Paper short abstract:

How does intergenerational tranfer of value occur in the absence of enduring material objects, and in the face of loss of the one inalienable value, land? An immaterial imaginary landscape of home plays an important role in the transformation of a Pacific House Society over time.

Paper long abstract:

"Paths of precedence: tensions, loss and the transfer of value over time"

In the atoll society of Tokelau, historically a House Society, inter-generational transfer has occurred since approximately 1925 without a concomitant exchange of enduring material objects. The one, significant exception is the inalienable category of land (Weiner 1992). A main question is whether set paths of precedence, linked to the creation of value (Graeber 2013, Hoëm 2018), impact differently on inter-generational transfer of kin-based estates at present. The paper explores how a significant increase in material wealth, from the mid-eighties until present, affects the intergenerational transfer of goods, and relationship patterns.

An inherent tension between ephemeral material objects and an enduring attachment to place, is brought to the fore by two simultaneous, but conflicting ongoing processes in Tokelau at present: 1. Aid driven increased material accumulation (Hoëm forthcoming), and 2. The ultimate threat of losing of the land altogether, that climate change represents (Hviding 2017).

Migration and the exchange of perspectives on the meaning and significance of 'home', contributes in novel ways to an immaterial imaginary. How this imaginary landscape of home shapes patterns of material transfer (including inclusion or exclusion from intergenerational transfer) in the face of loss of inalienable value, is the analytical focus of this paper (Tabe 2016).

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on house-related memories, tensions and disputes, this paper examines how inheritance practices and perceptions of kinship have changed over time at the grassroots level in Beijing. It explores materiality and relatedness in the sense of 'de-kinning' as part of China's modernising process.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on long-term fieldwork undertaken in an old-town neighbourhood in central Beijing, this paper looks at how inheritance practices and perceptions of kinship have changed over time and examines their impact on the daily life of local residents. It focuses on a small number of privately-owned siheyuan ('courtyard houses'), which were handed down from generation to generation in one family. The images of the siheyuan call to mind extended families and a 'Confucian state' favouring male heirs. They were nationalised under high socialism in the 1950s, when men and women were granted equal rights in property. After eventually being returned to their former owners in the wake of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the siheyuan, now dilapidated due to lack of maintenance, were confronted with increasing privatisation and commercialisation. Despite the physical survival of the siheyuan, it is now a commonplace for siheyuan siblings to turn against each other, and for families to break up, as people struggle over shares of their suddenly valuable but neglected old residence.

Piecing together memories and accounts of informants, these extended families could be seen to have gradually fallen apart during the historical processes of socialist construction and post-Mao reform and opening-up. While noting certain continuities in ways of life among siheyuan occupants, this paper hopes to broaden the debate on materiality and relatedness (cf. Carsten) in the sense of 'de-kinning'(cf. Howell) as part of China's modernising process.

Paper short abstract:

Due to out-migration from a Turkish town and new urban occupations, an ancestral land could not be inherited for 80 years and was partly used by various actors. The paper looks at how it has recently become a subject of legal and moral disputes within the kin group, who now needs to re-make itself.

Paper long abstract:

Turkey has been rapidly urbanising during the last century and this has had repercussions on property and inheritance management. Villagers have been moving to cities and towns people have been moving to larger urban metropoles for education, jobs and modern livelihoods. This paper looks at a specific landed property which could not be inherited during the last 80 years in a small town in southwest Turkey and how this property has been dealt with and contested among the three generations of a kin group. Due to outmigration from the town and the emergence of new urban occupations, the land remained partly bracken and was used partly by various actors, not all from the kin group. It has, however, recently become a subject of legal and moral disputes among the kin, who now needs to rediscover and re-make itself. The paper will explore how memory but also face-to-face sociality could play a role in re-writing the history of property and ownership. Furthermore how different moralities challenge the different structural constraints such as the presence/absence from the locality, the existence of written documents and having/lacking local allies will be examined. Gender, migration experience, social skills but also the changing legal regulations of inheritance are all significant in the negotiations on making property (as ancestral land or commodity) and kin (a moral kin group or kin as individuals). This auto-ethnographic research will also reflect on the relevance of anthropological knowledge in understanding the making and un-making of property and kinship.

Paper short abstract:

The lifetime of Norwegian holiday homes (hytter) usually extends beyond the life of its owners, raising questions about how it should be passed on to the next generation. Decisions about ownership become questions of kinship, as generational logics meet principles of equality.

Paper long abstract:

Should equality between siblings over-ride equality between grandchildren? And if so, why? This paper considers some structural dilemmas that arise between legal rules and social norms when Norwegians choose how to pass on property. Predominant principles of equality and fairness can come into conflict, just as primogeniture conflicts with partible inheritance, and kinning-through-owning meets the difficulties of peaceable co-ownership and accommodating differences between co-owners. Through ethnographic examples of a range of compromises that people invent to manage such dilemmas, we explore the role of property in kinning, and de-kinning within and between Norwegian families.

Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the interconnection of death, landscape and inheritance in western Kenya. It explores how the materiality of homesteads makes kinship visible across generations. This can index familial attainment, but also disaster. Here, what is passed on is not only land but also misfortune.

Paper long abstract:

In Luo communities in western Kenya, death is materialised in the landscape. Building a homestead is a lifelong project for Luo men, ultimately completed by burial within it. After death it is abandoned and left to disintegrate; the sons inherit land and build their own homes nearby. This process locates kinship topographically: generations and homesteads flow forward in the landscape whilst the decaying remains of houses and graves root intergenerational inheritances into particular locales. In this way, an ideal death enables land to be passed on, new generations to accede and kinship to be made visible.

But this idealised generativity is often obstructed. For urban Luos, failure to build a rural home leaves nowhere for a body to be buried, while one brother's failure to take up his inheritance and build on his father's land has implications for his siblings' capacity to become fully adult. Meanwhile, new burial methods and construction materials mean that graves and homes endure in the landscape, obstructing the generativity of decay and restricting inheritable land.

By tracing several generations of one Luo family, this paper considers the shifting terrain of death, family and inheritance in western Kenya. It explores questions of decay, legacy and what happens after a 'bad' death. Here the homestead of the deceased can transform into a monument to disaster, a contaminated legacy inviting intergenerational misfortune. The resilience of cement, glass and brick - which in life indexed attainment - become a reminder of familial failure to inscribe generations of kin into a landscape.

Paper short abstract:

Heirlooms and inherited money may create links between generations, and thus give personal historical depth and a sense of belonging to present lives. Frequent divorces and remarriages challenge this generational transfer, as legal reforms enable valuables to stay with the surviving spouse.

Paper long abstract:

As an answer to societal changes, and the legal challenges that follow from divorce, remarriage and blended families, the latest Danish inheritance law reforms have favoured the horizontal conjugal bond between current spouses with reference to their so-called life companionship. This notion resonates well with modern kinship studies that also focus on kinning as performed and created through common daily practices. On the other hand, formal and fixed understandings of kinship ties also seem to continue a very powerful existence, when it comes to legal rules and inheritance practices, and these point to the importance of vertical transfers between generations. This paper focus on contested norms concerning the significance of the conjugal bond and the generational link when it comes to ideas of what is fair and just. How do people try to balance or dispute these concerns? How are heirlooms disseminated, claimed or quarreled over? What is the role of heirlooms in processes of kinning and de-kinning?