Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030103

Authors: Karansupamas Engchuan

Indigenous languages in Southern Thailand are increasingly affected by modernization, digital communication, and language contact, yet the relationship between kinship terminology, social organization, and linguistic sustainability among Indigenous Austroasiatic-speaking communities remains insufficiently explored. This study addresses three research questions: (1) how Tan’ean and Jaahaai kinship systems differ in their semantic structures and classificatory patterns; (2) how kinship terms reflect cultural worldviews, social organization, and relational values of the Manni and Mueng’ra communities; and (3) what challenges influence the transmission and sustainability of kinship-related linguistic knowledge. This study aims to comparatively analyze consanguineal and affinal kinship terminology in the Tan’ean language of the Manni ethnic group and the Jaahaai language of the Mueng’ra ethnic group, focusing on how kinship systems encode cultural worldviews, social relations, and adaptive strategies under contemporary change. Guided by Componential Analysis and Ethnolinguistic Vitality Theory, this study employed a qualitative ethnolinguistic approach. Data were collected through genealogical elicitation, in-depth interviews, and participant observation with 40 key informants from Trang, Phatthalung, Satun, Songkhla, Yala, and Narathiwat provinces. The data were analyzed through semantic feature identification and comparative interpretation of kinship structures. The findings demonstrate that, despite shared Austroasiatic heritage, Tan’ean and Jaahaai exhibit distinct kinship systems reflecting different cultural logics. In response to the first research question, the findings reveal that the Manni system resembles the Hawaiian type, emphasizing egalitarian relations, generational categories, and inclusive incorporation of affinal relatives, whereas the Mueng’ra system shows Crow–Omaha characteristics, including generational skewing, gender-specific markers, hierarchical classification, and stronger influence from dominant regional languages. Regarding the second research question, the findings demonstrate that kinship terminology functions as a cultural mechanism for organizing social relationships, identity, and intergenerational obligations, reflecting different models of Indigenous social organization. For the third research question, the study identifies language contact, changing social conditions, and reduced intergenerational transmission as challenges affecting the continuity of Indigenous kinship knowledge. Therefore, the study recommends community-based orthographies, participatory digital learning platforms, and policies supporting Indigenous linguistic rights to strengthen language revitalization, cultural continuity, and Indigenous communities’ capacity to adapt to social transformation.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030102

Authors: Tahir Rashid

Immanuel Kant is synonymous with modernity, enlightenment and secularity. This reputation is earned through the incredible influence of his three weighty critiques, which have laid the intellectual, moral and aesthetic foundations for modern philosophical thought. Despite this reputation, many scholars in recent years have argued that Kant’s intellectual contribution to secularism, moral universality and political republicanism ought to be approached more critically. The ‘other’ Kant is also one of the progenitors of the modern concept of race. Kantians have defended Kant against charges that race is essential to his entire critical project. This essay moves beyond the stalemate between race scholars and Kantians by reading his concept of race together with his philosophy of religion. Drawing on critical approaches to religion, race and secularism, this essay argues that race is constitutive of his philosophy. More specifically, it demonstrates how race and religion are deeply entangled in Kant’s construction of Jews and Judaism as the constitutive outsiders of Euro-Christian modernity.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030101

Authors: Mehmet Nuri Şanda Doğan Gün

In the original publication (Şanda and Gün 2026), the Acknowledgments section was inadvertently omitted during the publication process, and the author would like to add the following acknowledgement: [...]

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030100

Authors: Ikenna Kamalu Ngozi Georginia Ugochukwu Chisom Paula Ogamba

Names and naming are some of the ways by which Igbo families and communities of Southeastern Nigeria construe and express ideation about their origins, kinship, intergroup relations, social and spiritual roles, and identity. The names that most Igbo families and communities bear provide information about their ancestry, historical ties, and the experiences and circumstances that define their existence as a distinct people. Among the Igbo, names are not merely a means of identification; they are perceived as carriers of history and social experiences. Igbo communities and families use names to identify the descendants (umu—children) of a particular progenitor, indicate the specific number of in-group members that share common ancestry or social bond (name + number marker), indicate the spatial location of a community, and indicate the spiritual roles of a community or family. Igbo families in particular use the names they bear to frame the social experiences and situations that surround the birth of a child (nwa), peculiar professions associated with a family, and peculiar social, economic or spiritual roles associated with some families, among other uses. Thus, based on the tenets of anthropological/cultural linguistics, this study will examine the social and cultural–cognitive factors that shape how the Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria derive community and family names. While insights from anthropological linguistics provide the framework for the study of the names in the social and cultural contexts, the cognitive dimensions of this study derive from the framework of Cultural Linguistics (CL). This ensures that the cognitive aspects of the names are integrated into the analysis. Many of the existing studies on Igbo names and naming practices have centred chiefly on personal names, while only a handful have focused on community and family names among the Igbo. This study, which draws chiefly from anthropological linguistics (AL) and Cultural Linguistics (CL), aims to address this lacuna.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030099

Authors: Barbara Ann Mitchell Asli Evrim Ozer Boah Kim

There has been a significant rise in the number of individuals searching for genetic relatives using home-based DNA kits alongside online historical records, archival sources, and family stories. Initial studies suggest that these experiences can have profound psycho-social and emotional impacts on self and identity. However, research to date has not examined the experiences of older adults who uncover previously unknown relatives and how these discoveries influence their identities in later life. To address this gap, this study draws on life course and identity theories. We conduct three ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses to examine how age, the context of discovery, and the subsequent relationship with the newly discovered family member (or proxy) affect three conceptual identity domains: familial belonging, cultural identity, and sense of self/uniqueness. Data are drawn from an international online survey of 293 amateur genealogists aged 55 years and older who located a previously unknown close genetic relative within the past five years using DNA testing. We also synthesize and integrate emergent themes from 50 in-depth qualitative follow-up interviews. Findings show that reported identity changes are associated with stronger relationship quality, more frequent contact, emotionally driven motivations (compared to curiosity), and more complex searches, net of covariates. Qualitative data elucidate the expansive, fluid, and sometimes ambiguous nature of identity reconstruction following unexpected family discoveries today.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030098

Authors: Michelle Lynne Finley

Books play an important role in supporting identity, yet inaccurate or incomplete metadata in library catalogs can limit the discoverability of culturally representative works. This qualitative instrumental case study examined how metadata assigned to juvenile fiction books featuring Black characters, purchased from 2017 to 2021 in a regional comprehensive public library, reflected book content and influenced discoverability. The following research question was derived from the research problem and the purpose of the study: What is the metadata searchability of juvenile books that feature Black characters in a regional comprehensive public university library catalog in the southeastern United States? This study used document analysis to compare bibliographic metadata with thematic content of the chosen books to identify gaps in the catalog. Findings indicated that metadata frequently captured broad topical content while omitting deeper themes related to Black identity, possibly reducing the discoverability of these works through catalog searching. The results demonstrate the need for more representative metadata practices to improve access to culturally significant literature and provide librarians with a framework for evaluating and strengthening metadata assignment to support visibility in library collections.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030097

Authors: Vathiswa Papu-Zamxaka

The claim that gender diversity is a leadership issue rather than a women’s issue circulates widely in transformation policy and university planning, yet it is rarely given historical or epistemic grounding, and almost never an African one. This article asks how ceremonial and ritual authority was gendered in selected African cultural institutions, through what mechanisms colonial rule reconfigured that gendering, and what follows for contemporary leadership theory and for African higher education and public governance. The study is conceptual and qualitative. It applies genealogical documentary analysis to a purposively assembled corpus of forty scholarly and policy texts published between 1976 and 2026, analysed in three phases of descent, emergence and residue. The framework combines the coloniality of gender, Foucauldian genealogy, Weberian authority and relational leadership read alongside Ubuntu, and it operationalises two constructs defined at the outset: authority as an installed position and authority as a relational function. Six findings are reported. Authority was installed rather than possessed, distributed across complementary gendered offices, and carried by statuses detachable from anatomy; ritual office formed a distinct register; colonial indirect rule masculinised public office and bureaucratised what had been relational; and the women’s-issue framing is the residue of that sequence. Seven recommendations follow, centred on measuring the distribution of authority rather than headcounts alone.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030096

Authors: Chiang Wan Ling Shamim Akhter Tribhuwan Kumar Musarat Shaheen

Educational practices in primary schools are not formed in isolation from social and cultural heritage. In Malaysia’s multi-ethnic society, shaped by colonial history, diverse migration genealogies, and intergenerational transmission of familial and community values, the pedagogical orientations of teachers and the learning dispositions of students are deeply embedded in historical and cultural processes. This study examines how family–community genealogies, cultural heritage, and intergenerational educational narratives intersect with teacher training practices, specifically learner autonomy promotion, teacher-as-facilitator orientation, and flexible learning environment creation, to shape pedagogical practice in a multi-ethnic primary school in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. A qualitative interpretive research design was employed. Eight participants, seven experienced primary school teachers and one student representative were purposively selected from a multi-ethnic primary school in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews guided by four thematically organised dimensions drawn from the genealogy of education framework and analysed using Braun and Clarke’s six-phase thematic analysis. Four interconnected themes emerged: (1) convergent cross-genealogical endorsement of learner-centred pedagogy despite diverse ethnic community educational inheritances; (2) the teacher-as-facilitator role as the most genealogically resonant pedagogical shift from colonial transmission traditions; (3) flexible learning environments as inspirationally valued but materially constrained sites of genealogical negotiation; and (4) the perceived inseparability of facilitative practice and positive student learning outcomes. The findings illuminate how historically situated family–community genealogies shape the reception and enactment of contemporary pedagogical practices in Malaysia’s post-colonial, multi-ethnic primary school context.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030095

Authors: Betty Bacon

Senior leadership turnover in Christian Higher Education Institutions (CHEIs) necessitates the identification of effective self-leadership practices that preserve intergenerational memory and Reformed traditions. Using a qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), this study explored the lived experiences of five senior-level administrators averaging 22.2 years of leadership experience in CHEIs. The findings identified five core themes shaping their leadership: (1) efficiency and Self-Awareness, characterized by the use of digital boundaries and organizational systems; (2) fulfillment, derived from a deep sense of “calling” and the institutional mission; (3) fortitude, built on theological principles of God’s sovereignty to navigate administrative stress; (4) applicability and Intellectualism, rooted in the Reformed confessional heritage and “treasure trove” of creeds; and (5) integration, where spiritual practices, such as breath prayers and scripture-based cues, are woven into professional routines. Crucially, the research revealed a significant disconnect where leaders utilized robust self-leadership strategies for professional growth but often struggled to apply parallel techniques (such as goal setting or self-observation) to their personal spiritual disciplines. The study concludes by proposing a Spiritual Self-Leadership Framework that integrates the Five Solas of the Reformation with self-leadership theory to provide a roadmap for individual sanctification and institutional flourishing.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030094

Authors: Mboni Collins Makamu Ntsieni Mawedzha

Marriage remains a central social institution among the Vatsonga, functioning not merely as a union between individuals but as a cultural institution through which gender identities, kinship relations, ritual obligations, and communal belonging are constructed and transmitted across generations. While scholarship has extensively explored marriage and gender in African societies, limited attention has been paid to the genealogical processes through which Vatsonga marriage rituals have historically shaped gender identities within changing social, political, and religious contexts. This article examines marriage as a site of gender construction by analysing the relationship between ritual practices, identity formation, and social belonging among the Vatsonga of Southern Africa. Using the genealogical approach of Michel Foucault and the theories of African feminists and decolonials, this study employs interpretive qualitative methodology, which entails the analysis of interdisciplinary literature in African philosophy, anthropology, gender studies, theology, and ritual studies. As a result of this analysis, it becomes evident that marriage rituals continue to play a great role in constructing masculinity and femininity, as well as kinship and community. At the same time, however, these rituals are dynamic and have undergone changes in light of colonialism, Christianity, urbanization, migrations, constitutional democracy, and modern concerns regarding gender equality. This article does not present marriage rituals of Vatsonga as static and monolithic practices, but rather shows their historical contingency, cultural dynamism, and continuous negotiation amid social change. Therefore, this study calls for critical engagement with marriage rituals in order to protect culture as well as to ensure gender equality and the dignity of all parties involved. With regard to the application of genealogy to marriage practices of Vatsonga, this article brings new perspectives to current debates on ritual, gender construction, African epistemologies and the decolonisation of marriage studies.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030093

Authors: Tasneem Rashed Shahwan Shanthini Pillai Suziana Mat Saad

The classical Chinese poem The Ballad of Mulan and Riyoko Ikeda’s iconic shōjo manga series The Rose of Versailles are two important East Asian cultural texts that are compared in this article to examine feminist resistance and gender negotiation. The protagonists of both stories are women who work in very patriarchal environments while also opposing, subverting, and eventually overcoming traditional gender norms. This paper argues that both texts enact what could be called a “dialectics of compliance and resistance”—that is, a simultaneous negotiation between conformity to institutional norms for survival and resistance through exposing and challenging those same norms in which heroines must adopt masculine codes to survive institutional structures, but in doing so reveal those structures as arbitrary and historically contingent—through the analytical lenses of feminist literary criticism, queer theory, postcolonial gender studies, and Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. The article explores the mechanics of cross-dressing as a political act, the ideological ambivalence ingrained in narrative closure, the construction of female heroism, and the divergent yet convergent ways in which each text positions itself relative to its own socio-political moment. They do this by drawing on close textual reading and cultural-historical contextualisation. In the end, the paper argues that The Ballad of Mulan and The Rose of Versailles share a feminist imaginary that resonates strongly with current discourses on gender, identity, and resistance, even though they come from different cultural and generic traditions and are separated by more than fourteen centuries.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030092

Authors: Lucy Mishina Ushuple Lucas Nkwetta Afutendem

This study investigates how personal and family names function as systems of heritage transmission in communities of South West Region, Cameroon and Cross River State, Nigeria. While African onomastics has documented naming traditions, cross-border comparative research on naming as a linguistic–anthropological system remains limited. Using qualitative methods—interviews, participant observation, and ritual documentation—the study analyses the semantic, morphological, and socio-cultural dimensions of indigenous names. The findings show that naming practices operate as structured cultural mechanisms that encode lineage affiliation, birth circumstances, moral expectations, spirituality, and social belonging. The study develops a motivational classification framework demonstrating how names sustain intergenerational knowledge and social cohesion while adapting to religious change, migration, and modernization. By linking linguistic form to social function, the article contributes a comparative perspective to African onomastics and highlights naming as a key resource for cultural continuity in borderland societies.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030091

Authors: Drasko Acimovic

This paper seeks to illuminate the historical and biological intersections between Druze traditions and the silent architecture of Freemasonry within the Balkan milieu, a region historically defined by a constellation of preeminent scientists, writers, and artists whose legacies were forged within the crucible of Masonic thought. Central to this inquiry is the reconstruction of a familial intellectual lineage and genealogy of the author’s ancestor that maintained, for generations, a quietude of profound exchanges with esoteric custodians in France. These subtle conduits suggest the operation of “invisible networks” bound by an unstated ethical and philosophical cipher. To probe the biological currents beneath these traditions, the study unveils genetic evidence of the K1a5a haplogroup, a Levantine signature found within the domestic sphere. By examining this familial case study, the work suggests that the preservation of “the Secret” is not merely an intellectual endeavor, but a biological inheritance, where genetic markers and initiatory silence converge across centuries. The continuity of these invisible networks is historically evidenced by the 1926 Belgrade Masonic Peace Congress, led by French and German Grand Masters. This Legacy directly connects to its centennial peace declaration scheduled in Belgrade for late Juni 2026, showcasing the enduring role of the region in trans-regional diplomacy.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030090

Authors: Funda Taş Çetin Ayşe Mermutlu

At no time in history has social change been as rapid as it is today. Developments in digital technologies have profoundly transformed everyday life, including motherhood experiences. This study examines intergenerational continuity and change in motherhood experiences related to pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare in Mardin, Türkiye, a culturally diverse region where long-standing traditional social relations coexist with rapid social transformation driven by modernization, urbanization, educational expansion, digitalization, and changing gender relations. This socio-cultural context provides a valuable setting for exploring how motherhood has both persisted and changed across generations. The study employed a qualitative phenomenological design based on subjective experiences. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 60 women from two generations (mother–daughter pairs) using purposive and snowball sampling methods. The interview data were analyzed using MAXQDA 24 through thematic analysis. The findings indicate that motherhood continues to be shaped by enduring patriarchal norms while simultaneously being redefined through medicalization, professional expertise, digitalization, and the ideology of intensive mothering. Important continuities remained, particularly regarding maternal responsibility and gendered divisions of care, whereas substantial changes emerged in digitalization, medicalization, parental roles, family planning, anxiety, child-centeredness, and sources of parenting knowledge.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030089

Authors: Ye Tian

Place names do more than label streets—they encode the priorities of the institutions that assign them. This article examines how urban naming practices and heritage governance interact in Changchun, Northeast China, a city whose built environment bears the accumulated imprint of the late imperial era, the Manchukuo colonial period, socialist construction, and contemporary heritage tourism. Drawing on the concept of “place genealogies,” we bring critical toponymy and critical heritage studies into dialogue to analyze how these historical layers have been preserved, transformed, or marginalized in the city’s official commemorative record. Using a mixed-methods design combining archival research, critical discourse analysis, GIS-based toponymic mapping, and semi-structured interviews across three generational cohorts, we identify a pattern we term the functional prioritization of memory: historical periods are foregrounded in heritage development in proportion to their present-day utility, while others are systematically underrepresented. Situating Changchun within the “Global East” framework, we argue that this selective approach reflects a distinctive mode of heritage governance—characterized by pragmatic curation and continuity rather than the sharp commemorative reversals observed in other postsocialist contexts. The findings advance an integrative analytical vocabulary—place genealogies, functional prioritization of memory, genealogical management—that extends critical toponymy beyond its current concentration on Central and Eastern European contexts and contributes to a more globally comparative framework for studying urban memory governance.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030088

Authors: A. K. M. Ahsan Ullah Diotima Chattoraj

This article theorises Hmong migration through the concept of resettled histories, understood as the social and political processes through which histories of war, flight, loss, survival, and belonging are carried into new places, translated into new institutional languages, and contested across generations. Rather than approaching Hmong mobility as a linear movement from Southeast Asia to Western resettlement countries, the article situates Hmong migrations within longer histories of upland mobility, imperial and colonial governance, Cold War militarisation, refugee camps, and contemporary diasporic reconstruction. In response to scholarship on collective memory, postmemory, diasporic memory, refugee critique, digital diaspora, and Asian American studies, the article clarifies that resettled histories are not simply memories preserved after migration. They are histories that become socially active after resettlement through community organisations, veteran memorialisation, Hmong New Year celebrations, oral-history projects, clan networks, digital platforms, political mobilisation, and intergenerational debate. The article also foregrounds differences among Hmong communities by gender, generation, religion, class, political position, national location, and relations to Laos, China, Thailand, France, Australia, and the United States. By engaging contemporary Hmong scholarship and Hmong-produced archives alongside foundational migration and memory theory, the article shows how displaced communities do not merely adapt to host societies; they also struggle to have their histories recognised, narrated, and transmitted. The Hmong case demonstrates that resettlement may provide legal security without ending the historical life of displacement. It therefore offers a lens for rethinking migration as the movement and reconstruction of histories, not only the movement of people.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030087

Authors: Ulugbek Ochilov Utkirbek Ochilov Shohida Karamova Bahodir Absamadov Gulshod Khushmanova Feruza Kurbanova Bakhtiyor Gafurov Abdugappor Insopov Sadokat Makhmudova

Scholarship on Nazar Eshonqul has primarily interpreted his fiction through the frameworks of absurdism, symbolism, and postmodern alienation. In this article, I make a different claim: that his title story, Maymun Yetaklagan Odam (“The Man Led by a Monkey”), and the stories that cluster around it in the 2008 collection can best be read as a sustained meditation on genealogical rupture: what happens to a family and a community when the lines along which memory, value, and identity are supposed to pass are broken. The study is based on memory studies (Halbwachs, the Assmanns), postmemory theory (Hirsch), cultural trauma theory (Alexander, Caruth), and theories of narrative identity and habitus (Ricoeur, Bourdieu, Hall) and reads these in conjunction with recent work on post-Soviet narrative and inherited trauma in similar literary works in order to interpret the painter, his monkey-led-man canvases and his estranged son in close detail. The study argues that the monkey functions as a symbol of inheritance detached from its origin, a transmission that lives on mechanically, without meaning. The narrative fictionalises the violent social changes that were part of twentieth-century Central Asian life and which emptied the spaces of familial and cultural continuity, resulting in alienation, social amnesia and an identity that no longer knows how to tell itself. This reading situates Uzbek modernist fiction within broader debates on genealogy and memory, showing how literary narrative can more effectively illuminate disruptions in cultural inheritance than discursive analysis alone.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030086

Authors: Emma Shaw

This paper reports on the findings of a large-scale survey (N = 1406) in Australia examining what ‘history’ means to practising family historians. Using the Typology of Historical Consciousness as a second-level analytical framework, the study identifies and categorises the diverse ways in which family historians conceptualise and define the discipline. Findings reveal that the majority of respondents articulate a traditional historical consciousness (50.5%), characterised by identity-seeking, generational connection, and a conception of history as inherited continuity. A substantial proportion (27.3%) demonstrate genetic historical consciousness, framing history as a dynamic developmental process linking past, present, and future. Exemplary and critical historical consciousness each account for approximately eleven percent of responses, indicating that lesson-extraction from the past and epistemological scepticism toward inherited historical narratives are minority, though analytically significant, orientations within this population. The study contributes empirical data to ongoing international conversations around the definitions, meanings, and purposes of history, and has implications for how academic historians and heritage institutions engage with the large and historically active community of non-professional historians.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030085

Authors: Te Aorere Ngātai-Tautuku Moana Murray

This article is a conversation-style paper between two takatāpui weaver-scholars presenting the creative praxis behind the 2026 exhibition in Kirikiriroa, Aotearoa, titled Whatua He Whiringa Takatāpui. The exhibition included five takatāpui weavers across Aotearoa who wove together queer Māori communities to reject the colonial binaries of traditional and contemporary, art and craft, and male and female. With multiple activations and ceremonies held in the gallery space, Whatua He Whiringa Takatāpui fostered mana takatāpui, and takatāpui community and thrivance from the harakeke roots in Kirikiriroa. Some of the taonga created in this exhibition are inspired by taonga tawhito, or Māori ancestral treasures, which collapse space–time and allow descendants to connect to the ancestors of generations past. With two such taonga, a kuia’s kete and an 18th-century kaitaka, the authors meet their respective elders to share kōrero that could not—and did not—happen in their lifetimes. How does our creative practice allow us to theorize alongside our grandmothers and generations past?

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030084

Authors: God’sgift Ogban Uwen Maxwell-Borjor Achuk Eba Felix Tabi Okorn Kalu Obasi Kalu Edadi Ilem Ukam

This paper adopts a multisemiotic perspective to examine the significations of monuments in city spaces in Calabar, Nigeria. Data were generated through photo documentation, participant observation and semi-structured interviews in a three-year fieldwork involving 34 participants. Drawing from interactions between the designers, the monuments and the social audience, findings present the monuments as multisemiotic significations of the benefits derived from Western education, gains from missionaries’ activities and their interface with the locals, abolition of the slave trade, sociocultural heritage, histories and identity, potential in tourism and carnivals, and an emerging shift from African traditional religion to Anglo-Christian beliefs. These representations are dialogic expressions of lived experiences and histories of residents that (re)construct memorials of their past and provide a guide for the present and project expectations of the future. The symbolic images integrate localised intentions of the designers drawn from the environment and the people, with appropriate interpretations by the social audiences to situate their indigenous significations within varying global discourses on monuments.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030083

Authors: Hulkar Salimova Ulugbek Ochilov

The novel Mehrobdan Chayon by Abdulla Qodiriy has been studied mostly as a historical, social and literary text, and its representation of motherhood and women as agents of cultural transmission has received little scholarly attention. This article suggests that Qodiriy presents motherhood not primarily as a biological relationship but as a cultural institution, in which Uzbek society is reproduced across generations in terms of literacy, religious and literary canon, comportment and marital expectation. The analysis, based on close reading of three figures, i.e., the neighbourhood girls’ teacher, Nigor oyim; the educated daughter, Ra’no; and the marital-futures-managing woman, Mohlar oyim, and an interdisciplinary cultural-studies approach, demonstrates that the maternal line functions as the novel’s mechanism of cultural continuity, transmitting both knowledge and social constraint. The article adds a Central Asian case to the study of motherhood and rethinks Qodiriy’s domestic scenes as the place where Uzbek womanhood is reproduced and reformed.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030082

Authors: Efnan Dervisoglu Tuncay Bilecen

A Orhan Pamuk’s first novel, Cevdet Bey and His Sons (Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları), published in 1982, follows three generations of an Istanbul bourgeois family from the late Ottoman period to the 1970s. Set during the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey, the novel explores the social and cultural tensions accompanying Turkish modernization. This article examines father–child relationships in the novel through the theoretical framework of multiple modernities. Rejecting the assumption that modernization follows a singular Western model, the study approaches Turkish modernization as a historically specific and layered experience shaped by local social and cultural dynamics. Within this context, the article focuses on paternal authority, masculine identity, intergenerational expectation, and memory across three generations of the family. The study further analyzes how photographs, domestic spaces, rituals, and everyday narratives preserve the symbolic presence of the father after death, allowing paternal authority to persist across generations. The article argues that the novel presents a representative portrait of an Istanbul bourgeois family negotiating the tensions between tradition and modernity during the Ottoman–Republican transition.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030081

Authors: Ulugbek Ochilov Shuhrat Sirojiddinov Rano Kasimova Muborak Khamidova Obodon Adizova Akmal Ziyodullayev Malohat Jabborova Akhmad Rakhmatov Bakhtiyor Adizov Rahmanovich Gulomjon Kholov Nozima Djuraeva

Genealogy is about the things that are transmitted from one generation to the next: blood, name, property but also grief, guilt, belief and dread. A genealogical reading of Stephen King’s fiction suggests that this is the last category of inheritance that preoccupies the writer’s imagination and that the entire oeuvre is more concerned with the transmission of fear and supernatural power through kinship, community and place than with the terror of the haunted subject alone. In King’s fiction, fear is inherited rather than merely experienced, supernatural power is transmitted rather than acquired and horror is reproduced through families, communities and social institutions. This study, which uses King’s novels as evidence rather than as objects of close reading and draws on genealogy studies, cultural and collective memory theory, trauma studies and family-systems thinking, traces four recurrent genealogical structures: the family lineage of fear; the inheritance of supernatural capacity as a form of cultural transmission; the ancestral burden carried by communities and reproduced through their memory; and the consolidation of these into durable genealogies of identity, power and trauma. King’s fiction thus provides an underutilized archive for genealogy studies: a popular genre in which cultural fears of lineage, descent and social reproduction are performed at the interface of the affective and the supernatural. In all these novels, the struggle to break free from what one has inherited is hard and it is this struggle that the present study examines.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030080

Authors: Masiiwa Ragies Gunda

Encounters between Africa and Europe have occurred since ancient times, yet a decisive turn in these relations occurred during the height of European imperial and colonial expansionist explorations from the 15th century. The central question behind this article is how did Europe succeed in emasculating Africans and Africa? Through a multi-focal analysis combining systems-thinking and intersectionality approaches to analyzing these encounters, this article makes the following findings—Europe constructed an asymmetrical relationship in which race, gender, religion, and class were instrumentalized and weaponized, erasing or blurring the distinctions between the sacred and the secular to achieve the total domination and control of Africans while assuring themselves of access to all African resources.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030079

Authors: Eunice Kingsley Ukaegbu Kwita Ojong Adomi Genevive Chimezie Osuji

Traditional namesake practices are indisputable naming conventions among the Bende people, through which old names are maintained without infiltrating the community with new ones. It is believed that, when a person who had lived earlier on, had led an impactful life, there is the need to keep their memories immortalized in the life of another, rather than creating an entirely new one. Thus, the Bende people in Abia State have been consciously identified by the recurring naming identity pattern in which as many as qualified people can bear a particular name in a particular extended family. This peculiar onomastic practice has been so misunderstood by others that it has become imperative to study and investigate why certain names are repeated, by whom, and to also identify the cultural events that herald such processes. To achieve this, this study adopted a descriptive qualitative research design to investigate the linguistic and cultural significance of namesakes. Forty participants were selected, using purposive sampling from the area of study, through whom data was elicited. Participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions were primarily used for data collection. The collected data were translated and analysed using thematic analysis to identify and categorise patterns. This study was based on socio-onomastic theory, and revealed the names recycled, the reasons behind them, the cultural significance of this onomastic practice, the conditioning of names in Bende, the namesake ritual, and the perceptions of the namesake pattern by the community.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030078

Authors: Berivan Can

This study examines the rituals and identity formation processes of a women’s motorcycle group in Adana (Türkiye) through an autoethnographic perspective. While motorcycles are often associated with male-dominated cultures, women riders have increasingly established their own communities and collective practices. Drawing on participant observation, the study introduces the concept of “ethnomotography” to describe autoethnographic research conducted within motorcycle culture. Data were collected through long-term participation in group activities, meetings, rallies, and everyday interactions as a member of the group between September 2022 and June 2024. The findings demonstrate that group identity is constructed and maintained through a series of rituals that resemble “rites of passage”. These rituals include initiation processes, the symbolic use of club insignia and vests, participation in weekly meetings and rallies, collective social responsibility projects, and mechanisms regulating membership continuity. The findings demonstrate that these rituals function as cultural mechanisms through which belonging, solidarity, and collective identity are produced. At the same time, the study shows that while the women’s motorcycle group provides an important space for mutual support, visibility, and empowerment within a predominantly male motorcycle culture, it also selectively reproduces organizational norms commonly associated with motorcycle clubs. Finally, the study suggests that belonging may persist beyond formal organizational membership, indicating that ritual participation produces identities that extend beyond institutional boundaries. By introducing ethnomotography as a perspective for studying motorcycle cultures from within, this research contributes to discussions of ritual, gender and identity.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030077

Authors: Gerald Mandisodza

For over a century, the South African secular state refused to legally recognise Islamic marriages (nikah), primarily due to their potentially polygynous nature. This statutory exclusion left Muslim women without civil legal protections during marriage, upon divorce, and at the death of a spouse. This article examines the fifteen-year strategic litigation campaign led by the Women’s Legal Centre (WLCT), which culminated in the landmark 2022 Constitutional Court judgment. Utilising a qualitative analysis of public court filings, legal pleadings, and judicial decisions, the author explores how marginalised Muslim women used civil courts to bypass and challenge the exclusive authority of conservative male clerical councils (ulama). The article analyses this legal trajectory through two primary theoretical lenses: Robert Cover’s concept of jurispathy (the state’s suppression of a community’s laws) and Afro-feminist frameworks. The findings reveal a critical tension in state-led legal reform. While the 2022 judgment secured vital financial and proprietary protections for women, it simultaneously introduced the limitations of ‘state feminism’ by replacing informal religious control with a rigid state bureaucracy. The paper argues that developing an authentic decolonial family law requires a jurisprudence that enforces the material and financial rights of African Muslim women without forcing their religious unions to conform entirely to Western, secular concepts of civil marriage.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030076

Authors: Lynette Hammond Gerido

Family health history (FHH) is an important tool for cancer risk assessment, yet its clinical utility is undermined by incomplete data, particularly among historically marginalized communities whose family records have been systematically disrupted by slavery, forced displacement, and undocumented status. I conducted a cross-sectional online survey of 1885 US adults affected by cancer to examine associations between genealogy engagement and FHH confidence and to assess variation across sociodemographic subgroups. Genealogy research was the single strongest modifiable predictor of FHH confidence, with participants reporting genealogy research more than twice as likely to report high confidence compared to those who did not (OR = 2.07, 95% CI 1.72–2.50), a relationship that persisted after full adjustment for age, sex, race, income, and education. Despite comparable rates of genealogy engagement, Black and Hispanic respondents reported substantially lower FHH confidence than White respondents. These findings suggest that while interest in genealogy is already widespread and self-motivated in the population, current clinical tools for FHH collection are inadequate to leverage this interest equitably. Next-generation FHH tools should be designed to reflect the dynamic, collaborative features of genealogy platforms rather than static medical forms, and their development must be grounded in community-centered design principles that prioritize populations for whom incomplete family history poses an added burden.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030075

Authors: Ndidzulafhi Mudau

This study analyses the Reformed liturgy as a site of ritual contestation that both shapes and facilitates the reconstruction and transformation of gender roles and identities in African contexts. Rooted in genealogical and decolonial scholarship, it examines how a ministry, long-reformed yet fundamentally integral to African-congregational communities, continues to express masculine forms of agency already present in reformed worship that influence perceptions of power, belonging, and identity. The emphasis is on Reformed communities in Southern Africa, where the arrangements of liturgical practices, preaching, eldership, sacramental administration, and life-cycle rites persist in grappling with a colonial past from an African epistemological perspective. This study examines the intersections of baptism, marriage, funerals, and ordination with customary rites such as lobola (bridewealth), initiation, and ancestor veneration, drawing on liturgical theology, ritual studies, and African gender scholarship to reveal both reproductive and resistant dynamics while simultaneously reshaping a new order within these practices. This article examines the ways in which worship facilitates continuity, rupture, and transformation within African gender identities, while seeking to situate Reformed liturgy within an African context of ritual ecologies rather than to contrast them. This approach may enhance decolonial discourse by illuminating contemporary discussions on liturgical studies and gender.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030074

Authors: Muchativugwa Liberty Hove

Neither women’s studies nor lesbian and gay studies offers an adequate theoretical or political base for disruptive scholarship. Reading and interpreting Southern African writers, especially Sindiwe Magona and Ngugi wa Thiong’o, promotes women’s studies as an academic and political approach to both gender and the erotic. Drawing on genealogies of rupture and intergenerational studies, we argue that the feminist is a positionality that must be widely available to challenge heterosexual perspectives and become a catalyst for audiences to engage in nuanced analyses of discourses on places and genres—narrative in particular—where memories are rearticulated and elaborated. This article explores how the narratives of Magona, Ngugi, and Soyinka inform and complicate the erasure, erosion, and amnesia that accompany contemporary imaginaries of what is re/membered. We challenge the tendency to evaluate African feminisms as only either oppressive or empowering and read the selected texts and their prototypical characters as dynamic embodiments that inform gendered spaces across both the attachments that people hold to particular gender identities and styles and recognising the punitive realities of dominant gender expectations. The article takes a positionality on the often troubled relationship between feminism and femininity, a critical but generous reading that highlights the potential for an affirmative orientation towards identity politics. This study utilises the theoretical lenses of border thinking and decolonial and African feminisms to interrogate matrifocal borderlands and the sociohistorical and cultural dis/continuities of being and becoming. We explore notions of the entanglement of motherhood, daughterhood, wifehood, and sisterhood as morphing identities. These are identities at the margins of political, sociocultural, and gender normativities in African literature. Magona’s “threshold people”, like Ngugi’s perfect nine, destabilise, disrupt, and refuse to be subordinated as they codify living differently in the in-between worlds. Magona, for instance, laminates the challenging discourse of contestation to map difficult, dangerous, and marginal spaces where women live at the borders of sociocultural, religious, ethnic, and gendered norms. These are spaces suffused with affective possibilities—defensiveness, shame, anxiety, anger, curiosity—and the women have to develop relational solidarities in negotiating hyper-visibilities or (in)visibilities within the 21st-century global south.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10030073

Authors: Maia Berryman-Kamp

Whānau (family) is a foundational unit of Māori social organisation, and the replacement of Māori family structures with Western nuclear models is widely regarded as among the most significant tools of colonisation. As Māori move toward decolonisation and re-Indigenisation, approaches to family and identity are shifting from imported structures. However, takatāpui and irahuhua (LGBTQ+ and gender-diverse Māori) are rarely explicitly included in these movements. Contemporary framings of whānau within Māori discourse can inadvertently reiterate colonial talking points, particularly regarding binary gender roles, divisions of labour, and the boundaries of what constitutes whānau. Building on takatāpui scholarship and the findings from three separate wānanga (targeted collective conversations) across a 1.5-year period with 18 irahuhua participants, the article examines the contrasts and connections between “coming out” and “coming in” to tradition and whānau. These conversations revealed that when participants enact self-determination and “come in” to their whānau, they demonstrate pathways to strengthen and restore Māori understandings of whānau and challenge the role of historic inquiry in modern Māori politics. Grounded in one wānanga participant’s understanding that “family pressures that make you feel divided [are] just what the coloniser wanted,” this article explores how takatāpui and irahuhua strengthen their communities and demonstrate sovereignty in settler contexts.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020072

Authors: Victoria Enefiok Etim Jude Terkaa Tyoh

Language embodies traditions, values, and collective identity, bridging gaps between generations and geographies. Maintaining consistent language policies at home and in communities remains challenging, with research showing that only a few families have explicit rules about language use and few enforce them regularly. The study explores strategies for heritage language maintenance (HLM) to mitigate language attrition among Anaañ bilinguals residing in the Akpabuyo and Calabar South Local Government Areas of Cross River State, Nigeria. The study draws on social identity theory, which links language use to identity, motivation, and group affiliation, thereby influencing language maintenance. Using a qualitative approach, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 40 participants, selected purposively from Anaañ speakers in the study areas. Thematic analysis is employed to identify patterns and themes, revealing approaches for heritage language maintenance to curb language attrition. Findings reveal that despite some Anaañ speakers’ negative attitude towards their HL, others value it, keep it alive, and are ready to pass it to the future generations. This will preserve cultural identity and foster a sense of pride, belonging and shared values among Anaañ people, especially those residing in Southern Cross River State.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020071

Authors: Kieran E. James Sheikh A. Tanzil

Although Marx’s industrial reserve army (IRAL) theory suggests that Mexican Americans should be acknowledged by the capitalist class and perhaps resented by the white working class and middle class who compete with them in the labor market, the ideology and discourse of Trump and his supporters has labelled them as an illegitimate foreign body which pollutes the racial and cultural purity of America. In fact, this discourse has overshadowed earlier discourses that pointed to their contributions to local economies. Even capitalist business owners and major shareholders may give their commitment to this newly reinvented, but actually very old, discourse even when it goes against earlier ideas and their own self-interests. If anything, the discursive pattern of vilifying Mexican-descended people ensures their persistence—in the mind of capitalists—as a potential IRAL. We connect our ideas to related sociological events such as the establishment of “whitopias” and the whitening of the gated communities.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020070

Authors: Seoyoung Kim

Nuclear contamination challenges assumptions that harm can be contained through technological control, political borders, or bodily separation. Across the Asia-Pacific, radioactive exposure moves unevenly through racialised, gendered, and colonial histories, rendering some bodies more vulnerable to ecological violence than others. Nuclear regimes continue to depend upon theological logics of purity, sacrificial exclusion, and protected innocence. This article develops a spirituality of fermentation through Asian eco-feminist theology and the Korean practice of sakhim. Fermentation becomes a practice of sustaining wounded life through endurance, permeability, and communal care. From this spirituality of fermentation, I develop the concept of Vital Fluidity as an ethical and theological framework for understanding how life continues through shared vulnerability, where bodies, nourishment, and histories remain deeply entangled. The article contributes to intersectional debates in theology, religion, gender, and ecology by approaching contamination through relation rather than separation. Under nuclear conditions, ethical responsibility emerges through practices that hold grief, contamination, memory, and nourishment together within shared existence. Fermentation therefore becomes a practical theological model for living with nuclear bodies.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020069

Authors: Themba Shingange

The conceptualisations of the “sacred” and the “secular” are shaped by diverse entities in different epochs and spaces of society. Again, these conceptualisations often exhibit power dynamics, epistemic privileges, and the classification of people using the notions of human and non-human zones. In Africa, the historic intersectionality of the empire, mission, and conversion shaped, and continues to shape, the nuances of the sacred and secular in race, gender, and religion. Thus, this article used a desktop approach to analyse both the primary and secondary literature to explore the nuances of this phenomenon in this historic intersectionality and how its legacies continue to dominate the contemporary context. The preliminary findings showed that the historic missionary/colonial conceptualisations of the sacred and secular on race, gender, and religion remain the fulcrum of the contemporary narratives and their consequences. Thus, the article argues that decoloniality can serve as a lens in exploring this phenomenon and as an option to transform the current status quo.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020068

Authors: Josias Tembo

In this article, I show how discourses of African tradition, human rights, and African indigeneity circumscribe and curtail the emancipatory potential of discussions of same-sex relations in Africa. The terms of the debate on both sides—those who claim that same-sex relations are ‘un-African’ and the critics who rightly challenge this view—are circumscribed by what I call the religious-secular divide. This divide continues to entrap discussions of African humanity and agency within racial-colonial strictures of tradition/religion and secularity/modernity. Instead, by engaging with the work of Amilcar Cabral and Aimé Césaire, I develop a notion of decolonial or emancipatory African agency and a way of understanding African humanity as an alternative basis for engaging with the question of same-sex relations in Africa, African traditions, and African indigeneity, and with questions of African humanity and decolonial agency more generally.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020067

Authors: Therese Smith

In this article, I explore Blackface Minstrels as a burlesque representation of African Americans. Black minstrelsy was an American nineteenth-century entertainment sensation that was subsequently exported to Europe and sustained there. While it would be impossible in this article to give an overview of the history of blackface minstrelsy, it is necessary to first tease out some of the characteristics of the genre, at particular historical moments, in order to reach an understanding of the genre’s popularity, how it sat in its social (and primarily race-sculpted) landscape, and examine some of the inherent contradictions therein. I scrutinise in particular blackface minstrelsy’s reception by Irish audiences, probing the politics of representation therein involved. To this end, I also investigate issues of social and cultural visibility in an Irish landscape that was remarkably homogeneous racially until at least the 1990s. As two core documents in this regard, I firstly examine the BBC’s ‘Black and White Minstrel Show’, created by George Inns in 1958, which ran from 1958 to 1978, in black and white, ironically, until 1967, and thereafter in colour. The second document that I examine is the very successful Irish Lyons Tea Company’s advertisement from the 1980s, which featured stick-figure black-and-white minstrels in stereotypical makeup and ‘standard minstrel Kentucky dress’ singing and dancing to a simple but memorable jingo.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020066

Authors: Raquel Levy-Toledano Wim Penninx Michael Waas Goran Runfeldt Michael Sager Paul Maier Adam Brown

This Y-chromosome study of Moroccan Jews, the largest conducted to date, analyzes the patrilineal origins of 288 men of genealogically verified Moroccan Jewish descent through the Avotaynu DNA Project, identifying 111 distinct founder lineages. The long-standing hypothesis of large-scale Berber Judaization has not previously been tested at full Y-chromosome resolution; our findings provide the first systematic evidence against it. Approximately 71% of founder lineages and 80% of individuals trace to haplogroups common in the Middle East. Only 4.5% of founder lineages are of autochthonous North African origin. Iberian-origin lineages account for 11% of Moroccan Jewish founder lineages reflecting sustained demographic and cultural exchange between Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula over many centuries. Split dates between Moroccan and Ashkenazi or Sephardic subclades cluster between the 5th and 8th centuries CE, suggesting that the ancestral lineages of contemporary Moroccan Jews were already present across the Mediterranean basin during late Antiquity and the early medieval period. Analysis of 190 distinct Moroccan Jewish surname roots identifies 29 polygenic and 30 monogenic surnames, and demonstrates that the linguistic origin of a surname, including surnames of Maghrebi morphology, does not necessarily reflect its bearer’s Y-chromosome ancestry. Unlike Ashkenazi Jews, Moroccan Jews show no evidence of a founder effect or genetic bottleneck, and display a remarkable patrilineal diversity. Among the individual lineages documented here are the first paleogenetic link between a contemporary Moroccan Jewish patriline and a victim of the 1348 Tàrrega pogrom, an Iberian/Ashkenazi split traceable to tenth-century al-Andalus, and an unexpected connection between a predominantly Moroccan Jewish lineage and the Saint Thomas Syrian Christian community of Kerala. Moroccan Jewish patrilineal heritage is overwhelmingly Middle Eastern in origin and has been preserved with remarkable continuity across two millennia of diaspora, persecution, and migration.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020065

Authors: Motadi Masa Sylvester

This article examines how women’s ritual authority and identity are negotiated in contemporary mourning practices among the Tsonga. Although African scholarship has increasingly addressed gender, widowhood, and ritual life, limited attention has been paid to mourning as a gendered space in which women’s authority is simultaneously exercised, regulated, and contested. The article addresses this gap by analysing mourning not as a static cultural residue, but as a dynamic ritual field shaped by kinship, seniority, obligation, memory, and social change. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative document analysis of recent scholarly literature, ethnographic studies, and theoretically relevant texts on Tsonga mourning, African ritual practice, kinship, and gender. The analysis is guided by a decolonial perspective, which recentres African epistemologies and lived ritual meanings, and a genealogical perspective, which traces how authority, identity, and obligation are transmitted and reworked across generations. The article argues that Tsonga mourning practices position women as custodians of ritual continuity while also subjecting them to moral discipline and social regulation. Its contribution lies in bringing together African gender studies, ritual studies, genealogy, and decolonial scholarship to show how mourning remains a vital site for the ongoing negotiation of gender, belonging, and cultural authority.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020064

Authors: Donald Mark C. Ude

The article argues that existing conceptualizations of secularity ought to be expanded to embrace a plurality of practices and forms of life within African societies. In other words, secularity must be understood as a plurality of historically situated forms of life rather than a single Western conceptual template. Two interconnected objectives define the article. The first is to show shows how the concepts of “deprivatization,” “conditions of belief,” and “postsecularity,” drawn from José Casanova, Charles Taylor, and Jürgen Habermas respectively, may contribute to a pluralistic conception of secularity. The second is to furnish concrete instances of secular forms of life in African societies by exploring the Igbo socio-religious world, underlining its secularity. In foregrounding African forms of secularity, the article not only challenges Western hegemonic appropriation of the secular category and its implicit race-religion nexus, but also contributes to ongoing efforts to rethink, ‘decolonize,’ and deracialize secularity as a global category of social analysis. Ultimately, the future of secularity lies in ongoing, decentered contestations and conversations across multiple worlds.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020063

Authors: God’sgift Ogban Uwen Itang Egbung Stephen Magor Ellah Josephat Adoga Odey

This article examines the ethnopragmatic significance of religiously based personal names among the Agwagune people of Biase in Cross River State, Nigeria. Insights from a socio-onomastic framework are used to account for the situational, socioreligious and sociocultural contexts of Agwagune naming practices that reinforce the people’s belief systems and worldview. Using participant observation and semi-structured interviews, data were generated during a nine-month fieldwork session involving 30 participants who were knowledgeable in the traditional religious socio-onomastic tradition. Our findings show that Agwagune people draw from their symbolic linguistic resources to bestow personal names that become messaging instruments that express traditional religious affiliations, sociocultural practices and indigenous belief systems. The personal names bear ethnopragmatic relevance that manifests in the veneration of deities and traditional worship; significations in rituals and religious festivals; mysteries of death, reincarnation and commemoration; traditional familial hierarchies; and the sociocultural connection between the people and their physical and spiritual universe. Aside from contributing to the global discourses on socio-onomastics from the perspectives of a micro-minority ethnolinguistic group, the study is also relevant because it serves as documentary material for an endangered and transitioning socio-onomastic practice that characterizes the people’s cosmology, belief systems and lived experiences that are gradually being replaced by Christian orientations.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020062

Authors: Nasar Meer

This article examines how social science has recurrently positioned Islam as a problem-case for European narratives of modernity, simultaneously comparable as ‘a religion’ yet cast as the religion that ‘doesn’t fit’ secularisation, differentiation, and liberal public-reason expectations. Moving beyond the view that social science merely misdescribed Islam, this article argues that Islam has often been made to carry an explanatory burden internal to Europe’s self-narration, a limit-case through which stalled secularisation, anxious liberalism, and contested universals are rendered intelligible and governable. The article returns to canonical texts that helped establish such comparative imagination, including Hegel’s philosophy of history, Weber’s typologies of religious ‘bearers,’ and Gellner’s account of Islam as a comprehensive ‘blueprint’ of social order, to show how durable contrast effects were installed and later reactivated in contemporary debates on secularism, gender, security, and belonging. Drawing on Asad’s critique of the category ‘religion’, the article theorises ‘disruption’ as a recurring genre through which Islam is made exceptional, disruptive to secularisation theory, to accounts of modern differentiation, and to liberal self-understanding. It concludes by appealing to a reflexive sociology of religion that historicises its own categories, compares entanglements rather than civilisations, and treats Muslim intellectual traditions as theory-producing interlocutors rather than merely empirical ‘data’.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020061

Authors: Isaac Nortey Darko Noah Boakye-Yiadom

Introduction: This article examines the roles of chiefs and traditional leaders in fostering environmental sustainability, collective responsibility, and accountability in Ghana. It argues that chieftaincy functioned as a key institution for regulating human relationships with land, natural resources, and social order in precolonial governance systems. By grounding environmental stewardship in customary authority, moral obligation, and spiritual legitimacy, chiefs helped sustain communal balance and cohesion. Methods: The article uses a conceptual and historical-interpretive approach to analyze the chieftaincy institution’s normative, political, and spiritual functions in environmental governance. It draws on interpretations of precolonial governance structures, customary practices, and indigenous cosmologies to examine how chiefs exercised authority and shaped collective conduct. Results: The analysis shows that chiefs, with their councils, established and enforced rules, norms, and sanctions that promoted sustainable community life. Their authority included custodianship of land, social order, and sacred obligations. As representatives of ancestors and intermediaries between the human and spiritual realms, chiefs reinforced a moral framework in which environmental harm was seen as both a social offence and a disruption of divine and ancestral balance. The nonpartisan nature of chieftaincy provided a unifying platform for guiding communities toward shared responsibilities, regardless of political differences. Discussion: The article concludes that chieftaincy historically served as an important mechanism for environmental stewardship and ethical governance in Ghana. Chiefs were positioned as custodians of a balanced relationship between people, land, and spiritual order. Revisiting these indigenous governance principles offers insight into how traditional authority can contribute to contemporary discussions on sustainability, accountability, and community-based environmental governance.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020060

Authors: Daniel Pratt Morris-Chapman

Over the last forty years British Methodism has moved increasingly toward becoming an inclusive Church. Indeed, today, the concept of inclusion may accurately be described as a hallmark of British Methodism. However, while the Methodist Conference has formally identified principles governing its practice in this area there has been limited discussion as to how far these developments cohere with the church’s doctrinal standards which are officially related to John Wesley’s writings. This paper explores the continuity and discontinuity between Wesley’s theology and the commitment to inclusion characteristic of his spiritual descendants. In particular, it probes Wesley’s actual practice in relation to the admission and expulsion of members and evaluates whether or not his conception of holiness really serves as a warrant for the conception of inclusion, practically operative in contemporary British Methodism. In exploring these questions the paper explores whether or not John Wesley really was as Inclusive as contemporary British Methodists imagine.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020059

Authors: Leonie Pihama Margie Kahukura Hohepa Linda Tuhiwai Smith Graham Hingangaroa Smith Jenny Lee-Morgan Matt Roskruge Herearoha Skipper

This article discusses the role of Kaupapa Māori in transforming Māori educational experiences within Aotearoa (New Zealand) over the past forty years. Since the initial articulation of Kaupapa Māori from the mid-1980s, there has been an exponential growth in its development and application across Aotearoa (New Zealand). There has been extensive documentation that it was within the education sector that Kaupapa Māori initiatives were developed and initiated by Māori in response to the failure of mainstream conventional education to provide for Māori children. That response was formalized through the establishment of Te Kōhanga Reo (Māori Language Nests) and Kura Kaupapa Māori (Māori Immersion Schools), which were led by Māori. Since then, there has been an increased utilization of Kaupapa Māori theory as a foundation for understanding, explaining and critiquing key issues facing Māori and Aotearoa more broadly. In the research project “Kaupapa Māori: Creating an Indigenous Model for Systems Change”, we undertook a series of interviews (n = 80) with Māori people involved in a range of sites who utilize Kaupapa Māori as the foundation in their lives, both personally, as whānau (extended family), and in their work. A key question posed was: What are the success factors within Kaupapa Māori that can inform innovative models for systems change that will transform inequities experienced by Māori? This was asked to gain insights into how Kaupapa Māori have created transformative and meaningful change across a range of sectors and sites. Where the wider project included participation from across a broad range of social contexts, this article looks at key themes that arose from how kaikōrero (participants) saw transformative change occurring through being a part of Kaupapa Māori educational developments. Kaikōrero shared multiple ways in which transformation occurred for individuals, within their whānau (extended families), through intergenerational changes and impacts at community and systems levels.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020058

Authors: Yaw Ofosu-Asare

This paper argues that the colonial introduction of Christianity in Africa must be understood as a reordering of personhood, moral feeling, and the conditions under which lived experience becomes intelligible, rather than as a change in formal religious affiliation alone. Drawing on scholarship in African philosophy, religious history, European intellectual history, and African psychology, the paper traces how missionary Christianity reclassified African spiritual worlds, recoded suffering and misfortune, and disrupted the transmission of spiritual knowledge across generations. Crucially, it situates this encounter within the longer history of Christianity’s own disenchantment: the suppression, within dominant Protestant and Enlightenment traditions, of enchanted practices that had characterised European Christianity for over a millennium. The missionary traditions that condemned African spirit mediation, ancestral veneration, and ritual healing were carriers of a tradition that had practised structurally analogous things before disciplining them out of its own self-understanding. The paper shows that colonial religion produced layered forms of subjectivity in which ancestral obligation, Christian doctrine, communal personhood, moral anxiety, and therapeutic pluralism coexist in tension. The concept of ontological compression is proposed to name the condition under which parts of the self become unsayable within authorised vocabularies, a condition rendered doubly intense by the fact that the compressing tradition had already performed this narrowing upon itself. Rather than treating African spirituality as residue, superstition, or cultural background, the paper proposes that it should be approached as a living philosophical and psychological archive through which many people continue to interpret suffering, relation, responsibility, and reality itself.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020057

Authors: Khalid Ahmed Hassan Mahmood Farah Kashif Aasia Nusrat Ruqia Saba Ashraf

This study examines women’s marginalization and agency in We Need New Names by situating the novel within broader frameworks of transnational genealogies, spatial politics, and colonial migration legacies. Utilizing Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), based on Lazar’s gender ideology and discourse approach in (de)constructing gender identities and gender equality, along with Homi K. Bhabha’s Third Space Theory, this study analyses how diaspora displacement and colonial past influence gendered identities. Through a qualitative and interpretive analysis of select textual episodes, the study reveals how spatial displacement, linguistic fragmentation, and cultural hybridity both inhibit and facilitate female empowerment. Women counter marginalization using everyday tactics such as silence, storytelling, embodied resistance, and discursive bargaining, turning marginal spaces into spaces of resistance. This paper makes a theoretical contribution to migration studies, spatial inequality, and decolonization by exploring gendered identities in transnational and postcolonial settings.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020056

Authors: Suhail Ahmad

This paper examines the colonial and postcolonial construction of the underdeveloped Hindu male ego in V.S. Naipaul’s “One Out of Many”, focusing on immigrant Santosh—who migrates from Bombay to Washington—as a site where gender, caste, and race intersect. Using Stephen Greenblatt’s technique of New Historicism as a methodological tool, it argues that Santosh’s posture, psychological and sexual crises epitomize colonial and psychoanalytical discourses that feminized Hindu masculinity through martial race ideology and psychoanalytic tropes. The paper shows how Naipaul employs, in the novella, colonial period’s circulating Hindu symbolic motifs such as Kali, Prayashchittam (purificatory rituals), bronze gods, and brass plates to reinforce images of Hindu men as guilt-ridden, impure, sexually deficient and lacking assertiveness, and gift of vison. The paper further argues by excavating an archived letter of Sudhir Kakar how Naipaul in India: A Wounded Civilization appropriated Sudhir Kakar’s psychoanalytic approaches to undermine Hindu masculinity. It concludes that Santosh is less a universal immigrant and more a culturally historicized projection of colonial, and psychoanalytical discourses on emasculation.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020055

Authors: Loreen Maseno Sophia Chirongoma

The writing scene in East Africa has witnessed a rise in the emergence of contemporary literature. One example is Dust, a 2014 novel by the Kenyan Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, who, in 2003, was awarded the Caine prize for African writing. The novel Dust has been reviewed from various angles. Dust introduces two female characters, Akai and Ajany, who are both connected to a key character in the novel: Odidi Oganda. How do the characters Akai and Ajany exemplify forms of hybrid identity shaped by colonial and diasporic contexts? This essay is about these two female characters who provide adequate material with which to explore hybrid identities during the colonial period and in the diaspora. Both experience trauma, which impacts their associations in their local communities and in the diaspora. Akai is tremendously affected by colonialism. She is a contract laborer impregnated by a British colonial settler who later attempts to kill her. Ajany moves in with an abusive man, whom she stabs to death in self-defense right before fleeing Brazil as a fugitive. This essay uses a Postcolonial Feminist lens to explore how these two characters propagate cultural resilience, challenge nationalist narratives, and demonstrate resistance. It employs the method of Narratological Text Analysis in order to present Akai and Ajany in their particular contexts. For analysis, the essay adopts a dialectical type of literary theorising.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020054

Authors: Chenae Christensen-Duerden Sarah M. Coyne Loren Marks Erin K. Holmes Ashley Larsen Gibby

Although identity development is often framed as a task of adolescence, identity continues to evolve across the life course. Midlife, in particular, involves significant role change, reflection, and meaning-making, yet women’s midlife identity development within religious contexts remains understudied. Using life course and narrative identity frameworks, this qualitative study examined how women navigate identity shifts during midlife within a family-centered faith context. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 women aged 38–69 who identified as practicing members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in six countries. A grounded theory analysis revealed three interrelated processes, identity disruption, re-evaluation, and revision, while anchoring identity in core sources of meaning. Faith and purpose provided continuity across transitions, supporting coherence, resilience, and growth. These findings challenge deficit-based models and position midlife as a generative period of ongoing identity development.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020053

Authors: Beatrice Taringa

Africa is historically celebrated as the cradle of humankind. However, there is doubt on whether she is maintaining her own originality and position as the motherland and fatherland of all humanity. Although globalisation has impacted all continents and states, its negative effects seem to be skewing towards African and in particular Zimbabwean Shona families. This paper examines how DNA testing has impacted on some of the Shona families in Zimbabwe. The Shona community in Zimbabwe is culturally porous and receptive in terms of traditional, religious, linguistic and cultural values. They embraced Western democracy that is premised on human rights principles, constitutionalism, and citizenship, which, however, do not guarantee their belongingness. As some of the Shona families in Zimbabwe drifted away from the traditional cultural belief system campus, they got into a foreign and alien worldview that is dictated by the host in the name of technology. This has led to excessive reliance on foreign systems that are appearing like global standards yet they are disempowering them and causing them emotional and social distress. The reliance is a result of neocolonialism, linguistic and cultural imperialism that needs decolonisation. Thus, the paper adopts a qualitative approach based on an illuminating multiple case study design of six purposively selected scenarios aired on the The Closure DNA Show programme broadcasted on Zimbabwe Television (ZTV). The Afrocentric paradigm serves as a lens to uncover some of the perceptions of Shona families in Zimbabwe on DNA testing and its implications on parenthood, the family unit, and identity. The findings reveal that DNA testing is perceived as gender divisive and a destroyer of the family unit and exposing children to vulnerability, while it is also perceived positively as a way of (dis)affirming identity, which is crucial among the Shona. The paper recommends that other television programmes be screened based on their implications on gender relations, the family unit and identity.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020052

Authors: Hundzukani P. Khosa

With a focus on how both traditions influence identity, memory, and lived spirituality in African contexts, this article examines the theological and cultural interactions between Christianity and African Traditional Religion (ATR). This study highlights the ongoing interaction between ATR and Christianity as two significant systems ingrained in African life, notwithstanding the continent’s religious diversity. In Africa, religion and culture are inextricably linked, influencing social customs, moral standards, and a sense of community but also constantly changing due to personal experience. African spiritual systems were frequently disregarded by missionary Christianity in the past, which led to conflicts that still exist in modern African Christianity. The importance of ancestors, rituals, and supernatural beliefs all of which are still fundamental to the worldviews of many African Christians are areas where these conflicts are especially noticeable. This article makes the case for a positive theological approach that acknowledges ATR as an essential tool for African Christian identity rather than as a rival or subpar system, drawing on the idea of inculturation. The article illustrates how African spirituality serves as a storehouse of collective memory and identity over generations by delving into issues of ancestry, ritual, and spiritual mediation. Additionally, it offers a liberative and dialogical theological concept that promotes understanding between Christianity and ATR. Such an approach not only bridges spiritual divides but also contributes to the development of a contextually grounded liberation theology that affirms indigenous knowledge systems while remaining open to global theological discourse.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020051

Authors: Madalina Iordache Ioana Chelu Daniel Dicu Ioan Gaica

This study aimed to estimate life expectancy at birth and survival patterns within a multigenerational family from Romania (102 individuals), whose members lived across the period 1900–2024. Life expectancy was estimated using abridged synthetic cohort life tables, and the results were interpreted through survival curve analysis. Life expectancy at birth was estimated at approximately 84 years for females and 80 years for males, while the overall life expectancy for the total family population was 81 years, representing a weighted estimate derived from sex-specific life tables, with weights corresponding to the proportion of females and males in the studied population, rather than a simple arithmetic mean, following standard demographic practice. The resulting survival curves exhibited a clear Type I survival pattern, characterized by low mortality at younger ages and an increasing concentration of deaths at older ages. When contextualized using recent Eurostat data, the life expectancy estimated for the analyzed family exceeds current national-level values reported for Romania and is close to the European Union average, particularly for females. These findings indicate a favorable survival profile at the familial level and illustrate the usefulness of life tables for investigating longevity patterns in small populations.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020050

Authors: Aaron Rosenthal Saher Selod

Objectives: Government surveillance of American Muslims has grown following 9/11, yet little scholarship has analyzed how this activity impacts political participation. We examine racial and ethnic variation in American Muslims’ experiences of state surveillance, as well as the connection between those experiences and voter turnout. Methods: Using a survey of 1000 American Muslims, we identify racial and ethnic patterns in being singled out in airports and by the police. We then analyze how being stopped in these venues shaped turnout behavior in the 2016 presidential election. Results: Black Muslims are more likely to encounter surveillance from the police, while Muslims who identify as Asian report the highest degree of monitoring in airports. We find that police encounters are linked to decreased electoral participation, but being singled out by airport security is not tied to a change in turnout. Conclusions: These findings provide a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of who is impacted by surveillance in the US and how that surveillance shapes American democracy.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020049

Authors: Nomatter Sande

There is a correlation between colonial histories and contemporary migration practices, and this paper examines these transnational enduring connections. Using a qualitative thematic synthesis of existing interdisciplinary sources, this paper argues that the politics of space, migration, and identity in the present cannot be fully comprehended without tracing their colonial genealogies. The findings demonstrate that colonial migrations in all forms (forced, enslaved, or settled) formed transnational genealogies that determine who moves, who is stopped, who belongs, and who is an outsider. The paper concludes that understanding current migration politics, spatial inequalities, and identities requires an appreciation of transnational genealogies that connect the past to the present. The paper suggests that colonial history is more than a background but a framework that sets the conditions within which migration occurs today. This paper contributes to showing that family functions as a neglected site where genealogies are transmitted and contested across generations.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020048

Authors: Wendy Hermeston

Permanency planning, an approach to the placement of children in out-of-home care, is central to child and family system practice, policy and law. Using the example of legislative reforms in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, this article explores how privileging legal permanence leads to ongoing failures to account for Aboriginal worldviews and child-rearing practices. Drawing on qualitative research, including Yarning Circles and semi-structured interviews that I conducted with Aboriginal community members in NSW, the findings contribute to limited evidence on permanence from Indigenous perspectives, revealing how familial and cultural connectedness shape belonging and social and emotional wellbeing and highlighting the importance of children’s ongoing connections with extended Aboriginal family, community and culture. Aboriginal understandings of permanence align more closely with cultural, relational and physical domains than with the construct of legal permanence that predominates in permanency planning approaches. Prioritizing legally permanent care arrangements above other domains poses long-term risks to Aboriginal children’s social and emotional wellbeing, demonstrating the need for “deep-level” cultural adaptation in child welfare law, policy and practice. The findings have implications for decolonizing child protection and repositioning Aboriginal conceptualizations of permanence as the foundation for legislation, policy and practice—reforms that must be Indigenous-led, culturally grounded from the outset, and anchored in full implementation of principles embedding self-determination and Indigenous children’s fundamental rights.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020047

Authors: Ănúolúwapọ̀ Adéwùnmí Adétọ̀míwá Elvis Banoeye Batung Hasiyatu Abubakari

This study investigates the role of naming practices as cultural repositories that preserve family, lineage, and community identity. It explores how anthroponymy encodes histories of ancestry, migration, settlement, and sociopolitical organisation in two West African societies, Dàgáárè-speaking communities and Yorùbá communities. Adopting a comparative onomastic ethnographic approach, this research analyses names among the two selected cultures. Data is drawn from interviews, school registers, attendance sheets, and cultural practices, with emphasis on how names record genealogical descent, settlement histories, occupational roles, spiritual affiliations, and ethical expectations. In Dàgáárè and Yorùbá culture, bal/baloo yoe (clan names) and lineage names identify descent from founding ancestors, document migration and settlement, mark ritual responsibilities, memorialise historical events, and regulate kinship and marriage through totemic and spiritual identities. This study argues that names in Dàgáárè- and Yorùbá-speaking societies operate as cultural texts that preserve and transmit heritage across generations. The significant implications extend to linguistics, anthropology, and heritage studies, where names can be leveraged as tools for cultural preservation and historical analysis.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020046

Authors: Ruth Ratidzai Murambadoro Carol Lynne D’Arcangelis

This article juxtaposes the Indigenous communitarian feminist concept cuerpo-territorio and the African proverb musha mukadzi drawing on ethnographic research with Zimbabwean women activists in the context of land reform, thereby expanding the scope of both concepts. Our entry point is Zimbabwean women’s struggles for land in the Third Chimurenga, or post-2000 Fast-Track Land Reform Programme. Despite egalitarian promises, land redistribution efforts have favored political elites and men, reinforcing colonial capitalist practices of extraction and accumulation. Our comparative exercise reveals musha mukadzi as a political discourse that enables Indigenous women to reclaim their body–land relationship through struggles for land reform and beyond. In the process, we identify four key resonances between musha mukadzi and cuerpo-territorio, namely, an ontological similarity expressed through Indigenous women’s commitments to and responsibilities for re/generating the network of life; a common appeal to ancestral (feminist) wisdom to enhance ongoing struggle; the political mobilization of the concepts by Indigenous women to seek liberation from patriarchal, neo/colonial oppression; and, their conceptual utility as feminist analytics. Finally, we lay the foundation for further work on the possibilities of transnational feminist solidarity between Indigenous women in Africa and Abya Yala.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020045

Authors: Khalid Ahmed Hassan Mahmood Sardaraz Khan Aasia Nusrat

This study analyses NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names through the framework of intersectional feminism, a concept introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw that examines how multiple identities, such as race, gender, and class, intersect to shape distinct experiences of marginalization. Bulawayo’s narrative, centred on the protagonist Darling, reveals the complex social forces she encounters as she navigates cultural and geographic transitions. Through a blend of English and Shona, the text reflects cultural duality and the tensions of migration, including acculturation and displacement. The episodic structure mirrors the fragmentation inherent in Darling’s African upbringing and her transcontinental journey. The analysis situates the novel alongside contemporary works such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, highlighting shared thematic concerns with identity, oppression, and the migrant experience. Ultimately, the study argues that Bulawayo’s representation of intersecting identities enriches the novel’s engagement with gender, race, class, and the transformative potential of language in articulating minority experiences.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020044

Authors: Bruce Durie

The question of which Scottish surnames constitute a Clan and which do not is hotly contested. It is wrongly felt, especially in the Scots-abroad communities, that Clan is somehow of higher status than “Family” or “House” and/or applies to everyone of Scottish heritage. Opinions and assertions are on a spectrum between two absolutes: (a) “everyone in Scotland is in a Clan, and everyone should wear kilts and tartans”; to (b) “Clans disappeared in the 18th century and there is no point clinging to a Romantic notion with no modern relevance”. Historically, the Clan is a phenomenon of the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and Islands and was not found as a social structure in the Lowlands; the Southern Uplands (Scottish Borders) are a special case. The “everyone” persuasion leads to cultural nonsenses such as Lowland-ancestry Scots abroad forming “Clan” Societies and adopting Highland dress. Scots overseas are looking for an authoritative statement as to whether their surname constitutes a Clan, a family, or some other nomenclature. Yet, there is no official or agreed historically based list of who are Clans and who are not. There is no such list—or a formula by which an answer can be derived. This essay is intended as a step towards that. Also, the non-historical concept of “Septs” is dismissed.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020043

Authors: Deniz Aktaş

In Western Europe, and particularly in The Netherlands, speech is rarely neutral: to talk is to participate morally and civically, while silence is frequently marked as evasive, passive, or suspect. The capacities for speech, for being heard, understood, and responsive, are widely regarded as hallmarks of autonomous, transparent, free-thinking, and sovereign subjectivity, celebrated as expressions of a shared progressive modernity. These ideals of subjectivity are routinely placed in tension within the so-called secular–religious binary framework, in which the compatibility of non-secular sensibilities or non-Christian religions, especially Islam, with such Dutch societal values is persistently and heavily problematized. Within such accounts, speech becomes a criterion Muslims in Europe are then expected to meet, not merely by speaking but by doing so in ways deemed proper and intelligible. To complicate and deepen understanding of these dynamics, this article draws on ethnographic insights from (secular) Christian–Muslim couples in The Netherlands, looking at how the dynamics of speech–silence function within intimate contexts, where they take place, where they break down, and ultimately where their limits lie. Attuned to the cacophony of multivocal gestures, whether in acts of refusal, the quiet eloquence of silence, or the directness of vocal protest, the article reveals the intricate and consequential interplay between these dynamics and the structuring and affective forms of secular and religio-racial norms in everyday life.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020042

Authors: Bernd Reiter

This article argues that racism did not originate with the modern invention of race but crystallized out of a much older imperial grammar that had already learned how to naturalize domination through embodied difference. Long before race emerged as a named category, ancient and medieval empires developed durable ways of converting historically produced hierarchies into features of nature, the cosmos, and divine order. Through a comparative genealogy spanning early Mesopotamian epic, Near Eastern imperial inscriptions, Egyptian visual regimes, Greek philosophy and historiography, biblical scripture, South Asian metaphysics, late antique encyclopedism, and medieval Marian devotion, the article shows how inequality was repeatedly anchored in the body, in genealogy, in geography, and in moral psychology. Across these traditions, political authority is consistently masculinized, while subordination is feminized, animalized, or rendered reproductively vulnerable. Patriarchy and racialization thus emerge as co-constitutive imperial technologies rather than as separate or sequential phenomena. Modern racism did not invent hierarchy; it rendered an ancient logic portable, inheritable, and globally scalable by fastening domination to visible human difference. By situating race within a longue durée history of empire and male domination, the article reframes contemporary debates on racism as questions of imperial continuity rather than modern deviation.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020041

Authors: Husniye Merve Bingol Turkan

The 1923 Greek–Turkish Population Exchange (Mubadele in Turkish), formalized through the Lausanne Convention, remains one of the most consequential cases of compulsory migration in modern history. This systematic review synthesizes a century of scholarship across political, legal, social, cultural, and historiographical dimensions. Findings indicate that the exchange not only legitimized forced displacement under international law but also reinforced authoritarian state-building in Turkey and exacerbated political instability in Greece. The social consequences included trauma, marginalization, and the emergence of heterogeneous refugee identities, while cultural memory oscillated between nationalist silencing and transnational remembrance. Urban landscapes and demographic structures were profoundly reshaped, producing visible legacies in contemporary cities. Furthermore, assimilation policies formalized the integration of populations, influencing the development of national identities in both Turkey and Greece. Historiographical trajectories diverged, with Greek scholarship emphasizing refugee struggles and Turkish scholarship foregrounding nation-building. Recent studies highlight hybrid identities and transgenerational redefinitions of belonging. This review underscores the necessity of integrating political, social, and memory studies to capture the multi-layered impacts of the exchange, offering a comprehensive account of its enduring relevance for migration, nationalism, and memory studies in Southeast Europe.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020040

Authors: Dianala M. Bernard

Intergenerational memories, migration histories, and the lasting influence of colonial linguistic systems profoundly shape heritage language maintenance in Afro-descendant communities of Central America. This study examines how genealogy functions as a pedagogical tool for sustaining English-based Creole languages among Afro-descendant populations in Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize, three nations linked by Afro-Caribbean migration yet shaped by distinct colonial and educational systems. Drawing on scholarship documenting oral histories, family narratives, and community-based linguistic practices, the study advances a genealogy-as-pedagogy framework to explain how families transmit language, identity, and belonging across generations through ancestral memory, positioning family-based knowledge transmission as curriculum. In Costa Rica and Panama, where Spanish colonial and post-independence language ideologies marginalize English-based Creole varieties, genealogical practices operate as primary mechanisms of linguistic continuity in the absence of sustained institutional support. In Belize, by contrast, British colonial legacies and the national recognition of Belizean Kriol create a distinct sociolinguistic environment in which state institutions, the media, and educational policy reinforce genealogical memory. Through comparative analysis, the study argues for integrating genealogical knowledge into multilingual education, community revitalization initiatives, and heritage language policy to strengthen Afro-descendant linguistic continuity in Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020039

Authors: Nikos Gogonas Christina Maligkoudi

Intercultural conflict is expressed as struggle due to a perceived incompatibility of values, norms, face orientations, goals, scarce resources, processes, and/or outcomes between at least two parties from different cultural communities in an interactive situation (Ting-Toomey and Oetzel 2001) [...]

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020038

Authors: Terri Libesman Paul Gray Wendy Hermeston Kirsten Gray

Across occupied Indigenous nations, child protection systems remain one of the most enduring sites of colonial power [...]

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10020037

Authors: Magezi Elijah Baloyi

Death is a universal phenomenon, defined by the rituals associated with it and conducted within the confines of the culture to which the deceased belonged; thus, it is nearly impossible to universalise a particular mourning pattern, as African people display considerable diversity. The complexities introduced into African mourning by colonialism and other developmental changes, such as urbanisation and the recent COVID-19 pandemic, have relegated many African traditions in relation to bereavement to the periphery. A newer and controversial practice associated with funerals conducted among black communities in South Africa is that of the “after tears” party. Although this practice has not yet infiltrated the rural areas, it is nevertheless a phenomenon that is worth investigating, seeing that those who participate in this practice are predominantly from townships in Gauteng, and such events are gradually occurring in the rural villages as well.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010036

Authors: Mehmet Nuri Şanda Doğan Gün

Located in northeastern Anatolia, Çıldır and Ardahan serve as a gateway to the Caucasus for political entities such as the state and mobile groups such as the tribe. Due to this geopolitical characteristic, the region has fallen under the dominion of numerous states and civilizations throughout history. With its fertile highlands, Lake Çıldır, and natural water resources like the Kura River, the area constitutes an attractive living space for hem settled agriculturalists and nomadic tribe groups subsisting on animal husbandry. These features have profoundly influenced the ethnic, demographic, socio-economic, and cultural fabric of the region. Following the establishment of Ottoman sovereignty in the 16th century, Çıldır and Ardahan assumed a vital role in the state’s Caucasian and Eastern policies. This research addresses the Turkmen tribe and other ethnic communities residing around the eyalet of Çıldır and the sanjak of Ardahan. It further examines the banditry activities carried out by these groups, the attitudes of central and local administrators toward such activities, migration and settlement patterns, and the economic and political pressures exerted by the Russian State upon these tribes. The political and economic pressures exerted by the Russian State on these tribes reflect a broader imperial strategy of frontier making, as discussed by Khodarkovsky in the context of Russia’s expansion into its southern borderlands. By positioning the region as a negotiated frontier, this study moves beyond a descriptive narrative to analyze how tribal mobility and settlement functioned as tools of sovereignty and resistance within the broader context of Ottoman state formation and trans-imperial rivalry. The methodology employed in this study is the Qualitative Research Method; accordingly, documents from the Presidential Ottoman Archives (BOA) were transcribed, and the relevant sections were interpreted and incorporated into the study. The archival findings are contextualized within recent historiographical debates concerning the shifting definition of the state versus nomadic agency during the transition from the 18th to the 19th century. While existing literature contains academic studies aiming to elucidate the archaeological, geographical, economic, and administrative structures of Çıldır and Ardahan, it has been determined that no academic research has been conducted to analyze the ethno-socio-demographic structure of the region specifically focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries in a historical sense. With this focus on the interplay between imperial frontiers and tribal identity, this study provides a critical analysis of how local dynamics shaped the grand strategies of the Ottoman and Russian Empires.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010035

Authors: Tiara Fernanda Aros Olmedo Hilde Danielsen

This article explores how young women of colour in Norway navigate everyday racism and how such negotiations are shaped by the tension between speaking out or maintaining social harmony in a society that largely perceives itself as egalitarian and non-racist. The study draws on qualitative interviews with 13 participants from diverse ethnic backgrounds—some were adopted, and others were children of immigrant parents or immigrants themselves. The analysis examines how anti-racism strategies are shaped by drawing on feminist and postcolonial theory, particularly the concept of the feminist killjoy. The notion of Orientalism, and the notion of cultural repertoires. The findings show that participants demonstrated different reactions from silence to confrontation, all demanding emotional labour. Several participants described the burden of having to choose between remaining polite and educating others, while others chose silence as a protective strategy. Rather than viewing resistance as a binary between silence and confrontation, this study demonstrates that everyday anti-racism is a fluid and context-dependent practice. How women performed anti-racism was also closely linked to their social position, social support, cultural norms, and access to political perspectives. The stories show that, over time, some women became more outspoken or secure in their interpretations of racist encounters, especially when gaining distance from constraining environments.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010034

Authors: Edgar Gutiérrez-Gómez Rocío Laime-Huallpa Rubén Darío Alania-Contreras Aldo Bazán-Ramírez Daniela Isabel Dayan Ortega-Révolo Wilfredo Bazán-Ramírez

The female oral tradition of harawi constitutes a living cultural expression in Quechua-speaking Andean communities, where song is configured as an instrument of collective memory and identity. This study aimed to understand how women, through harawi, construct spaces of cultural resistance in the face of processes of forgetting and social transformation. A qualitative approach was adopted, using an ethnographic and phenomenological design. Data collection was conducted over a period of one hundred and twenty days through semi-structured interviews, participant and non-participant observation, audiovisual recording, and documentary review. The findings show that harawi not only preserves ancestral knowledge but also strengthens female identity and the intergenerational transmission of the Quechua language. Subtle forms of symbolic resistance to linguistic and cultural stigmatization were identified. It is concluded that female harawi oral tradition constitutes a mechanism of living memory and an active practice of cultural affirmation in Andean communities.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010033

Authors: Tanya Allport Cinnamon Lindsay-Latimer

This article investigates narrative and storytelling as critical methods for understanding how relationships with land in Aotearoa New Zealand are shaped by colonial histories and ongoing systemic displacement of Māori (Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa). Colonialism is not a past event; it continues to structure daily life, disrupting our embodied connections to whenua (land) and reshaping what we call home. Drawing on the research project Tō mātou kāinga, tō mātou ūkaipō, Whānau conceptions of home we explore the concept of body–land, emerging from Indigenous women’s struggles and grounded knowledges, to examine how the land is not only a living genealogical ancestor but also a maker of our bodies and identities. Through narrative, we trace the ways land has been taken and commodified under colonial logics that frame it as property to be owned and extracted from, which contrasts with Indigenous ontologies that understand land as kin and relationality as central to existence. By centering Māori women’s embodied experiences, this article articulates home as a relationship rather than a fixed place and considers how these understandings open pathways toward relational, sustainable futures. This work contributes to broader conversations on decolonial praxis, Indigenous feminist theory, and the embodied politics of land and belonging.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010032

Authors: Rachel Nir Ismail Karolia John Wainwright

This study explored the experiences, perspectives and confidence of teaching and research staff of discussing race and ethnicity, and associated equalities matters, at a post-1992 university in North West England, UK. In particular, it studied whether colleagues, who were largely white, had the understanding and personal skills to deliver on race equity in teaching and learning in a Higher Education Institution (HEI). Further, it examined whether there was a disconnect between the intention of an HEI working towards the Race Equality Charter (REC) mark and the detrimental effects this may have on its minoritised ethnic staff. The study was based on focus groups and interviews of 43 academic staff as participants using Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Intersectionality as the theoretical lens. These address discrepancies between institutional declarations and realities within higher education, which is important, as HEIs are increasingly positioning themselves as committed to diversity and equity, while the practical implementation often remains inconsistent. The findings demonstrate that the white participants were not confident, competent or pro-active enough to effect any meaningful change in race equity. At the same time, the minoritised ethnic participants often felt the burden of having to relive the trauma and pain of racism and take the lead in any race equity initiatives. In sum, the study demonstrates that HEI initiatives that purport to tackle systemic racism through decolonisation and the REC mark have little chance of effecting institutional change if the staff do not have the confidence, competence and necessary skills to make it happen.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010031

Authors: Idongesit Imohowo Eyakndue Arnold Benjamin Udoka

Among the Anaañ people in Akwa Ibom State, Southeastern Nigeria, the practice of naming serves as a central mechanism for communicating personal identity, recollecting memory and preserving social hierarchy across generations. The act of naming a child after a revered ancestor or existing relative is a form of moral inheritance that binds the name bearer to certain virtues, histories, and expected cultural nuance associated with the namesake. This article investigates the social functions of namesaking and in its role in family inheritance amongst the Anaañ people. This study examines the rituals, ceremonies, and narratives associated with namesaking, and further analyses the intergenerational authority and social status embedded in the practice. The analysis is rooted in social memory theory by Halbwachs (1992), which views names as memory carriers that connect individuals to their nativity and ancestors. Drawing from ethnographic research design, using participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 30 participants who were purposively sampled, the analysis reveals that namesaking and inheritance are interwoven cultural processes that promote social identity, reproduce lineage hierarchies, and individuate the bearer within the social universe of the community. This study concludes that in the Anaañ society namesaking is a symbol of continuity, with specific social expectations, moral obligations and traditional roles tied to the original name-holder.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010030

Authors: Emily K. Suh Erin Lehman

Language and discourse are central forces shaping representations of self and family creation in adoption narratives. Informed by theorizations of agency, as well as language and legitimacy, two transnational adopted persons engage in a collaborative autoethnography through electronically exchanged letters about the authors’ experiences as international and interracial Korean-American adopted persons. The resulting analysis uncovered how language and identity can intersect in adoption narratives, complicating adopted persons’ stories and their telling of them. The authors also explored the agentive potential of mushfake as hybrid and emerging discourse/Discourse. In narrating their experiences, the authors illuminated how adopted persons and other members of marginalized groups can exercise their agentive authority to take up and demand recognition of self-proclaimed identities which are situated in spaces of in-betweenness and becoming.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010029

Authors: Pallawi Sinha

The world is burgeoning with ever-growing disparities, nation-states are becoming increasingly oppressive with centrist politics, conflicts are intensifying, and climate change is causing natural disasters, which are increasingly displacing families and children. That is, 473 million children worldwide are living in conflict zones today. By the end of 2023, 47.2 million children had been displaced due to conflict and violence, while natural disasters had driven 26.4 million internal displacements, of which 8.8 million were children This article then responds to the uneven landscapes and dominant imaginaries confronted by contemporary childhoods. In doing so, it locates how children bear the burden of adult agendas in the waiting room of the past, present and future. This lends to the analyses of the wider politics that frame childhoods. In response, the article calls for a conceptual turn in childhood studies urging a radical politics of hope rather than the oppressive politics of tomorrow. It proposes a (re-)imagining of just futures for children whereby adults move from apathy towards childhood reparations and think about what might have been stolen from children and what we may owe them. The paper concludes that any imagination of reparative futures cannot be crafted without children.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010028

Authors: Jessie Fubara-Manuel Juliet Nkane Ekpang Romanus Aboh

Female-child naming represents a unique naming practice among women; yet, there are no current studies examining the interconnectedness between naming female children and gendering among married Bette-Obudu women. This study fills this gap in addition to exploring how Bette-Obudu women, southeastern Nigeria, use the names they assign to their daughters to dominate the “home space”. Ethnographic data were collected through semi-structured interviews from twenty-five purposively selected female-name-givers. Ethnolinguistic data of gendered names, within the Bette-Obudu anthroponomastic tradition, were investigated from the socio-onomastic perspective. This theory provides insights into the sociocultural and contextual meanings of names. The study aims to reveal that female-Bette names, such as Úbékpí (I will marry by force) and Ùngiéáwhúkyémá (The wife dominates her husband), among others, exemplify how mothers bestow names to their daughters to navigate patriarchal oppression and marginalisation, highlighting the concept of female space within the institution of marriage. Essentially, such names denote name-givers’ calculated effort to resist oppressive patriarchal regimes. This study increases understanding of how female-naming in the Bette-Obudu onomastics functions as an effectively subversive discourse against patriarchy by drawing scholars’ attention to the under-explored status of female-naming among Bette-Obudu women.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010027

Authors: Tiffany Lethabo King

This article underscores sites of Black and Indigenous ecological failure to draw attention to the limits of figuring ideal subjects on the “ecological field” as stewards of, laborers on, and ultimately masters of, the earth. I consider depictions of errant ecological comportment to render other kinds of orientations—boredom, distraction, orgasmic submission, grief—plausible and necessary for developing and honing an ecological ethic. What is often rendered implausible or undesirable might also contain the potential to stave off the impulse to reproduce humanisms that require mastery over the earth. To better pursue failure or an inability to achieve appropriate attunement with the ecological, I focus on a Black fat femme falling from a tree and an Anishinaabeg youth lying on the ground and looking up at a tree. These errant bodies function as sites of friction that trouble old and new materialisms that continue to shape ecological thought and subjectivity.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010026

Authors: Valentina Villafañe Jorge Hugo Villafañe

This article examines how minor noble houses in the Hispanic world sustained social status under economic constraint and changing institutional regimes. Using the House of Villafañe of Santiago del Molinillo (Kingdom of León) as a case study, it conceptualizes the Casa as a social, patrimonial, and symbolic formation rather than a strictly genealogical lineage. The study combines a long-duration perspective with microhistorical analysis and historical genealogy, drawing on notarial documentation, parish registers, population censuses, and litigation concerning hidalgo status in both Castilian and colonial settings. The findings show that the house’s continuity rested on adaptive strategies: the regulation of kinship, selective marriage alliances, flexible patrimonial arrangements, institutional participation, and the mobilization of symbolic resources such as lineage memory and public recognition of noble condition. The article further demonstrates that Atlantic mobility to colonial La Rioja and Cordova (Argentina) did not constitute a rupture, but extended established practices of social reproduction into new legal and social environments. The House of Villafañe emerges as a resilient collective actor that transformed structural constraints and geographic mobility into resources for long-term continuity, offering a productive scale for analyzing social reproduction and inequality in the Hispanic world.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010025

Authors: Rakhmanali Begaliyevich Bekmirzayev Samarbek Osmonov Asan Berdiev Nurgul Osmonova Gulsara Tureeva Nargizakhon Alimova Ikromjon Kuzikulov Bakhtiyor Khalmuratov Kakhramon Boymirzayev Begzod Iminov Yosin Ortikov Otabek Abduraupov Mirjalol Nazirov

This ethnographic study examines the jety ata (seven generations) tradition in the Goyibi lineage of the Jookesek tribe, a Kyrgyz community from southern Kyrgyzstan now living in Uzbekistan’s Fergana Valley. Based on 18 months of fieldwork (2022–2024), we document how this diaspora-in-place community sustains genealogical knowledge despite displacement, minority status, and political pressures. The core finding is “layered transmission”: a preservation strategy combining formal oral recitation, digital documentation (e.g., WhatsApp family trees), and adapted narrative pedagogy by grandmothers. These overlapping methods create redundancy and resilience, enabling adaptation to modernization while maintaining spiritual (eskeruu and ata-baba ruhu) and identity functions. Younger members engage selectively through gamified stories but resist rigid memorization. The case highlights women’s underrecognized role in transmission, ongoing epistemological negotiations, and identity anchoring in diaspora contexts. Findings are specific to this community and contribute to understandings of cultural reproduction and indigenous knowledge adaptation in Central Asia.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010024

Authors: Lucy Fulford

The Ugandan Asian expulsion of 1972 was a landmark moment in postcolonial politics, but the people at the centre of it have often been a footnote in Idi Amin’s story. This paper explores the strengths, if not essential nature, of bringing a critical family history and life-writing lens to this history of migration, within the boundaries of genealogy, as the family is central to both the experience of exodus and understanding the origins of South Asians in East Africa. Moving to a ‘history from below’ spotlighting underrepresented voices privileging gender, caste and class is a vital step in democratising this history. Through an examination of the methodologies of the author’s testimony and memoir-led history of the exodus, The Exiled: Empire, Immigration and the Ugandan Asian Exodus, this work reflects on personal scholarship, objectivity and positionality, showing the significance of an intimate and marginalised approach. It demonstrates how reclaiming this history among next-generation diaspora requires challenging revisionism, self-serving success narratives, and increasing politicisation in service of anti-immigration narratives, moving beyond the nostalgic view of empire invoked by some retellings towards a more nuanced living history of the expulsion.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010023

Authors: Dafina Vlahna Bedri Peci

Intergenerational wealth transfer represents a central mechanism through which genealogical bonds, family continuity, and economic stability are maintained across generations. This article examines inheritance law and financial regulation from a genealogical perspective, focusing on the role of family property as both a legal institution and a socio-economic structure rooted in kinship and lineage. By integrating approaches from genealogy, legal studies, and financial analysis, the study explores how inheritance frameworks shape intergenerational relations, preserve family identity, and influence patterns of economic inequality. The article analyzes inheritance law as a key instrument through which genealogical continuity is institutionalized, highlighting the ways in which legal norms regulate the transmission of assets, rights, and obligations within families. Particular attention is given to the interaction between financial regulation and family-based wealth, demonstrating how legal structures affect long-term economic sustainability and social cohesion. The study adopts a qualitative and theoretical methodology, supported by comparative references to selected legal traditions, in order to illustrate how inheritance systems reflect broader cultural, historical, and genealogical values. By situating inheritance and wealth transfer within the broader framework of genealogical relations, this article contributes to interdisciplinary discussions on family, law, and the economy. It argues that inheritance law should be understood not merely as a financial or legal mechanism, but as a genealogical process that shapes intergenerational bonds, social structures, and economic outcomes over time.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010022

Authors: Angelina Hurley

This article draws on my doctoral research, Reconciliation Rescue: An Original Blak Comedy Series and Aboriginal Cultural Perspectives on Humour, to examine how Aboriginal humour operates as a mode of resistance, truth-telling, and cultural continuity. My thesis consists of two components Reconciliation Rescue, an original scripted Blak comedy series, and an accompanying exegesis that situates the work within broader discussions of Aboriginal sovereignty, identity, and the politics of reconciliation. In this article, I extend that research to demonstrate how Aboriginal voices, when centred in comedic storytelling, challenge colonial paradigms and reframe national narratives. Grounded in my lived experience as an Aboriginal woman and my longstanding creative practice, I explore the ways in which Aboriginal humour addresses intergenerational trauma, racism, and stereotypes. I contrast the collectivist values and relational worldviews of Aboriginal cultures with the individualism of Whitestream society, arguing that humour particularly the oration of humorous storytelling has long served as a powerful tool of healing, resilience, and community cohesion. This distinctive form of ‘Blak Humour’ confronts harmful assumptions, empowers our people, and strengthens cultural identity. By reflecting on the development of Reconciliation Rescue and the principles that shape First Nations comedic expression, this article illustrates how Aboriginal comedy can act as an educational and transformative force. It highlights humour’s potential to foster understanding, unsettle entrenched power structures, and contribute meaningfully to more culturally informed and socially just approaches to reconciliation in Australia.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010021

Authors: Congrong Xiao Yan Zhang Dongkwon Seong

Situated within the field of modern Chinese political history, this study investigates the Late Qing New Policies (1901–1911) as a pivotal transition from a traditional tributary empire to a modern multi-ethnic nation-state. A critical limitation in current scholarship is the tendency to reduce these reforms to mere expedients for dynastic preservation, thereby overlooking the complex mechanisms by which they fundamentally reconstructed national identity and interethnic power structures amidst the “triple crisis” of territory, sovereignty, and nationality. To address this, the article employs a comprehensive historical analysis to explore how institutional restructuring in administration, military, and ideology catalyzed the transformation from imperial autocracy toward a “responsible government” framework. The research is distinguished by its innovative application of Anthony D. Smith’s theories of “ethnic” versus “civic” nationalism to deconstruct the “myth-symbol complex” of the Chinese nation, bridging the theoretical divide between the “New Qing History” paradigm and empirical modernization narratives. Findings demonstrate that while the Manchu leadership aimed to secure formal primacy, the practical implementation of reforms engendered a de facto Han-supported power structure, compelling the reconceptualization of the state as a “multi-ethnic constitutional monarchy” and establishing the institutional logic for the “Five Races Under One Union” model. Consequently, this study offers significant academic value by redefining the New Policies as the foundational phase of modern China, providing a crucial theoretical framework for understanding the continuity of China’s multi-ethnic statehood and national identity beyond the dynastic collapse.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010020

Authors: Deborah Gray White

This article introduces my mother and maternal grandmother into the American story. I bring together sources like the census and family bible, documented history, and my memory to demonstrate that genealogy and family history expand the archive on black women and the black family. I also reflect on the way history and memory are dichotomized and argue that autobiography/memoir holds a key to freeing black women’s history from the violence of the archive.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010019

Authors: Katie Cueva Jessica Saniguq Ullrich Taa’aii Peter Roberta Moto James Ay’aqulluk Chaliak Jessica Black Diane McEachern James Allen Lisa Wexler Stacy Rasmus

This paper describes Alaska Native youth-identified community strengths that support young people’s well-being. Youth from three rural Alaska communities were engaged by the research team in digital storytelling and photovoice to explore their perspectives on what their communities were already undertaking to support youth. Each youth participant was then invited to complete an interview, which was then transcribed, coded, and qualitatively analyzed by the research team leads. The community strengths described by young people align with several community-level protective factors identified in a parent study as associated with reduced risk of youth suicide. Findings illustrate that protective communities help young people build and maintain supportive relationships with community members, family, and peers, and promote their connection to their culture, including by providing opportunities to learn their language, history, and culture; to be out on the land hunting and fishing; and to practice traditional ceremonies and spirituality. Communities implementing initiatives that support these factors may protect young people from youth suicide.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010018

Authors: Kristín Loftsdóttir

Recent scholarship has called for greater attention to white supremacy. This is closely linked to broader efforts to foreground the structural and institutional dimensions of racism. In the Nordic context, such a perspective challenges longstanding assumptions of exceptionalism by highlighting the historical and contemporary presence of coloniality and racism in the Nordic countries. This article examines the concept of white supremacy in relation to the Nordic countries, arguing that white supremacy has constituted a longstanding feature of Nordic societies and that the erasure of Indigenous concerns and voices presents one way in which white supremacy has been expressed. It uses two recent cases involving artist production connected to Iceland, Kalaallit Nunaat, and Denmark to analyze the links between the past and the present. The historical embedded analysis of these cases demonstrates that white supremacy has been an enduring feature of Nordic societies. Nordic Indigenous critiques, as well as discussions concerning Indigenous people within and beyond the Nordic countries, reveal thus how white supremacy operates through everyday structural and institutional practices in the Nordic context. These findings underscore the importance of addressing white supremacy as a pervasive and normalized aspect of Nordic social and political life.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010017

Authors: Eyo Mensah Nancy Irek Aaron Nwogu Queendaline Iloh

The crown conveys a rich tapestry of history and deep cultural resonances among the Yoruba people of South-western Nigeria, beyond its representation as an emblem of leadership, royalty, and nobility. This article explores layers of the meaning of crown in the Yoruba personal naming system. It relies on an ethnopragmatic theory to analyse the cultural significance and symbolic impact of crown-related names among the Yoruba. Drawing on a qualitative research approach using participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 25 participants who were purposively sampled in Ikeja, Lagos State, we argue that crown-related names are not mere identifiers or person reference labels, but they provide cultural insights and reflections on the foundation of authority and continuity, and carry the aspirational principles of the Yoruba traditional structure. The names symbolise personal journey; reinforce the hierarchical structure of the Yoruba society; and highlight the people’s deep connection to their ancestral lineage. This study concludes that crown-related names encapsulate the values, beliefs, and social structures of the Yoruba society, serving as enduring markers of dynastic identity and cultural values. In this way, crown-related names represent badges of honour that validate their bearers’ self-worth and dignity.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010016

Authors: Karen Rotabi-Casares Carmen Monico

Guatemala’s intercountry adoptions were suspended in 2007 after widespread illicit procedures and the persistent trafficking of children. This article is a historical and policy analysis of the related social welfare systems. It uses Midgley’s framework to examine the past and the changes that have resulted in Guatemala’s reform era. Specific attention has been paid to non-formal systems, market-based or profit-oriented systems, non-profit and faith-based systems, and importantly, government-based systems. Previous (pre-reform) child welfare systems, particularly during the millennium adoption surge, are then compared to a relatively new and reformed system. An international child rights legal and policy context, to include the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, frames the discussion that also considers the passage of the 2007 Adoption Law. The article has a child rights perspective and considers the role of women, particularly birth parents, during Guatemala’s peak adoption years.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010015

Authors: LaDrea Ingram Aliyah D. De Jesus Esthel Nam

Intergenerational trauma significantly affects the health and mental health of African American families, particularly women whose lives are shaped by systemic inequities and historical oppression. This scoping review examines how trauma and resilience are transmitted across generations in African American communities, with a focus on dyads such as mother–child and mother–daughter relationships and a conceptual grandmother–mother–daughter triad. The review aims to identify mechanisms of trauma transmission and resilience and to inform culturally responsive, multigenerational interventions. Peer-reviewed studies published between 2012 and 2025 were identified that included African American caregivers and children and addressed biological, psychological, social, cultural, and resilience dimensions of intergenerational processes. Data were synthesized using a dimensional conceptual analysis approach. Findings indicate that intergenerational trauma is perpetuated through chronic stress and discrimination, maternal mental health challenges, family structure and caregiving strain, and cultural narratives about strength and self-reliance. At the same time, resilience is transmitted through sensitive caregiving, spirituality and faith, social and kin support, racial socialization, and economic survival strategies that draw on cultural and historical knowledge. These results underscore the importance of addressing intergenerational trauma holistically by integrating dyadic evidence within a broader conceptual triadic framework. Culturally responsive, multigenerational interventions that leverage family and community strengths and make space for emotional vulnerability are essential for interrupting cycles of trauma and fostering healing within African American families.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010014

Authors: Desmond D. Mascarenhas Balaji Rajagapolan John W. Fox Richard J. Johnson

An accurate DNA clock can strengthen cross-disciplinary inputs in the study of genealogies and ancient migrations. New Y-chromosome sequence data gathered from a Lotli Pai Kaundinya (LPK) Brahmin cohort whose staged migration from the Pontic Steppe to the West Coast of India was previously reported, are used here to generate a more precise DNA clock. The formula distinguishes Y-mutation rates for transitions and transversions and corrects for dropped mutations in sequence reads. The formula is validated against a baptismal tree covering over four centuries (0–704 YBP interval), a published STR-based chronology for this same cohort (704–5200 YBP) and a comparison to Y-Full formation times for mutations older than 3000 YBP. Using this more precise clock, we support a proposed “founder effect” expansion in Khorasan during 4300–3800 YBP using a novel phylogenetic branching metric; and use archeological, numismatic, toponymic, climate reconstruction and ancient textual data to explore religious and professional dimensions of cultural kinship with other communities believed to have interacted with the LPK during their long migration. The availability of more precise dating facilitates the integration of such secondary data types, resulting in an enriched and more plausible migration narrative.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010013

Authors: Rachèl Overbeek Bloem Niké Wentholt Carolina Suransky

While drill music is often talked about in relation to crime, it is often overlooked as an art form and cultural practice. Consequently, its artists are rarely heard from. To address this societal and academic gap, we have conducted in-depth interviews with ten UK artists from this genre and subculture. This article presents the shared meanings these UK drill artists attach to the motivation to make their own music, the music subgenre and its culture, and its ongoing criminalisation. We do so by conceptualising these meanings as counter-narratives. The article departs from the observation that these counter-narratives present themselves in drill, as a form of expression, on two dimensions: drill as the outcome of intra-group expression of emotions and social relations, and as the platform to engage with social injustice on the inter-group level. An interdisciplinary theoretical framework, combining psychological insights on needs, philosophical cues on (mis)recognition, and the lens intersectionality, allows us to study and bridge these two dimensions. We identify twelve counter-narratives that were validated by a majority of respondents. The study, besides analysing these in-depth counter-narratives, also foregrounds UK drill artists’ agency generally absent from both societal and academic discourse.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010012

Authors: Samson Maekele Tsegay

Historically, the number of United Kingdom (UK) emigrants has exceeded the number of immigrants, but this trend began to change in the early 1970s. The UK government has been enforcing strict immigration controls to reduce the number of immigrants, especially asylum seekers. The country even left the European Union to better control its borders and consider new arrivals based on their skills. However, despite tighter immigration policies, long-term international migration to the UK has continued to grow. The ongoing, and to some extent gendered and racialised, migration fix has not provided a sustainable solution for the country. Instead, it has increased the vulnerability and anxiety of refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants. Informed by a scoping review and the concept migration fix, this article examines UK immigration policies since World War II. This article is important for understanding the migration fix in UK immigration and asylum policies and their effects on asylum seekers, refugees, and other migrants.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010011

Authors: Oluwaseyi B. Ayeni Oluwajuwon M. Omigbodun Oluwakemi T. Onibalusi

Citizenship is not only a legal status but also a form of recognition. Every state defines who belongs by tracing lines of descent, yet the way ancestry is proven differs widely. This study compares nationality laws in Europe, Africa, and North America to show how evidence shapes access to citizenship. It asks what kinds of proof states require and what happens when those forms of proof are missing. The analysis draws on nationality laws, constitutional texts, case decisions, and administrative practice. The findings show that Europe relies on documents and registration systems that treat records as truth, while African states face gaps in documentation that leave many citizens unrecognised. In North America, technology and DNA testing have made biology a new measure of belonging. Across these regions, the law of descent has become a law of evidence. Documents and DNA dominate, while oral and community genealogy have lost authority. These evidentiary habits travel across borders, shaping how migrants and diasporas prove identity in a world that equates paperwork with legitimacy. The study concludes that certainty and fairness can exist together if states accept multiple paths to proof. When documents, sworn statements, and community testimony are combined, the law can recognise descent without excluding those who lack official records. Belonging should rest not only on what is written or tested but also on what is known and trusted.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010010

Authors: Chamion Caballero

The author wishes to make the following corrections to this paper [...]

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010009

Authors: Nathalie Lozano Neira

This essay theorizes the body-land, a living site where colonial violence, displacement, and resurgence converge through a hemispheric dialogue between Indigenous and decolonial feminisms from Abya Yala and Turtle Island. Drawing on Lorena Cabnal’s concept of the body-land as the primary terrain of colonial invasion and regeneration, María Lugones’s analysis of the coloniality of gender as a system that fractures body, land, and relations, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s theory of embodied relational resurgence, and Diana Taylor’s notion of the repertoire as embodied memory beyond the archive, the essay argues that silence, gesture, and affect function as insurgent practices of knowledge transmission that contest colonial modes of erasure. Through an autoethnographic narrative spanning displacement from Villarrica, Tolima, and re-rooting on the territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations, the analysis traces how colonial grammars of race, gender, and territory are inscribed in the body. Yet these embodied inscriptions also generate practices of resurgence. By bringing Cabnal, Lugones, Simpson, and Taylor into direct conversation, the essay demonstrates that resurgence must be understood as an embodied, relational, and hemispheric process, one in which the body becomes a generative territory for reimagining belonging and repairing the fractures of colonial modernity.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010008

Authors: Mutsa Murenje Sipho Sibanda

The integration experiences and vulnerabilities of migrants in host states are a critical area of study. This qualitative research, grounded in a human rights and social justice framework, investigates the systemic injustices and integration challenges faced by Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg, South Africa. Through in-depth interviews with 16 participants and six key informants, the study employs thematic analysis to uncover the socio-cultural, economic, and political barriers that impede successful integration. The findings reveal pervasive issues such as prejudice, discrimination, xenophobia, and language barriers, which exacerbate the migrants’ vulnerabilities and make it difficult to support their families. They, at times, fail to buy food and pay school fees for their children. Despite these challenges, the resilience and creativity of Zimbabwean migrants are evident. The study’s unique contribution lies in its widening of the genealogy of theories of migration by incorporating African-centred migration perspectives, which are grounded in social justice perspectives. This critiques the Global North-dominated narratives that have historically sidelined the lived experiences of migrants from the Global South. The study offers a comprehensive examination of the interplay between systemic barriers and migrant resilience, offering new insights into how migration involves and affects families. This research calls for the development and implementation of rights-based integration frameworks to address systemic issues and enhance the well-being of migrants so that they can better support their families and kinsmen.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010007

Authors: Akumjika Chikamma Michael Olubunmi Funmi Oyebanji Victoria Enefiok Etim

The paper explores how the diasporic Igbo community portrays its cultural identity through personal names and naming practices in a globalised context. The study employs a qualitative approach, involving computer-assisted semi-structured interviews with 26 diasporic Igbo individuals residing in the United States of America (USA), to examine how names are constructed to reflect cultural identity, community ties, and connections to the Igbo society. The paper adopts the sociocultural linguistic theory of identity to examine how culture and society shape language use, analysing names as social acts that establish connections to the Igbo community and cultural heritage. The paper examines how Igbo migrants negotiate traditional naming practices in the diaspora and communicate their cultural identity and worldviews through naming. The findings reveal that the diaspora Igbo community conveys its cultural identity, migration history, and emotional connection to its homeland while maintaining social relationships in its host country. The study will provide insight into the role of names in preserving cultural identity and fostering a sense of belonging among the diasporic Igbo community.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010006

Authors: Karine Coen-Sanchez

This study examines the mobilization of social and cultural capital among first and second-generation Afro-Caribbeans in Canada, focusing specifically on Jamaican and Haitian populations. Employing an analytical model grounded in resistance and identity multi-positionality, this research utilizes Yosso’s theory of cultural wealth as a theoretical framework. Qualitative data were collected through focus groups and an intake survey aimed at exploring the dual objectives of defining Blackness and constructing an in-group Black identity alongside the establishment and contestation of social capital within these groups. The findings reveal a dynamic interplay between resistance and identity, highlighting how marginalized groups leverage their resilience to build robust social networks that challenge hegemonic norms. Significant generational differences were identified in experiences of racism, discrimination, and cultural preservation among the participants. This study contributes to the broader discourse on immigrant integration, social cohesion, and the role of cultural capital in mitigating systemic inequalities. The results underscore the necessity for intersectional approaches to comprehend the complexities of identity formation and social integration in multicultural societies. Moreover, the research emphasizes the critical importance of cultural heritage, identity, and community support as sources of strength and resilience for Afro-Caribbean communities in Canada.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010005

Authors: Bedri Bahtiri Kastriote Vlahna

This study examines the impact of Kosovo’s matrimonial property and inheritance laws on intergenerational inheritance and family connections. It explores how the division of property during marriage or upon divorce influences inheritance outcomes and the continuity of family lineage. The research employs a comparative approach, including genealogical case studies, to analyze these effects. Findings demonstrate that legal provisions significantly influence the preservation of family property and help prevent intra-family disputes. Well-structured laws ensuring the participation of children and the surviving spouse promote gender and social equality, respect heirs’ rights, and support economic sustainability. Comparative experiences from Germany and France offer practical examples for harmonizing property management in Kosovo. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of accurate property data and the use of genealogical records to maintain continuity in material inheritance and the construction of family history. Overall, matrimonial property and inheritance laws are more than legal instruments; they uphold social order and safeguard families’ material legacies. The study concludes with concrete recommendations for policy and legal practices that address communities’ real needs while acknowledging family history.

Genealogy doi: 10.3390/genealogy10010004

Authors: James C. Beaufils

First Nations children remain dramatically over-represented in Australia’s Out-of-Home Care (OOHC) system, particularly in New South Wales (NSW), which continues to report the highest numbers nationally. This narrative review, grounded in a relational First Nations Standpoint Theory and decolonising research paradigms, to critically examine the systemic, structural, and historical factors contributing to these disproportionalities. Drawing on interdisciplinary evidence across law, criminology, education, health, governance studies, and public policy, the analysis centres Indigenous-authored scholarship and contemporary empirical literature, including grey literature, inquiries, and community-led reports. Findings reveal that the OOHC system reproduces the colonial logics that historically drove the Stolen Generations. Macro-level structural drivers—including systemic racism, Indigenous data injustice, entrenched poverty and deprivation, intergenerational trauma, and Westernised governance frameworks—continue to shape child protection policies and practices. Micro-level drivers such as parental supports, mental health distress, substance misuse, family violence, and the criminalisation of children in care (“crossover children”) must be understood as direct consequences of structural inequality rather than as isolated individual risk factors. Current placement and permanency orders in NSW further compound cultural disconnection, with ongoing failures to implement the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle (ATSICPP). Contemporary cultural rights and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) frameworks highlight the urgency of restoring Indigenous authority in decision-making processes. The literature consistently demonstrates that cultural continuity, kinship networks, and ACCO-led models are sort to produce stronger long-term outcomes for children. The review concludes that genuine transformation requires a systemic shift toward Indigenous-led governance, community-controlled service delivery, data sovereignty, and legislative reform that embeds cultural rights and self-determination. Without acknowledging the structural drivers and redistributing genuine power and authority, the state risks perpetuating a cycle of removal that mirrors earlier assimilationist policies. Strengthening First Peoples governance and cultural authority is therefore essential to creating pathways for First Nations children to live safely, remain connected to family and kin, and thrive in culture.