BLOG POST #2
The thing that really made me wonder is the "kinship ties", how Muslims have to know each other's history, where they came from, who their family was. It's really different from our culture, how we don't really care where someone comes from, and who their family is. On page 185, Ghada describes how meeting other Palestinian families in Golders Green was exciting for her mother, because it was a way for her to determine where they came from, and also to have relief that the country was still there and it hadn't disappeared mysteriously. She also explains that sometimes just the surname is all that is necessary to determine one's place of origin. "Kinship is the most basic principle of putting individuals into social groups, roles, and categories. The basic sort of kinship is to belong to the same family by birth. Kinship tells us how we are related to our family or each other, through our biology and history. Kinship can be a complex system of social groups. It is a universal system as everyone has a family. Some small and large scale societies use kinship not only for human reproduction but for “economic transactions, the political system and [their] religious beliefs” (J.Hendry, 1999)." "Kinship." - Simple English Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Oct. 2013. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. Through kinship, we can find someone's origins just by knowing the level of class, because for example if someone was of the peasant class, then they would use their father's first name as their surname. For example, I were of that class, my name would be Tristanio Alfredo, because that is my father's name.