Another Reason Why The Left Will Win

[☭proletarian☭]

Appalachian that I wasn't related to in a way. Our familial structure is quite different than yours and that's something Americans don't understand.

Hillbillies are their own country??

 

[goldcatt]

Our familial structure is quite different than yours and that's something Americans don't understand.

I'm convinced that we're all better off not understanding your familial structure.

"Clan" and what you're thinking of as "family" are two different things. "Clan" traces kith and kin (usually without distinguishing between the two) to determine ties of loyalty, it doesn't mean marrying your first or second cousin. Think of it as a widely extended family network. An eighth cousin twelve times removed, by marriage, would still be clan and that person still a "cousin" and still "family" for clan purposes.

If you go back far enough many of the first Applachian settlers had a Scots or Scots-Irish background and imported a version of their clan system. Later settlers embraced it as the existing social structure, especially since many of them came from cultures that had similar if informal social structures. It's not complicated, really.

 

[AkronGuy]

Our familial structure is quite different than yours and that's something Americans don't understand.

I'm convinced that we're all better off not understanding your familial structure.

"Clan" and what you're thinking of as "family" are two different things. "Clan" traces kith and kin (usually without distinguishing between the two) to determine ties of loyalty, it doesn't mean marrying your first or second cousin. Think of it as a widely extended family network. An eighth cousin twelve times removed, by marriage, would still be clan and that person still a "cousin" and still "family" for clan purposes.

If you go back far enough many of the first Applachian settlers had a Scots or Scots-Irish background and imported a version of their clan system. Later settlers embraced it as the existing social structure, especially since many of them came from cultures that had similar if informal social structures. It's not complicated, really.

Exactly, I'm of Highland Scots stock and that's how we consider "family". I'd never marry a close cousin. But if you're an eighth cousin 12 times removed, yes I would. But that ain't incest, that's more of how we signify our connections. Yankers don't count family outside of a narrow definition. They don't understand that when two Appalachians meet, we try to figure out how we're related, and we'll figure out how we're related, even though that may mean we're 25th cousins 100 times removed, that's how we are. And then there's clan politics and rivalry. lol That's nother topic for another time.