Kinkeeping: The Media and Methods of Family Time-Binding
Who is the person in your family who holds everyone together across space and time? The person who keeps track of birthdays, organizes family gatherings, coordinates care when someone is sick, researches your genealogical history, knows the story behind a family heirloom and who's who in old family photographs?
"Kinkeeper" is a term used by sociologists to describe this person--the "glue" of families. In general semantics terms, kinkeepers are the family time-binders. In Manhood of Humanity, Alfred Korzybski described time-binding in this way:
I mean the capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever-increasing light of inherited wisdom…And because humanity is just this magnificent natural agency by which the past lives in the present and the present for the future, I define HUMANITY, in the universal tongue of mathematics and mechanics, to be the TIME-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE.”
Humans use time-binding to connect past, present and future, and to enable present and future people to benefit from all that humans have learned up to this point. And although Korzybski was talking about much more than what individual families might do to preserve and build upon their own members’ past experiences, how can we not see our own families in his reference to the “all-precious lives of past generations” and want to enact this time-binding process with them in mind?
This panel will explore the many dimensions of kinkeeping and the ways in which changes in the media environment simultaneously enhance, complicate, and threaten the processes of family time-binding.
Panelists
Peggy Cassidy, Ph.D., is a Professor of Communication at Adelphi University. Her research and teaching focus primarily on the history of media in the lives and education of children and adolescents. She is the author of BookEnds: The Changing Media Environment of American Classrooms (Hampton Press, 2003) and Children, Media, and American History: Printed Poison, Pernicious Stuff, and Other Terrible Temptations (Routledge, 2017). She is president of the New York Society for General Semantics and a board member of the Institute of General Semantics, and she has served as president of the Media Ecology Association and the New York State Communication Association.
Susan Drucker, J.D., is a Distinguished Professor of Journalism in the Department of Journalism/Media Studies, School of Communication at Hofstra University. She is an attorney and a treasurer of the Urban Communication Foundation. She is the author and editor/co-editor of thirteen books and over 200 articles and book chapters, including the Urban Communication Reader (Volumes 1 and 2, Hampton Press, 2010; vol. 3, Peter Lang, 2012), Voices in the Street: Gender, Media and Public Space (Hampton Press, 1997) and Urban Communication Regulations: Communication Freedoms and Limits (Peter Lang, 2018). Her work examines the relationship between media technology and human factors, particularly as viewed from a legal perspective.
Mary Kahl, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus and former Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Pennsylvania State University, the Behrend College. She previously held faculty and academic administrative appointments at the University of California at Davis, Boston College, the State University of New York at New Paltz, and Indiana State University.
Kahl’s scholarly interests include political campaign debates, gender studies, and presidential discourses. She has authored or coauthored over twenty scholarly essays appearing in such venues as The Quarterly Journal of Speech, The Journal of Critical/Cultural Studies, The Journal of Health Communication, Communication Quarterly, and the Western Journal of Communication. Her best-selling co-authored textbook, Advanced Public Speaking: A Leader’s Guide (with Michael J. Hostetler) is in its third printing with Routledge. Kahl has collaborated with and appeared on C-SPAN, the BBC and NPR, among other news outlets. Her most recent academic projects interrogate why presidents lie, the gendered dimensions of kinkeeping, and presidential foreign policy speeches delivered in former Soviet bloc countries.
This event will take place from 6 PM to 9 PM on Friday, May 22 at the historic Players Club in Gramercy Park.
Registration is free, but all attendees must be registered in order to gain admittance to the club. This includes any guests you might want to bring with you.
The program will take place in the Library on the 2nd floor of the club. Please note that, as an historic 19th century landmark, the site is not handicap accessible. Dress code is business casual and is strictly enforced, including no sneakers, shorts, ripped jeans, or t-shirts.