Siblingship beyond siblings? Cousins and the shadows of social mobility in the central Philippines

This article examines cousinship as a border zone that encompasses distance and intimacy, sameness and difference, and which mediates and is mediated by other kinship ties. It investigates how cousinship may bear traces of discord afﬂicting preceding generations; how it may further or augment them, or allow their repair; and how it is shaped by multiple and contending ideals. It does so in the context of social mobility in post-1945 central Philippines. Integrating ‘old’ and ‘new’ kinship studies, it analyses cousinship beyond consanguineous marriages; revisits the paradigm of siblingship that has dominated the anthropology of kinship in Southeast Asia; and attends to how inequalities and enmities arise, and are absorbed, within kinship.

different facets to this discord, including allegations of envy and ingratitude, on the one hand, and arrogance, on the other. Unlike her other siblings, Tita Monica had migrated to the United States to work as a nurse -the first in the family and the village to do so. Mark's mother, Tita Amy, had taken Tita Monica's side; Tita Angeles the other. Lola Ising's illness and death had brought aspects of this and other conflicts to the surface of family life. On the short drive to Santa Rosa, Mark told his brother, 'At least, we showed our faces to them -so they won't think that we're involved' .
Mark's interpretation of our excursion to what he termed 'the other house' took on a new tone once we returned to Santa Rosa. He emphasized to his mother and to Tita Monica -something that he would repeat over the next few weeks -how our arrival had caught his aunt and uncle unawares. He relished quoting his uncle's statement that we were 'bright and glaring' . Concurrently, he noted how he and his brother had performed the besa. He emphasized, too, that we had entered the house through the side door, suggesting familiarity, but also humility: servants and poorer relatives, as well as close friends and neighbours, often use the back or side doors. Yet Mark never used 'tito' when talking about his aunt's husband, referring to him instead by his first name 3a marked act of disrespect. In receiving Mark's narration, Tita Monica did not utter a word; her face remained expressionless. Similarly, Tita Amy was very restrained despite a visible smirk -she contented herself with asking for details every now and then.
The account offered in this article builds on efforts to foreground the inherent place of limits, disconnections, exclusions, difference, and ambivalence within kinship (Carsten 2013;Das 2018;McKinnon 2017;Peletz 2001;Stasch 2009). Such emphasis is in the wake of the 'new' kinship studies, which gives analytical primacy to practices and experiences of various forms of relatedness (Carsten 2000;2004). Indeed, the uncongenial aspects of kinship may be likened to shadows: at times unseen, ignored, or taken for granted, but certainly part of being related to, and living with, others in the world (see Bille & Sørensen 2007). Part of what I develop is how generations overlap with and affect one another, thus complicating linear and unidirectional depictions (Ingold 2007: 116-19). Doing so entails appreciating children's capacity to have their own voice relative to their elders (Das 1998), but also the passage of time and the difficult combinations of the past, present, and future within relations. Likewise, I view kinship as saturated by competing ideals and demands, but also acts of care and repair (Das 2007;Han 2012;Lambek 2011). Hence, not only are ruptures and discord transmitted by elders to their successors, as anthropologists have captured (Day 2012), but younger generations may also trigger these amongst their predecessors. Similarly, successors may shine light on the shadows cast by their elders.
I pursue this rendering in the context of social mobility, a topic that has received scant anthropological attention (but see Nagata 1976;Osella & Osella 2000). Spurred by efforts to examine kinship's continuing salience (McKinnon & Cannell 2013), in the broader project from which I draw I trace the role of kinship and personhood in upward mobility and the corresponding consequences (Cruz 2017). Taking my cue from sociological work on the lived experience of social mobility (e.g. Friedman 2014), and anthropological interventions that foreground how achievements may have unanticipated and unwanted outcomes (Long & Moore 2013), I highlight how social mobility may corrode the very relationships and forms of personhood that propel it. Moreover, given social mobility's entanglement with inequality in the material presented here, I demonstrate  (Bear 2014;McKinnon 2017). Upward mobility may thus create or darken shadows among kin.
I combine the contemporary emphasis on meanings, practices, and emotional and ethical difficulties with the systemic analysis of earlier kinship studies, which investigated, amongst others, the logic that underpinned various kinship systems, their implications for how societies are organized, and how they are encoded in language, ritual, and cosmology. Here, I heed Bodenhorn's (2015) exhortation for a rapprochement between the 'old' and 'new' kinship studies -one that entails recognizing the difference that systemic patterns and logics make, as well as how lived experiences of kinship exceed them. The Philippines, where kinship is reckoned bilaterally, is a productive site for doing so, as bilateral kinship systems have provided some of the impetus for the contemporary emphasis on kinship's uncongenial aspects (e.g. Strathern 1996). I also respond to Lambek's (2011: 5) critique of contemporary kinship studies, which, he argues, has narrowed its focus to nuclear and minimal family forms and possessive parenthood. Examining cousinship thus not only restores some of the lateral expanse of kinship studies, but also enables a reconsideration and layering together of filiation, marriage, and siblingship.
The literature on kinship in island Southeast Asia emphasizes siblingship. Ethnographers have demonstrated how generations are defined as layers of sibling sets; how siblingship takes precedence over filiation and affinity; how siblingship encompasses sameness and equality, but also hierarchy and difference based on age and birth order; and how siblingship constitutes personhood (Carsten 1991;1995a;1995b;1997;Errington 1989;McKinley 1981;Waterson 2009). This focus reconnected the analysis of Filipino kinship to that of their regional neighbours (Cannell 1999), and inspired a reconsideration of Southeast Asian societies that do not calculate kinship bilaterally (e.g. Allerton 2013). Beyond the region, it precipitated the emergence of the 'new' kinship studies. Notably it has been suggested that Carsten's work overemphasizes similarity amongst kin, and the flexibility and inclusiveness of relationships (e.g. Stasch 2009). However, her earlier work (especially Carsten 1997), and that of others (e.g. Errington 1989), demonstrates that exclusion, difference, and coercion are also fundamental aspects of kinship in the region.
My account foregrounds siblingship in adulthood, examining how it transforms and accumulates meanings over time (Alber, Coe & Thelen 2013;Lambek 2011). As elsewhere, siblingship is often examined in the regional literature in the context of early life, reflecting a similar tendency amongst Southeast Asians themselves (Gibson 1994). Apt here is Davidoff's seemingly obvious remark, made in the English context, that having cousins, as well as aunts/uncles, is a 'consequence of having siblings ' (2012: 165). Moreover, discussing cousinship makes visible how persons are embedded in multiple relations (Han 2012). I demonstrate how children may complicate their parents' ties of siblingship in later life. Finally, most accounts of siblingship, and kinship generally, in Southeast Asia focus on more egalitarian, rural, or remote settings. Early exceptions include Nagata (1976), who notes that the implications of upward mobility are registered in quotidian ways and may be more vividly seen in subsequent generations.
The material discussed here stems from fourteen months of ethnographic and historical research between 2014 and 2015, principally among the post-1945 generation, but also their parents and children. The post-1945 generation were born between the late 1930s and the early 1960s and came of age in the aftermath of the Second World War. Their parents were born in the 1900s-10s, got married in the 1920s-30s, and completed  -1970 generation) were born between the 1970s and early 1990s. I conducted fieldwork in Santa Rosa, a riverine and coastal ward of Iloilo City. Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the city was an affluent sugar entrepôt and centre of commerce and culture, but for various reasons its economy declined before and especially after the war (McCoy 1982). Starting in the mid-2000s, the city has experienced an economic boom, partly due to remittances from those working overseas. Santa Rosa was, until the late 1970s, a sparsely populated hamlet. Some residents were sharecroppers, but most were landless farmworkers and fisherfolk. The land was owned by non-resident affluent families of Chinese mestizo descent, some of whom owned sugar plantations in Negros (see Aguilar 1998). After the war, the landowning families shifted to commerce and more prestigious professions. In the 1970s, landownership reform further attenuated their links with Santa Rosa. At the same time, the children of sharecroppers and farm workers benefited from the post-war expansion of schooling and the increase in non-farm opportunities, including, since the 1980s, transnational labour migration and seafaring. In-migration from Iloilo's countryside and surrounding provinces also intensified, leading to a highly dense population.
This essay refers to broader patterns in Iloilo and the Philippines. I foreground the story of one family, the Mahilways, as well as some of their neighbours. Considered exemplary by other old-timers in Santa Rosa, the trajectory of the Mahilways is illustrative of social mobility in the post-war Philippines (Bautista 2001). As with many other upwardly mobile Filipino families, older generations were farmers and sharecroppers, but the post-1945 generation obtained schooling and pursued professional careers, mainly in teaching, engineering, and nursing. Foregrounding one family, whilst also incorporating the experiences and accounts of others, allows me to ground my claims in the specificities of lives. Furthermore, it permits me to capture how persons and their relations are shaped by, and participate in, broader historical events and processes, such as the political economic transformations I have mentioned.
In what follows, I propose a view of cousinship as a border zone. I discuss how, in Iloilo, cousinship can mean both distance and intimacy, and sameness and difference, and is potentially less weighty than siblingship and filiation. I trace transformations in cousinship brought about by social mobility. I then focus on conflicts amongst siblings from the post-1945 generation and their intergenerational transmission -despite a preference for younger kin to stand apart from their elders' discord. Such a view is shared widely by the old and young alike. I elaborate on the difficulties that such transmission poses for the next generation. In the conclusion, I revisit the main implications of my account for the study of kinship in general, as well as of Southeast Asia.

On the border zone
In her account of kinship in 1960s Elmdon, Strathern (1981: 145-6) provides a brief but useful starting point for the analysis of cousinship, particularly in bilateral systems. Cousins in the English case, she says, are 'boundary' kin 'who may or may not be included as "family"': they constitute 'a circle of relatives who may be regarded as near or distant depending on the context' . This dual potential is linked to genealogical and physical distance, and the personal circumstances of those involved: 'First cousins are potentially quite close, and a person with a few siblings nearby may find themselves firm friends with a cousin on whom they can call for help' . Life-course stage and intergenerational relations are pertinent too: '[F]irst cousins thought of as nephews and nieces of one's parents are "near", whilst first cousins who have themselves become grandparents to descending generations have also become "distant"' . I follow Strathern's view, but with two important qualifications. First, in her formulation, cousinship's meanings and consequences are entangled with other kinship ties within and across generations -although older generations appear to hold power over their successors, but not the other way around. In the decades following the Elmdon study, anthropologists and geographers working on political and territorial borders have drawn attention to how such borders both connect and disconnect; are constituted by layers of ongoing history, and multiple perspectives and meanings; and exert their agency (Green 2012). I transpose the insights of this later scholarship by attending to the role of both older and younger generations, the historical shifts in, and multiple meanings of, cousinship. Second, I expand the intergenerational dimension of cousinship by examining the relationship between siblings in one generation and their respective children in the next -an aspect about which Strathern is silent.
The perspective offered by Strathern is a view of cousinship from within kinship universes. An earlier mode of anthropological thinking, in fact, focused on how kinship systems may be differentiated depending on how parent's siblings' children and other relatives in ego's generation are classified (Murdock 1949). Similarly, Lévi-Strauss's (1969[1947) theory pivots on how societies differ through their regulation of ties, specifically marriages, amongst cousins. Indeed, anthropologists have long examined consanguineous marriages (e.g. Kuper 2007). Less discussed is how cousinship might unfold where cousin marriages are prohibited or discouraged.
Nevertheless, several insights may be garnered from the cousin marriages literature. As Busby (1997) underscores, the (non-)marriageability of cousins in the Dravidian kinship context is underpinned by a more fundamental issue: how cousins are deemed similar or different based on the substances that they inherit from their parents. Much then depends on how cousinship is defined in relation to other kinship ties. Meanwhile, as McKinnon (2016: 32) posits, cousin marriages potentially destabilize the opposition between consanguinity and affinity (i.e. between sameness and alterity) that has been central to kinship theory. In this spirit, cousinship is a lens through which to view both similarity and difference within kinship. It is precisely this combination of similarity and difference that underpins Davidoff's description of cousinship in nineteenth-century England as the 'most attenuated of all genetic ties' and 'a penumbra of relatedness ' (2012: 185-6).
As with kinship more generally, wider historical and economic shifts inflect cousinship. For instance, compared to the 1960s or present, in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Britain, sibling sets, and hence cousin sets in succeeding generations, were bigger (Davidoff 2012). Notably, the shrinking of sibling and cousin sets forms part of demographic transitions, and registers how kinship is increasingly encompassed by modernity, but its implications for lived kinship, especially outside Europe, are less understood (Johnson-Hanks 2008: 303;Lambek 2013: 244). 4 Moreover, cousinship itself may be fundamental to hierarchies and distinctions, as demonstrated by the literature on cousin marriages and their role in class formation and wider cultural politics in Britain and America (Davidoff 2012: chap. 9;Kuper 2007;McKinnon 2016). Analogous situations have been documented amongst those who occupy more marginal positions, such as the Amazonian peasants whose claims to the land, according to Harris (2000), are ensured by close residence amongst siblings and their children and marriages amongst cousins. In Santa Rosa, cousinship has different and discordant meanings. To begin with, it forms part of a depiction of a past where residents were related, and indeed close, to one another. Those born from before and immediately after the Second World War grew up with their cousins and other relatives often living in the same or adjacent compounds. Those with minimal age differences (especially if of the same gender) tended to be playmates and friends; they attended the same schools and shared in the walks that characterized everyday life (Cruz 2019). For these older villagers, the proximity amongst cousins resulted from the closeness of siblings in preceding generations: siblings grew up together and generally remained in the village even after marriage, and derived their livelihood from the same sources.
Notably, although marriages amongst second or further degrees of cousins are not prohibited in contemporary Santa Rosa, they are deemed too close. Cousin marriages are often associated with elite mestizo families' attempts to keep their wealth 'within the family' (Aguilar 1998: 58). At the same time, old-timer (tumandok) families have become interlinked through marriages. The bilateral reckoning of kinship, as well as the big family sizes that prevailed previously, means that succeeding generations have bigger sets of cousins, particularly of the second and third degrees. Amidst increased inmigration, being a tumandok brings precedence and power not afforded to newcomersa tumandok, or those who could obtain their support, has a distinct advantage in securing political office, for example.
The use of cousinship to convey and engender closeness has been noted elsewhere. In the Central Visayas, peasant villagers hold the view that, ideally, cousins of at least the fourth degree should not marry precisely owing to proximity (Dumont 1992). Cannell's rural Bicolano informants assert that 'We here are all cousins, that is, we are all siblings here ' (1999: 54). In upland Batangas, villagers describe themselves as 'from the same hatch' (isang pisâ, Tagalog), indicating that they have ancestors who were siblings, and that they are cousins of varying degrees (Aguilar with Peñalosa, Liwanag, Cruz & Melendrez 2009). Western Visayans are likewise reminiscent of other island Southeast Asians (e.g. Carsten 1997: 85;Errington 1989;Waterson 2009). Outside the region, similar views have been recorded. In the Amazonian case mentioned above, peasant villagers claim that 'cousins join kin together' (Harris 2000: 91). In England, cousinship has been used to indicate common origins, but also to diminish distance, in both homogeneous and multi-ethnic settings (Baumann 1995;Edwards & Strathern 2000: 151).
Ilonggo kinship terms indicate that cousinship may also suggest distance, along with conveying closeness. Siblings and cousins are addressed similarly, but referred to differently. Parallel and cross-sex cousins are not differentiated. Older siblings/cousins are addressed as manong (male) or manang (female) (or their shortened forms + nickname), whilst contemporary and younger siblings/cousins are addressed using their personal names. Siblings are referred to as utod, whilst cousins are differentiated by degree: pakaisá (first), pakaduhá (second), and pakatlo (third). Fourth and further degrees of cousins, if recognized, are simply called pariente (kin), like other distant relatives. As elsewhere in the region, kinship ties are rarely recalled beyond the third or fourth generation (Carsten 1995a;Dumont 1992;Geertz & Geertz 1964). Except for the Tagalog pinsan (cousin), which is also used by contemporary Ilonggos, there is no comparable generic term in Hiligaynon.
A similar pattern is discernible in terms used for antecedents and successors, although, as I describe below, the post-1970 generation differs slightly. Older generations call their parents tatay/papa (father) or nanay/mama (mother), and their grandparents lolo (grandfather) or lola (grandmother), or these terms' derivatives. Parents' and grandparents' siblings/cousins are addressed similarly, but with their personal names attached. Referential terms, in contrast, demarcate between nuclear and extended kin: marker + tatay/nanay or similar terms for parents; tíyà(y)/tita (female) or tíyò(y)/tito (male) for parents' siblings/cousins and close friends. One's children are distinguished from nieces/nephews, as are lineal grandchildren (apo) from collateral ones (e.g. apo sa hinablos, a grandchild from a niece/nephew). The children and grandchildren of cousins are classed with one's nieces/nephews and grandchildren, respectively, although their relationship may be qualified (e.g. a 'cousin once removed' in the English nomenclature may be referred to as hinablos sa pakaisa, lit. niece/nephew from a first cousin).
Earlier scholarship thus characterized Western Visayan kinship as combining classificatory and descriptive terminologies, and as a mixture of Murdock's (1949) 'Hawaiian' and 'Eskimo' types, resulting in some flexibility (Gonzalez 1965;Jocano 1969). This situation is analogous to that of the Sa'dan Toraja, who also minimize differences between cousins and siblings by using sibling terms; but highlight them during property disputes, and when distant cousins are to marry, which, unlike in Western Visayas, is preferred (Waterson 2009). I am reminded, too, of the Malay fascination with the boundaries of kinship -'how the similar and the different, the inside and the outside, are always potentially subject to transformation to one another' (Carsten 1997: 287). Hence, just like its English counterpart, Western Visayan cousinship is a border zone that straddles distance and proximity, and similarity and difference.
Insofar as distance and difference are concerned, it is pertinent to recall Edwards and Strathern's point that an aspect of English kinship is how 'the greater the number of persons that mediate the link the more tenuous it becomes' applies (2000: 157). Resonant, too, is Davidoff 's (2012) description quoted above of nineteenth-century English cousinship as 'attenuated' and a 'penumbra' . Further, seen from the vantage point of generations, it registers how close kin and their descendants are transformed over time into distant kin, and eventually to strangers (see also McKinley 1981). This intergenerational transformation was explained to me as a consequence of the blood shared by siblings in an earlier generation being diluted by in-marrying spouses. Although considered pariente, in-marrying spouses are also described as less than blood relatives -merely tapík (lit. 'attached to'). 5 So, even amongst age-or cohortmates, cousinship may mean distance and difference, especially in comparison with siblingship and filiation, and particularly during family conflicts.
Yet, even here, cousinship's implications are far from unequivocal. Such conflicts are often deemed as matters properly left to siblings and their parents. Although cousins, when asked, might voice an opinion or extend help to settle the issue, they would often hesitate and exercise caution, since they are 'merely' cousins and may be told off for meddling in 'family matters' . In some cases, however, it is precisely cousinship's relative 'lightness' that allows relations amongst cousins to flourish. People might confide in and seek succour from their cousins, especially when ties with their siblings or parents are fraught with competition or are deemed asphyxiating (see also Baumann 1995;Davidoff 2012).
I will discuss filiation in the next section, so my discussion here is limited to siblingship. For the post-1945 generation, it is common to have helped in the schooling of siblings (younger usually), at times sacrificing personal ambitions (Cruz 2019). In some cases, these flows of support have extended to nieces/nephews. Women, I found, are more likely to have complied with these expectations (even after marriage), as men are seen as less responsible than their sisters, and as having to provide for their own families once married (Blanc-Szanton 1990). Older members of this generation (and their seniors) are likely to describe persons as always already within siblingship. Humans are born with their dungan (soul, but also 'together'), a life force that allows them to prevail on and dominate others, but also an entity that is always with one (Aguilar 1998;Magos 1992). 6 Younger generations, although less likely to speak of siblingship in terms of dungan, recognize persons' embeddedness in sibling sets. Reminiscent of other Southeast Asians, one is asked 'How many siblings are you?' (pila kamo mag-ulutod), instead of 'How many siblings have you got?' (Carsten 1991;1997). 7 For the post-1945 and earlier generations, siblingship's importance is amplified by the comparatively large size of sibling sets mentioned above, similar to the 'long family' in nineteenth-century Britain (Davidoff 2012).
Likewise, for these older generations, fostering was prevalent. As in other parts of the region (e.g. Carsten 1991;1997;McKinley 1981;Schrauwers 1999), fostering entails taking in a sibling/cousin's child, but not becoming their exclusive parents. Fostering arrangements are predicated on solidarity, but also inequality. The child's parent (the foster parent's sibling or cousin) may be hard up, a favourite, or have died. The child is often asked to clean the house, help in the family enterprise, or look after their younger cousins -thus becoming like a servant (see Schrauwers 1999). In some cases, those fostered are asked to take a course or attend an institution that is cheaper than those of their cousins -as transpired when Lola Ising took in ten nieces/nephews, and later, three grandnieces/nephews. In less pleasant situations, help is only extended grudgingly, generating resentment amongst the aunt/uncle's spouse and children. Consequently, those fostered may feel inferior to their cousins, and may develop distant and tense relationships with their cousins and aunts/uncles, even in adulthood.
In other situations, fostering may enable poorer relations to better their economic and social standing. Amongst the Mahilways, this occurred over two generations. Lolo Minong (Mark's maternal grandfather) and his brothers were raised with a paternal female cousin who became orphaned at a young age. Later, she married Enso, whose second cousin had inherited a vast tract of land in Santa Rosa. Enso leased the land and made Lolo Minong his principal share tenant, giving the latter a stable source of income and enhancing his family's standing in the village. Likewise, Enso and his wife fostered several of Lolo Minong's children and those of Lolo Minong's brother's, and helped with their schooling -thus becoming their Papá and Mamá. The couple's only daughter to survive into adulthood continued to have some of her second cousins live in their house long after the death of her parents. Having remained unmarried, she later passed on to them what she had inherited from her parents.

Unequal and mobile cousins
Unlike their predecessors, the post-1970 generation does not have similarly dense ties of cousinship. Intensified geographical dispersal, upward mobility, and inequality have contributed to this transformation, as have an increased emphasis on filiation, and less dependence amongst adult siblings in raising children. In part, the situation described here resembles that in the Central Visayas, where migration, out-marriage, and heightened class differences contribute to the 'forgetting' of distant cousins and other kin (Dumont 1992). As above, kinship terminologies are symptomatic. The post-1970 generation, especially those in urban areas, generally address their aunts and uncles using descriptive terms (i.e. tita and tito, terms borrowed from Tagalog), unlike their elders, who, as described, use classificatory terms of address, but descriptive terms of reference.
As I elaborate elsewhere (Cruz 2019), although the post-1970 generation's parents grew up in a context where parenthood was shared amongst genitors and their siblings and cousins, it was also a time when filiation obtained considerable weight. Echoing other parts of the lowland Philippines, children in Santa Rosa are seen as owing their parents an unpayable debt of gratitude for the gift of life, and for schooling and other opportunities. Thus, children are to show respect and loyalty to their parents. Simultaneously, children are thought of as completing their parents and instantiating the family. Moreover, children are at times considered as their parents' substitutes, where their achievements are counted vicariously, and where they redeem their parents' deficiencies. Meanwhile, parents are seen as keeping their children together, helping to hold conflicts in abeyance. The birth of children, and marriage before it, likewise transforms persons' relationships with their own siblings and parents. The change in status confers maturity and autonomy and shifts the new couple's focus to their own children, whose interests they are expected to prioritize. Marriage and parenthood activate kinship's potential to become 'a kind of theft or hoarding, of something kept to or for oneself' (Lambek 2011: 2).
Resonating with what has been described as kinship's encompassment by the state (but also, I add, the market economy) (Lambek 2013), the emphasis on parenthood indicates in part the enduring influence of the notion of pamilya (family, Tag.). Defined by monogamy, parenthood, and nuclear residence, pamilya was introduced by the Spanish with varying degrees of success; it was adopted by the elites, enshrined in subsequent legislation, and reproduced in public culture (Aguilar 1998: 57-8;Blanc-Szanton 1990;Cruz 2012). Notably, the upwardly mobile segment of the post-1945 generation speak of kinship using a language of family, lineages, inheritance, and co-substantiality that privileges immediate and lineal kin, and which echoes elite articulations of kinship. They describe their schooling as their inheritance from their parents, even if their parents had little or no formal education, and notwithstanding the role of their parents' siblings and cousins and those of their own in achieving educational and professional ambitions (Cruz 2019).
Alongside the elaboration of filiation, fostering became less prevalent amongst the post-1970 generation, especially amongst those whose parents experienced upward mobility. The diminished salience of fostering appears to be a consequence both of parents' stable and regular income, and of the smaller family sizes. Fertility rates in the Philippines declined beginning in the 1960s, partly because of delayed marriages, itself resulting from the expansion of schooling and professional opportunities (Concepcion & Smith 1977).
Because of the post-1945 generation's migration in pursuit of work, personal autonomy, and marriage and family life, many of their children grew up outside of Santa Rosa -as far away as other parts of the Visayas and Manila. As mentioned, Iloilo's economy languished after the war, so upward mobility depended on finding jobs in other urban centres and, and especially after the 1970s, overseas. Following the post-1970 generation's own migration beginning in the 2000s, their dispersal has extended to North America, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere in Asia. Migration as nurses and other healthcare professionals has become a prominent route for Ilonggos and other Filipinos (Amrith 2016). Likewise, reflecting a widespread phenomenon in Western Visayas, joining the merchant navy has become a popular option, especially for men. In 2014, some of the overseas members of the families I worked with were already citizens of their new countries of residence, or were about to become so. In a few cases, they already had their own families abroad. Given the dispersal that has occurred over two generations, physical togetherness of extended families has become more difficult and less frequent. Cousins do not see each other and their aunts/uncles as often. Ritual moments (e.g. annual religious devotions and decenarios for deceased kin) and celebrations (including Christmas and New Year) are critical for they enable family reunions to occur (see Gardner & Grillo 2002). Similarly, moments of crisis, such as a family member's illness and death, temporarily reverse the centrifugal movements that have accumulated over time. In contrast, the accrual of shared everyday moments has become less prominent. Those overseas tend to communicate mainly with their parents and siblings, and their conversations often only involve aspects of their everyday lives. In some cases, information -such as an illness -are concealed or delayed as a form of care. Moreover, although migrant grandchildren are connected through online platforms to their immediate families and kin, infrastructural issues in Santa Rosa have, until recently, constrained online togetherness (compare Aguilar et al. 2009;McKay 2017).
Many families share the trajectory sketched here, although the extent of their geographical dispersals vary -the Mahilways being one of the most dispersed. A neighbour of the Mahilways, an elderly woman, several of whose children and nieces/nephews had left Santa Rosa, commented: Our family got more and more dispersed. Children got married, had children, and their children in turn had their own. They moved farther and farther. You no longer know them, especially the younger ones. My nieces and nephews in Manila, for example, are far, so I no longer see them. They'll soon have their own families, their own children, who I'd no longer know. Maybe in the future, I'd bump into their children and would've no idea that they're my relatives.
Resonating with Nagata's (1976) point regarding the intergenerational consequences of social mobility, mentioned in the introduction, the neighbour's statement makes it clear that the effects of dispersal on kinship ties are felt more when it comes to the younger generations. In fact, where the parental sibling set is large and dispersed, a child might not know some of his or her first cousins, particularly if there is a considerable age gap between the child's parent and the cousins. Here I am reminded of a daughter of the youngest in a brood of twelve. Out of her fifty-odd cousins of various degrees, she does not know many of those who live outside of Iloilo. 'We're not even Facebook friends' , she said.
Social and geographical mobility is a source of discord amongst siblings from the post-1945 generation. A usual source of friction is the failure to help siblings and/or their children despite having the resources to do so. Another issue is who will care for parents in their old age. Although their elders faced these issues too, the post-1945 generation's geographical dispersal made them more pronounced. There is also a greater potential for inequalities owing to the 'long' line of siblings that characterize that generation, coupled with drastic differences over time in economic opportunities. For example, younger siblings who in the 1980s entered the seafaring and migrant healthcare professions have done better financially compared with older siblings who entered the  teaching profession in the 1960s and 1970s. Migration and upward mobility (and for some, land reform in the 1970s) likewise have enabled families to acquire property that could cause or amplify conflict amongst siblings after their parents' death. In one case, a brother and his family left the village after losing to his siblings a court case pertaining to half a hectare of land left by their father. During my fieldwork, the ongoing economic boom exerted pressure on the value of land. Many agricultural properties had been, or were being, converted to new developments (see Fig. 3).
In the case of the Mahilways, one shadowy brother, who had not been home for seven years owing to a rather complicated marital and professional life, kept his distance despite their mother's illness and death, hence generating accusations of abandonment and ingratitude that added to a long-running rancour. Likewise, Tita Amy (Mark's mother) begrudged most of her siblings, Tita Olive included, for leaving her with the sole responsibility of looking after their mother. Not only were (and are) women preferred carers, but by the time of Tita Amy's marriage, most of her siblings had already left the family home. She thus had to forgo her dream of becoming a doctor. Instead, she faced the difficult task of juggling her care responsibilities with managing the family's farm in a nearby town, running a corner shop, and, on occasion, making rice cakes and other snacks for sale.
In our conversations, Tita Amy described their youngest sibling, Tita Monica, as her ally. From the United States, where she had emigrated as a nurse in the late 1980s, Tita Monica would send money each month for their mother's upkeep. It was also Tita Monica who paid for most of Lola Ising's hospital and funeral expenses. On the whole, migration has meant economic power and prestige for Tita Monica, and, indeed, the 'first word': 'the privilege of shaping family decisions before others have their say' (Cole 2014: S88), thus upsetting the age-and birth-order-based hierarchy amongst siblings. Yet migration has also meant vulnerability to excessive demands, abuses, ingratitude, Olive's husband and his propensity to meddle in the affairs of the Mahilway siblings, which exceeded that acceptable for a brother-in-law. The difficulties generated by social and geographical mobility have affected the post-1970 generation in part owing to children's continuing dependence on their parents. Although sources of livelihood have become more diverse, young and unmarried children remain their parents' economic responsibilities. Those whose parents have had less income, more care obligations, or, worse, both have faced more difficult circumstances compared to their more fortunate cousins. Here, as elsewhere, inequality entails temporal precariousness: the contraction and instability of the future (e.g. Bear 2014; Das 2015: 123).
Children's schooling is most pertinent here. Reflecting the limited amount of support provided by the state, disadvantaged children have to delay their schooling, study parttime, or transfer to less expensive degree programmes and institutions. Fee-paying institutions -in higher education especially, but also at primary and secondary levelsare generally preferred by middle-class and upwardly mobile parents for their children, as attending them often implies enhanced employability. Such situations differ from the past, when siblings/cousins attended the same state schools. Notably, there are few economically rewarding options that do not require degree-level qualifications, and these are often precarious and of low status (e.g. six-month jobs in hospitality and retail, or domestic work abroad). During my fieldwork, call centres that do not require degree-level qualifications had a limited presence in Iloilo and were only just beginning to expand.
There are other quotidian registers of inequality, too, including differences in clothing, access to gadgets, and the ability to frequent the city's new malls and entertainment strips. Such differences constrain cousins from participating in each other's lives -often articulated in terms of developing different interests. Responsibilities matter too, as disadvantaged children often have to help their parents secure their livelihood and fulfil care obligations. Even adult children working abroad, especially those who are unmarried, continue to be involved in their parents' obligations: by contributing to the upkeep of grandparents, for example. Simultaneously, position within their own sibling set matters: those who are older tend to have more obligations. As with their parents' generation, daughters, in particular, are faced with most of these obligations.

Ensnared and knowing selves
How, then, might it be to inhabit the border zone of cousinship amidst dispersal, inequality, and enmity? The elaboration of parent-child relations discussed above means that these ties are sometimes exploited to further rifts between siblings in the parental generation. For example, an aunt/uncle might cultivate ties with a niece/nephew with whose parent they are in conflict, in the hope of securing elusive information. In other situations, an aunt/uncle, perhaps with the (knowing) participation of their own children, might maintain ties with a niece/nephew in the hope of conveying information to an estranged sibling. In such cases, the objective may be to repair an ongoing animosity.
Children, as I have said, are expected to be loyal and obedient to their parents. At times, this means cutting ties with estranged relations, defiance of which could impair parent-child ties. This potential became visible when it emerged that Mark's younger brother had been helping a cousin undertake tasks given by that cousin's father (the shadowy uncle mentioned previously). 'Where does your loyalty lie?' , Mark's brother was asked by his mother and an aunt. Indeed, given the weight of expectations of loyalty and obedience, Mark's rendition of our unscheduled visit to the 'other house' may have been underpinned by a need to actively perform loyalty to his mother.
Yet children are simultaneously expected to show respect to other older kin -a consequence of the hierarchical importance of generation and age. Failure to do so means the casting of judgement and shame (huyâ) upon their family, particularly their parents. It could also worsen existing enmities, or create new ones. As others have shown, sentiments of shame in Western Visayas and the lowland Philippines are rooted in being in a socially unacceptable position that exposes a diminished self and family (Jocano 1969;Lynch 1973Lynch [1962). In a lifeworld where parents and children are seen as irrevocably connected to, and indeed stand for, each other, children's actions are reflected on their parents. Moreover, part of the difficulty that Mark and his cousins faced was that they had already reached adulthood -they no longer had recourse to notions of childhood innocence or lack of knowledge that, in other contexts, might absolve them from wrongdoing (e.g. Aguilar et al. 2009;Rosaldo 1980: chap. 3). Hence, even if they may be under the sway of their parents, as adults they are expected to behave appropriately.
So, Mark's decision that our group greet Tita Olive and her husband may also be seen as an effort at preventing flows of shame and judgement. In fact, his mother, Tita Amy, repeatedly -and anxiously -insisted that he and his siblings should not be involved in the conflicts between her and her sibling. 'Don't join the fray (indì mag-entra)' , and 'You must give respect to your aunts because they're older than you' , I heard her instruct her children several times. In explaining why she insisted so, she often alluded to how Tita Olive's children, supposedly upon their parents' prodding, have become involved in their elders' discord. Hence, Tita Amy demonstrated her moral superiority as a sibling and a mother, but also as a daughter. Whenever she reflected on her circumstances, she often invoked her mother. 'Don't mind it. Just persevere. God's grace is everywhere' , was what Lola Ising would tell her.
At the same time, Tita Amy's insistence, I suggest, is underpinned by a recognition of the weight of parent-child ties, including how children may feel compelled to defend their parents. Hence, when Mark narrated our visit to the 'other house' , Tita Amy was very restrained and said nothing that could inflame the situation -unlike when I spoke to her without the presence of her children. It is my sense, too, that another (perhaps contradictory) reason behind Tita Amy's bidding is the awareness that adult children may behave differently than preferred by their parents. I am reminded of another villager, whose married son figured in an affair, and who said: 'He's my son and of my body, but he has his own mind' .
Corollary to having no recourse to notions of innocence, adulthood means increased familiarity with the discord that blights one's elders. Adult children have to live with the 'poisonous knowledge' of frayed kinship ties (Das 2007). They witness and experience the cooling of previously warm ties with aunts/uncles and cousins. Their parents might confide in them, and as I encountered in some cases, children might encourage their parents to contest unequal arrangements within the wider family. In some of the instances with which I became familiar, living with such knowledge was made somewhat easier by memories of family life before conflict. In others, keeping their silence and Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute continuing to respect their elders was inflected by children's desire to make room for a future where ties could be repaired. This much I glimpsed when, during our short visit to the 'other house' , Mark spoke to his cousin, who in the past was very close and considered Mark as his brother, having none of his own. The topic of their conversation was perhaps unremarkable -motorcycling and going to the gym -but for ten minutes it seemed as though the enmity that had eclipsed them had been forgotten. The conjunctions, but also tensions, between parent-child ties and siblingship in the parental generation sometimes mean that enmities flow in multiple directions. I have already mentioned how conflicts in the ascending generation may be caused or furthered by their juniors. In other cases, chains of connection permit enmities to ricochet across and within generations, and between Iloilo and elsewhere, including abroad. Along the way, enmities are amplified and layered.
When Mark's sister, Jenny, first left for the United Kingdom in 2011, two of her cousins, Tita Angeles's daughters, were already working as nurses there. Although Jenny's migration was independent from those of the two cousins (she was recruited directly by an NHS Trust hospital), Jenny and her family expected them to help her settle in, especially since she had only little money. Filipino migrants often rely on kin and friends in adjusting to their new environment (e.g. McKay 2017). It also seemed to me that this expectation stemmed in part from the fact that Jenny was close with Tita Angeles's daughters during their childhood. Yet it was not until their grandmother was hospitalized in 2014 that Jenny met them back in Iloilo, three years after moving to the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, as I eventually learnt, Jenny and her cousins had been vying for superior status, as mediated through Facebook posts, such as pictures from the most recent holiday or celebration, or status updates expressing thankfulness for an achievement. Jenny's and her cousins' respective parents, too, played a part in this competition. During conversations with me and other visitors, they keenly proclaimed their children's latest advancement at work or acquisition of British citizenship, for example, implying (at times explicitly declaring) that they are the better parent. In Tita Amy's case, she also emphasized how Jenny, unlike her cousins, regularly sent money for Lola Ising.
Tita Amy initially attributed Jenny and her cousins' failure to meet to their busy schedules, but soon it emerged that it was just the latest episode of a long-running story. In the early 1990s, Tita Angeles's son, Ryan, moved to Santa Rosa from his parents' house in Negros to attend maritime college. Tita Amy, with some help from Tita Monica, paid for his fees. At that time, Tita Amy's own children were still little, and she and her husband considered Ryan as their eldest. After a year, however, Ryan developed a vice. He failed to redeem himself despite being given several opportunities -even turning violent at one time. Tita Amy thus stopped supporting him, leading to the deterioration of her relationship with Tita Angeles.
Other disputes were later wedged into this initial break, including how Tita Angeles did not share the responsibility of caring for their mother, even after her daughters migrated to the United Kingdom. It was hinted, too, that when one of her daughters married into a wealthy family, she started acting superior to her kin. Perhaps more critically, she took the side of Tita Olive (who is closer in age and had helped her with one of her daughter's schooling) when the latter fell out with Tita Monica (who, as mentioned, was Tita Amy's ally). Tellingly, whenever Tita Angeles and her children and grandchildren would visit Iloilo, they would not stay in the family's main house in Santa Rosa, but in the 'other house' .  'Nadamay' (Tag., implicated; nadalahig in Hil.) was how Tita Amy eventually described Jenny's relations with her cousins. Her use of damay is revealing, as the term and its correlates (e.g. pity; debt of gratitude) are key words in the cultural analysis of the lowland Philippines (e.g. Cannell 1999;Ileto 1979). In this line of scholarship, damay means empathy, the merging of selves, and the voluntary sharing and mourning of another's loss or misfortune. It is seen positively as generative of sociality and personhood, especially amidst marginality, oppression, or domination.
Tita Amy's use of the term, however, highlights how one may share another's plight even without assent or intention. The prefix 'na' indicates involuntariness and even coercion on Jenny's part. This construal departs from the positive valuation of damay, but also from recent exposition of how empathy may be intentionally used to deceive and inflict violence on others (Bubandt & Willerslev 2015). Although extending damay or being nadamay may very well occur in other types of relationship, such potentiality is even more pronounced within kinship. Given the weight assigned to filiation and siblingship, Jenny's relations with her cousins suffered because of Tita Amy's attenuated siblingship with Tita Angeles, itself intertwined with Tita Amy's relationship with Ryan.

Conclusion
Building on Strathern (1981), I have depicted Western Visayan cousinship as a border zone encompassing similarity and difference, intimacy and distance. Analogous to geopolitical borders (Green 2012), the meanings attached to cousinship shift depending on historical and relational context, as well as perspective; not simply inert or peripheral, it registers, but also enacts, changes in the wider fabric of kinship. One register of cousinship is genealogical closeness, reflecting how, in the past, siblings and their cousins resided closely, shared sources of livelihood, and participated in each other's lives. Muted, however, is how, even for older generations, cousinship may also signal distance and difference, and is constituted by, and generative of, inequality. Schooling, non-farm work, geographical dispersal, and smaller family sizes have made cousinship less dense in the post-1970 generation. These processes have likewise led to inequalities and enmities amongst siblings in the previous generation, thus casting shadows amongst their children and nieces/nephews. Crucial to this process, too, is the elaboration in the lowland Philippines of parent-child ties.
Ever since McKinley's (1981) paradigm-setting work, ethnographers of Southeast Asia have foregrounded siblingship in understanding the region's social organization. The material discussed here makes clear that when inequalities and differences amongst siblings are heightened, the implications for cousinship are not necessarily straightforward. The next generation's life chances are shaped by their parents' economic standing, although, as I have noted, children's gender and their position within their own sibling set also matter. At the same time, siblings' respective children, particularly in adulthood, may reproduce their elders' enmities, amplify them, generate new ones, or attenuate and repair them. Hence, inheritances, in the form of inequalities and enmities, shape but do not determine children's lateral relations. The relationship, then, between siblings in one generation and cousins in another cannot be assumed to be unidirectional.
Accounts  Geertz 1964). In relation to marriage, the birth of children is seen as transforming affines into consanguines -children conjugate their parents' sibling sets. Ultimately, however, this model glosses over what happens as children grow into adulthood. Cannell, for instance, describes marriage in Bicol as 'the coming-together of two groups of siblings, which at first disturbs each set' , but eventuates to 'the birth of children, who as cousins are all "like siblings" to each other, covering over as it were the breach made by affinity ' (1999: 55). Here, cousins are viewed only in terms of their potential for strengthening ties, notwithstanding a recognition that siblingship, and kinship more generally, is haunted by competing tendencies towards unity and division (Errington 1989). In this rendition, too, cousins are frozen in their childhood, and there is no indication of how they might come to inhabit their kinship universe as they grow older. The flow of time is truncated. I have foregrounded in my discussion the complexity that characterizes Southeast Asian kinship. Understanding cousinship, I have argued, requires layering siblingship with marriage and filiation: that is to say, attending to the unfolding and entanglements of kinship ties over time. Needed, too, is an appreciation of how different and conflicting meanings of relatedness may coexist in a given setting. Indeed, it has been suggested that the emphasis on horizontal ties, incorporation, and the production of similarity that has been observed in the region is the historical consequence of long-distance trade, slavery, and migration, amongst other things; there is a history, too, in Southeast Asia and Austronesia of practising ascribed social ranking and valuing origins, lineal ties, and precedence (Carsten 1995a;1997;Gibson 2011). Likewise, as I have noted at various points, kinship in the region is marked not only by inclusion, flexibility, and an emphasis on similarity, but also by exclusion, disconnections, coercion, difference, and hierarchy.
There are implications beyond the region. Anthropologists have often discussed cousinship in relation to consanguineous marriages, eliding how cousins might relate to one another under other circumstances. Cousinship, in fact, is a good place to investigate ties of adult siblingship in the previous generation and their transformations over time, specifically their entanglement with marriage and filiation, and how generations overlap and cast shadows on one another. Likewise, cousinship captures 'demographies in flux' (Day 2012) -most obviously the enduring and trans-generational effects of social and geographical mobility and the shrinking of sibling sets, but also shifts in dominant constructions of relatedness. It makes visible the consequences of inequality, how they unfold, and are passed on intergenerationally (Bear 2014;McKinnon 2017).
Examining cousinship as I have done so in this article addresses several concerns in the contemporary anthropology of kinship, including: increased attention given to kinship's uncongenial aspects; the passage of time and the multiple temporalities within kinship; the rethinking of generations and intergenerational ties; the emerging interest on siblingship across the life course, particularly in adulthood; and kinship's generativity (e.g. Carsten 2013;Das 2007;Ingold 2007;Lambek 2011;McKinnon & Cannell 2013). Finally, my account speaks to efforts to integrate the concerns and insights of contemporary kinship studies with those of its predecessors (Bodenhorn 2015). The material presented here makes clear how analyses of lived kinship entail attending not only to culturally elaborated relations, but also to the wider fabric of relationships (including seemingly marginal ties), the broader histories they form part of, and how persons navigate them. Martin for helpful suggestions on previous iterations of this essay. I also benefited from the comments of the Editor and reviewers of the JRAI. Tom Chambers read my drafts with utmost patience. The research on which this article is based was supported by a Wadsworth International Fellowship (WIF-224) from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and a Social Anthropology/Social and Political Science doctoral studentship from the University of Edinburgh, while writing was enabled by an Evans Fund Fellowship from the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
1 I have changed the names of my interlocutors. Where kinship terms are used, these reflect how I was incorporated into kinship networks. I have also modified and omitted some details, such as the specific location of my fieldwork and those pertaining to disputes, to make identification less easy.
2 Unless indicated otherwise, italicized terms are in Hiligaynon, the vernacular in my fieldsite. Unaccented words are stressed on the penultimate syllable.
3 I do not name Tita Olive's husband, to signal how conflicts in the family and my location in the kinship network prevented me from knowing him in any meaningful way.
7 As one reviewer has noted, the question is often shortened in other parts of the Visayas to 'How many are you?' , making the association between personhood and siblingship even stronger.