they replicate their parents' mating-oriented reproductive behavior, they tend to have multiple sexual partners and broken relationships. Children implicitly and explicitly model their sexual attitudes and behaviors on their parents, and see engagement in non-marital sex as normative. [ 57 ]  Father's absence can be a byproduct of initial social and economic strain within the household, as violence, lack of educational opportunities, and cumulative life exposure to poverty can increase the likelihood of early sexual endeavors and pregnancy. The timing of first intercourse can be heritable; shorter  alleles  of the X-linked  androgen receptor  (AR) gene has been associated with aggression, impulsivity, a high number of sexual partners, divorce in males, and earlier ages of physical maturation in females. [ 2 ]


A study in Ethiopia in 2008 found that despite being poorer overall,  widowed  and  divorced  women are on average 2.4 kg heavier than women whose children's fathers are present. [ 23 ]  Widowed and divorced mothers as well as their daughters are reported to have substantially improved  nutritional  status which could be explained by them having greater access to the mother's relatives ( matrilateral  kin). Furthermore, proximity to a mother's relatives can dramatically improve female children's height for age, an indicator of good nutrition. [ 58 ]  Women who return to their village of birth following marital dissolution are seen to benefit from extra matrilateral kin support. [ 59 ]


In light of certain research, father absence can be disadvantageous; certain evidence suggests stepfather presence does not reduce these disadvantages but in fact, has a worsening effect on such issues. [ 60 ]  For example, the  Cinderella effect , which refers to the observation that stepchildren are at a dramatically increased risk of physical abuse and homicide than children living with their biological parents. [ 61 ] [ 62 ]  Although researchers have found a negative relationship between stepmothers and food expenditure, this effect is not observed with stepfathers and their stepchildren. [ 63 ]  Ellis and Garber (2000) and Ellis (2004) suggest that stepfather presence is a better predictor of age of menarche than father absence, as it indicates lower quality paternal investment. According to their findings, girls raised in families with stepfathers exhibit a significantly earlier age of menarche than girls raised without stepfathers. [ 45 ]


Relative to other groups, children with a constantly absent biological father but a stepfather present reported more frequent incidences of  sexual intercourse , as well as an earlier onset of sexual behavior. The mean age of children with their biological father absent or partially absent is approximately 15. [ 64 ]  A higher percentage of children with a constantly absent biological father reported having sexual intercourse than those in the partially absent group. Those with a stepfather present and those with a biological father always absent have the earliest first-time experiences of sexual intercourse at on average 15.11 years old, whereas children without a stepfather or their biological father partially absent at the age of 15.38 experience their first encounter of sexual intercourse. [ 65 ]  The effect of having a partially absent biological father with a stepfather absence and the effect of both stepfather or biological father's absence is the same. This study indicated that the presence of a stepfather is not compensating for the disadvantages of a biological father being absent. In some situations, it can cause an even bigger negative effect on children. [ 66 ]


Choice of effective treatment can be greatly varied and thus can be affected by many factors such as age, one's ability to understand and deal with emotionally heavy material, family member involvement, and the family and child's priorities and needs. [ 67 ]  In treating some of the negative effects that young girls may have,  transference  to a male therapist could help facilitate the opportunity to fill any emotional void created through father absence. [ 68 ]  On the other hand, simply through the existence of a connection with a consistent and empathetic adult can provide some paternal function, regardless of gender. [ 69 ]


Fictive kinship  (less often,  fictional kinship [ 1 ] [ 2 ] ) is a term used by  anthropologists  and  ethnographers  to describe forms of  kinship  or social ties that are based on neither  consanguineal  (blood ties) nor  affinal  ("by marriage") ties. It contrasts with  true kinship  ties.


To the extent that consanguineal and affinal kinship ties might be considered  real  or  true  kinship, the term  fictive kinship  has in the past been used to refer to those kinship ties that are  fictional , in the sense of  not-real . Invoking the concept as a cross-culturally valid anthropological category therefore rests on the presumption that the inverse category of "(true) kinship" built around consanguinity and affinity is similarly cross-culturally valid. Use of the term was common until the mid-to-late twentieth century, when anthropology effectively deconstructed and revised many of the concepts and categories around the study of kinship and social ties. In particular, anthropologists established that a consanguinity basis for kinship ties is not universal across cultures, and that—on the contrary—it may be a culturally specific symbol of kinship only in particular cultures (see the articles on  kinship  and  David M. Schneider  for more information on the history of kinship studies).


Stemming from anthropology's early connections to legal studies, the term  fictive kinship  may also be used in a legal sense, and this use continues in societies where these categories and definitions regarding kinship and social ties have legal currency; e.g. in matters of inheritance.


As part of the deconstruction of kinship mentioned above, anthropologists now recognize that—cross-culturally—the kinds of social ties and relationships formerly treated under the category of "kinship" are often not predicated on blood ties or marriage ties, and may rather be based on shared residence, shared economic ties,  nurture kinship , or familiarity via other forms of interaction.


In  sociology of the family , this idea is referred to as  chosen kin ,  fictive kin  or  voluntary kin . Sociologists define the concept as a form of extended family members who are not related by either blood or marriage. The bonds allowing for chosen kinship may include religious rituals, close friendship ties, [ 3 ]  or other essential reciprocal social or economic relationships. [ 4 ]  Examples of chosen kin include  godparents , adopted children, and close family friends. [ 5 ] : 31–32   The idea of fictive kin has been used to analyze aging, [ 6 ]  foreign fighters, [ 7 ]  immigrant communities, [ 3 ]  and minorities [ 8 ] [ 9 ]  in modern societies. Some researchers state that peers have the potential to create fictive kin networks. [ 10 ]


Types of relations often described by anthropologists as  fictive kinship  include  compadrazgo  relations,  foster care , common membership in a unilineal descent group, and legal  adoption . A noted  Gurung  tradition is the institution of "Rodi", where teenagers form fictive kinship bonds and become Rodi members to socialize, perform communal tasks, and find marriage partners. In  Western culture , a person may refer to close friends of one's parents as "aunt" or "uncle" (and their children as "cousin"), or may refer to close friends as "brother" or "sister", although this is just a mere courtesy treatment and does not represent an actual valuation as such. In particular, college fraternities and sororities in some North American cultures usually use "brother" and "sister" to refer to members of the organization. Monastic, Masonic, and Lodge organisations also use the term "Brother" for members. "Nursing Sister" is used to denote a rank of nurse, and the term "Sisterhood" may be used for feminists. Fictive kinship was discussed by Jenny White in her work on female migrant workers in  Istanbul . [ 11 ]  In her work, she draws on ideas of production and the women she works with being drawn together through "webs of indebtedness" through which the women refer to each other as kin. These relationships are, however, less frequent than kin relationships, and serve purposes that are neither comparable to nor exclude a natural  family .


Recently, many anthropologists have abandoned a distinction between "real" and "fictive" kin, because many cultures do not base their notion of kinship on genealogical relations. This was argued most forcefully by  David M. Schneider , in his 1984 book  A critique of the study of kinship . [ 20 ]  In response to this insight,  Janet Carsten  developed the idea of " relatedness ". She developed her initial ideas from studies with the  Malays  in looking at what was socialized and biological. Here she uses the idea of relatedness to move away from a pre-constructed analytics opposition which exists in anthropological thought between the biological and the social. [ 21 ]  Carsten argued that relatedness should be described in terms of indigenous statements and practices, some of which fall outside what anthropologists have conventionally understood as kinship. [ 22 ]


This does not imply, however, that human non-kin relationships, such as in  tit-for-tat  situations, even within a friendship relation, are more important than kin relationships, since their motivation is also related to one's survival and perpetuation, or that people are necessarily bound to the culture they are inserted in, nor can it be generalized to the point of claiming all individuals always undervalue kinship in the absence of nurturing. In those cases, attachment to others is not a cultural act but an act of survival.  Herbert Gintis , in his review of the book  Sex at Dawn , critiques the idea that human males were unconcerned with parentage, "which would make us unlike any other species I can think of". [ 23 ]  Such individuals can be considered out of the natural tendency of living beings for survival through offspring.


In response to a similar model advanced by  E. O. Wilson ,  Rice University 's  David Queller  said that such new model "involves, and I suspect requires, close kinship". [ 24 ]  The theory also overlooks phenomena of survivalist non-kin or not close kin such as the one that can be seen on  tribalism  or  ethnic nationalism .


According to  Sarah Hrdy , cooperative breeding occurs among the kin of either parent or other group members. [ 25 ]


A study has shown that humans are about as genetically equivalent to their friends as they are their fourth cousins. [ 26 ]


In the biological and animal behavioural sciences, the term "kinship" has a different meaning from the current anthropological usage of the term, and more in common with the former anthropological usage that assumed that blood ties are ontologically prior to social ties. In these sciences, "kinship" is commonly used as a shorthand for "the regression coefficient of (genetic) relatedness", which is a metric denoting the proportion of shared genetic material between any two individuals relative to average degrees of genetic variance in the population under study. This coefficient of relationship is an important component of the theory of  inclusive fitness , a treatment of the evolutionary selective pressures on the emergence of certain forms of social behavior. Confusingly, inclusive fitness theory is more popularly known through its narrower form,  kin selection  theory, whose name clearly resonates with former conceptions of "kinship" in anthropology.


Whilst inclusive fitness theory thus describes one of the necessary conditions for the evolutionary emergence of social behaviors, the details of the proximate conditions mediating the expression of social bonding and cooperation have been less investigated in sociobiology. In particular, the question of whether genetic relatedness (or "blood ties") must necessarily be present for social bonding and cooperation to be expressed has been the source of much confusion, partly due to thought experiments in  W. D. Hamilton 's early theoretical treatments. In addition to setting out the details of the evolutionary selection pressure, Hamilton roughly outlined two possible mechanisms by which the expression of social behaviors might be mediated:


The  selective  advantage  which  makes  behaviour  conditional  in  the  right  sense  on the  discrimination  of  factors  which  correlate  with  the  relationship  of  the  individual concerned  is  therefore  obvious.  It  may  be,  for  instance,  that  in  respect  of  a  certain social  action  performed  towards  neighbours  indiscriminately,  an  individual  is  only just breaking even in terms of inclusive fitness. If he could learn to recognise those of his neighbours  who  really  were  close  relatives  and  could  devote  his  beneficial actions to them alone an advantage to inclusive fitness would at once appear. Thus a mutation causing such discriminatory behaviour itself benefits inclusive  fitness and would be selected. In fact, the individual may not need to perform any discrimination so sophisticated as we suggest here; a difference in the generosity of his behaviour according to whether the situations evoking it were encountered near to, or far from, his own home might occasion an advantage of a similar kind. [ 27 ]


Traditional sociobiology did not consider the divergent consequences between these basic possibilities for the expression of social behavior, and instead assumed that the expression operates in the "recognition" manner, whereby individuals are behaviorally primed to discriminate which others are their true genetic relatives, and engage in cooperative behavior with them. But when expression has evolved to be primarily location-based or context-based—depending on a society's particular demographics and history—social ties and cooperation may or may not coincide with blood ties. Reviews [ 28 ]  of the mammal, primate, and human evidence demonstrate that expression of social behaviors in these species are primarily location-based and context-based (see  nurture kinship ), and examples of what used to be labeled as "fictive kinship" are readily understood in this perspective. Social cooperation, however, does not mean people see each other as family or family-like, nor that people will value those known not to be related with them more than the ones who are or simply neglect relatedness.


Filiation  is the legal term [ 1 ]  for the recognized legal status of the relationship between family members, or more specifically the legal relationship between parent and child.  As described by the Government of Quebec:


Filiation is the relationship which exists between a child and the child’s parents, whether the parents are of the same or the opposite sex. The relationship can be established by blood, by law in certain cases, or by a judgment of  adoption . Once filiation has been established, it creates rights and obligations for both the child and the parents, regardless of the circumstances of the child’s birth. [ 2 ]


Filiation differs from, but impacts, both parental rights and  inheritance .


An example of law regarding filiation is found in the  Civil Code of Quebec , Book 2, Title 2 "Filiation", [ 3 ]  which details how filiation may be established, claimed, and transferred.


When an  adoption  takes place under the laws of the  United States ,  Canada ,  New Zealand ,  Australia , and the  United Kingdom , a complete transfer of filiation takes place.  A standard example in U.S. adoption law is seen in the  California  State Code:


8616.  After adoption, the adopted child and the adoptive parents shall sustain towards each other the legal relationship of parent and child and have all the rights and are subject to all the duties of that relationship. [ 4 ]


In other nations, a form of "incomplete adoption" may allow filiation with the biological family to remain.  An example of this is in French law, where two types of adoption exist:   adoption plénière , where filiation is completely transferred, and  adoption simple  in which filiation to the adopting parents is added to, but does not replace, filiation with the biological family. [ 5 ]


The legal transfer of filiation is evident in cases where adult adoptees have legally terminated their adoptions, resulting in filiation restored to their biological families.  One example of this is the Satnam Parmar Adoption Termination Act (1990) that was passed in the provincial legislature of  Alberta , Canada.  Parts 2 and 3 of this Act state: