Ownership as interpersonal dominance

Rudmin, Floyd W.

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Book

Document type:: Book

Collection:: POP - Possession, Ownership, Property

Title:: Ownership as interpersonal dominance: a history and three studies of the social psychology of property

Author:: Rudmin, Floyd W.

Year of publication:: 1988

Language:: English

Subject:: Besitz Eigentum Sozialpsychologie

Topic:: C - Psychology

Shelfmark:: C/R916 O9

Access:: Free access

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.48671/pop.AC14489044

i The English-Canadian equivalent to Attawapiskat was sought in island and village communities of Eastern Ontario. The primary site of the English-Canadian research was Amherst Island, just west of Kingston, Ontario. Amherst Island has about 400 permanent residents, with perhaps as many cottagers in the summer. There is one village on the island, though most residents live along rural roads. As documented in historical geographic research (Norris, 1977), many residents trace their origins to nineteenth century Angio-Ceiltic immigrants, and there has been little settlement by other ethnic groups, even in recent years. Not all of the English-Canadian respondents were recruited from Amherst Island. Three were from Simcoe island, just to the east of Amherst Island, and five were from the Sydenham Village district, just north of Kingston. An initial pilot investigation among the Cree consisted of interviews modeled on Furby’s (1978a,b) protocol, conducted in English where possible and in Cree with the help of an interpreter. The objective was to identify terms of ownership that would be common and important in Cree, but that would also have comparable forms in languages of stratified societies (Canadian-English, Japanese, Hindi). Pilot study respondents were six adult Cree from Attawapiskat, three Catholic priests who had made careers of serving in the James Bay area, and a legal aid lawyer. They were asked about expressions of ownership, for enumerations of property, for definitions of ownership, for sentiments of ownership, for means of acquisition, and for ownership relations. Based on earlier research (Rudmin, 1983), 108 English verbs of possession and ownership were presented in English to two bilingual informants who identified verbs that were and were not important in Cree conceptualizations of ownership. These 108 verbs were also translated into Cree and then back-translated into English (Brislin, 1980). This was done twice by independent sets of interpreters. These translations were checked by three different teachers of Cree, who also identified “hard Cree” words that might not be known by the younger generation. Japanese translations of the verbs of possession were established by forward-and-back translation by two independent pairs of Japanese-English bilingual informants. Hindi translations were tentatively made by a single informant. In the final selection of stimuli, priority was given to terms that were important for the Cree conceptualization of ownership, that were known to be “easy Cree” and therefore understandable to most of the community, that had greater consensus on translation, and that had clear equivalents in English, Japanese, and Hindi. To keep the psycholinguistic tasks

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