The Elush Kinship System(s) | Worldbuilding
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- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
- As promised, kinship and the Elush!
(You might wonder: if people can't enter a house they weren't born in, how can they split house? There are rituals with skeletons and dogs that I didn't want to put here, but might appear in another video :P )
For more on how matriarchal families like this work in real life, I'd recommend the book "A Society Without Fathers or Husbands" about the Na/Mosuo people of China, or just any articles about them really!
My Patreon: / nakarispeardane
Music:
“Noto no koto”, robwalkerpoet - ccmixter.org/files/robwalkerpo...
“Maestro Tlakaekel”, Jesse Gallagher
My Patreon: / nakarispeardane
Extraordinarily interesting, as usual. Also I love the house art and design. There's so much personality to them.
Three things I really love about this:
A) the design of the Elush house
B) how you always manage to bring it back to clay
C) tracing genealogy through familects (probably my favorite one)
I do have one question though: if people aren't allowed to enter a house they weren't born in, how do they interact? Do they just meet up at "neutral" places, like libraries or restaurants, and never see the inside of another house? Also, what is the cultural precedent for this?
This video has inspired me to make a Miran kinship system video...someday 😂
Somebody please tag me if she answers, thanks
@@worldbuildingjuice She actually explained the question in the Evolution of an Elush House video, as well as Life In A Clay Pot, which was that they have guest rooms attached to their doorway that folks can enter, and it is where they display information that they need to make public, such as pregnancies, the people can interact in these areas without stepping over the doorway of another person's house.
Also the reason they can't cross doorways is because of mistrust arising from the early days of Elush.
@@aarmolecules5491 that's right I forgot abt that! Thank you!
@@aarmolecules5491 oh thanks! It's been a while since I've seen that video.
@@worldbuildingjuice Yer welcome!
I LET OUT AN UNGODLY SOUND WHEN I SAW THE NOTIFICATION
"...people should never enter houses they weren't born in. Also, there's no concept of marriage, monogamy, or even romance."
"...so [...] it doesn't really matter whose, uh, 'water' it is."
So how are fathers treated in Elush society (when concerning their children)? How are men treated familially in general, besides maternal uncles? Are they just individal units?
I don't think she cares or thinks about them, her societies are mixes of absurd ideology and a handful of novel ideas.
I'd also like to know
@@FugaxContrapunctus Matriarchy and patriarchy can be just as oppressive or equal as the other. Should it really be any better or worse if it's one gender or the other taking the dominant role?
Fathers just usually aren't considered, to be honest. And many wouldn't consider themselves fathers - fathering a kid is like, a favour to another family, or just a consequence of having sex. It's not particularly their business - they're more concerned with their own family.
Men do play an important role in the family as part of raising children - a kid has only one primary female role model, but a lot more male. And also just in general keeping the family running - since the child-rearing is shared, they have more time to pursue their own skills. They're a unit with their siblings, and with the other males of their generation, and are kind-of in the units of all their sisters at the same time. Older males (so great-uncles) also have a lot of influence over the house's larger purchases and decisions, especially later on - since they are more involved in the whole house, rather than just their own direct descendants, they are trusted more with whole-house matters.
I know some people are concerned that this isn't plausible - I mentioned elsewhere, but I also was like "ok would this actually work", and there is definitely real life precedent for this happening and men being okay with it! There's a book I'm gonna add to the description, "A Society without Husbands or Fathers", with really interesting stuff like the men of that culture's opinions on this, and why this kind of thing might happen (the author figures that it's part of having a lot of sexual freedom, which is true for Elush too - people can have sex with whoever they want, but it's guaranteed that any child they have the responsibility of raising is genetically related to them).
@TithonusAndFriends This sort of kinship system seems to be based upon the Mosuo, though.
i loved the part about tracing genealogy thru language
Thank you!! :D The original script didn't have much about the familect stuff and then I looked at the family structure of Elush and went "waaaait I can make this even weirder"
It would be awsome if you made an episode where we followed an Elush person in their daily life.
Just realized you had already created a Patreon account... I'm so sorry I didn't notice before! Will be your next patron, that's assured!
Thank you so much!!
aunt being "mother-ish" is really funny to me
great video as always!!
You are so brilliant!
I'm binging your videos!
I'm really curious about the views of the afterlife and what the underworld looks like. I'm imagining a palace of your ancestors almost infinite in it's rooms and grandeur.
I really like the way the importance of houses to the Elush people is reflected in other aspects of their culture (ex. kinship structure) I wonder if/how that also manifests in other areas like conceptualization of self.
Do the Elush people say their bodies are their houses like the western idea of "your body is a temple" do they use house related terminology in poetry such as eyes being windows or bones being the foundation (in more ways than one)?
Really fantasizing stuff.
The part that hasn't been cover yet that I'm most excited for is the political structure of Elush. Are they a monarchy? Oligarchy? maybe some sort of democracy where power is concentrated in each household?
I also have a "world" where male parentage is seen as irreverent (they use a Pearl/Nucleus metaphor similar to your Pottery/Water one) altho so are any adult male relatives since it is more of a direct misandrist matriarchy than Elush.
You are correct :3 Elush people do see their lives and bodies as similar to houses, dividing things up into rooms which have different people it's appropriate to share with, building new parts of personality/new areas of life...
Just discovered this channel.
Fascinating stuff!
We LOVE this daily life type worldbuilding!
The world you're building is such a nice combination of grounded and imaginary.
If people never enter a house they weren't born in, then where do they conceive?
they have sex outside both houses (in a field, hotel or some-where-else) and the woman gives birth in the house she was born in, without the man being present.
Can i mention that 1. I first thought this said "Kidnap system" instead of Kinship system XD
2. This is very very cool and i love it
So happy to see a new video from you, Nakari!
So wonderful! Brilliant stuff, as always ♥️
These videos are so beautiful and inspiring! I love them!
such an underrated channel, keep up the good work!
Amazing world building and art as always!
Another incredibly interesting video, thank you a lot and keep it going ;)
I love how interesting this is!
im always biased to home languages due to studying sign languages, which arise from the creolization of home signs
Agriculture intensifies!
you are... so good
i have a question. how do you stop inbreeding from happening? are there marriages or something like marriages? do men sometimes get sent to new houses or women to new houses? do 'room's of different houses ever combine to make new houses?
so "Dal" means something like "great" or "more" in your conlang? that means our conlangs have a false cognate! although theyre definitely pronounced differently. my "d" is pharyngealized and dental. i just thought this was cool.
Actually! Babies say "ba" first! In most cultures, babies say the diminutive for their fathers first (Baba, Aba, etc). "Ma" does come before "ta" though, because nasals are easier than unvoicing. The "ma=mother" thing is much more likely due to the common association between mothers and cattle, given that it is only found among farming cultures.
How are you gonna move society to a nuclear family structure while still letting the men run off to momma in this matrilineal system? You can’t get your brothers and sisters to help out because you had to go off and get your own house that you alone can support? This sounds like an extremely stressful system...
When a house is super new, there are certain things people can do to make the two houses *technically* the same (the spirit that protects the doorway gets shared between the houses), so people of each house are free to enter it. It only lasts a generation or two (until the doorway is rebuilt), but means there is time for new households to stabilize and support each other. Still pretty stressful, but nobody ends up just abandoned without help by their original family until the new house is able to survive.
The system just gets abandoned lmao
@@NakariSpeardane but in a nuclear there is only the immediate family. So after one or two generations they are on the mother is on her own.
One thing I wonder, is whether they'd have issues with, or rather see no issue with, incest, if they develop the idea "it doesn't matter who provides the water."
Since they're extremely family centered, not wanting to dwell too much in homes they were not born in, it raises the concern that they'd form relations with the (fe)males they spend the most time with. The lack of sexual culture/code, where they don't even have a concept of romance, also implies they might see no issue with family "fun."
Not sure how, but it'd be nice if they had some plausible reason they do not partake in incest. However, if they developed or learned this culture from experience, then they'd probably start to think who the "water" comes from does matter, and would prefer high status healthy males who are not closely related. The best I can think of is them having some superstition that living in your father's house is bad luck, for some reason.
Actually the fact that these people live with their siblings all their life is usually enough to discourage incest - there's a thing called the Westermarck effect where people who grow up together generally never feel sexual attraction towards each other. There's also a dislike of having a child live in its father's house, but that's more a justification they think of after the fact.
Though their thoughts on how family works means their thoughts on what incest is are different - a half-sibling through the father would be totally fine, a maternal second cousin wouldn't be.
@@NakariSpeardane That probably works. Though the half-sibling thing would really come back to bite them.
The system means that men can have as many kids as they want without having to support them; or rather as much activity as they want, similar to tinder. So a few successful males, be they rich or good talkers or whatever the culture values, could cause a serious issue of incidental inbreeding, having multiple dozens of kids over their lifetime.
Unless the father has distinctive features which the child inherits, working out who is related to who would become impossible, and after a few generations you'd start to see a few unlucky families suffer severe inbreeding, with most of the community being more mildly effected. As the generations go on, this could get very bad, until the community looks like Hapsburg royalty.
That could be an interesting detail for the culture, of course. They mightn't be able to work out what's going on for some time, and develop all kinds of superstitions about it. They might also have the reaction of the Hapsburgs, and decide that the Hapsburg Jaw is really cool, as they did.
@@vanivanov9571 that would definitely be a problem.
@@NakariSpeardane Westermarck effect has been criticised. There is no indication there can be no innate sexual attraction by people raised as siblings prior 6 years old.
What about people who don't fit in the gender binary? Not a man or woman or what they were concerned as a child? Would they be like the the frog name? If there's a person in a family that's ,let's say nonbinary, and wants to use different pronouns, would it be a faimly choice to come up with a custom name like a frog one? Or would there be an third gender like native Americans that has to do around religion?
Just spit-balling ideas, please excuse my spelling/grammar mistakes.
Most society won’t be bother dealing with this. If you are born a particular sex, you are that gender because sex and gender were often conflated.
Some society might accommodate “non-binary” or in some case intersex people in their communities but often those were force to accept a particular gender.
It must be tough growing up as a boy when you learn that men aren't important.
Whered you get that idea from? Im sure these men dont tie their worth to their “water” and how its viewed. This society is not even similar to how our actual societies work, as shes said in other comments. Have you watched her other videos, like the one about summer and winter families or the one about pottery?
@@cadebowman4582 It's most likely I was reading too much into the exact words, at 1:15 she said fathers don't really matter except for the person who's father it is.
About 2:56 it seems like cousins from your uncles aren't really a thing.
This seems weird to me as those cousins would see you through their aunt, right??
@@kairon156 In her video on summer and winter families she explains that the mothers and fathers of children are split up. They don’t grow up in their father’s household (or with any members of that household) so what they’re labeled isn’t important. Just like specifying the gender of cousins isnt important to us in english. Labeling the relationship between a father and a child is what she’s referring to as being not important, not the father as a person. For example, he’d still have an important role in the life of his sisters’ children which is why he’s called “tatti” by his (sisters’) nieces and nephews.
Cousins from your uncle aren’t really a thing because they aren’t living in your household, theyre off in their mother’s household. You and your uncles children would never even interact in a household setting. Children do not live with their fathers growing up, so (like she says in the video) everyone else in the family doesn’t even necessarily know how many children the men have. Your uncles children would view you as “a house to do with still water” or basically just one of the people in their fathers household.
@@cadebowman4582 okay, This explains quite a few things that was missing.
Thanks for clearing it up for me.
It's kind of sad that's there's no concept of romance and marriage. I guess conception through one-night stands is the way things work? :( It seems sad to me since fathers IRL have such an important influence on their children.
Yeah I am curious about how a society would be devoid of romance and how that would affect the people in it
Men would not work the fields in this society, so it is bust: you should consider changing biology if you are going to change relationships in this way, you should look into the Salarians in Mass Effect if you are going to treat reproduction like spawn.
There's actually a real life culture that's pretty similar (the Na/Mosuo) and they seem to be doing okay! Would recommend reading about them, they are really interesting :D