Free The People of the Eye: Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry by Harlan Lane, Richard C. Pillard, Ulf Hedberg

transnational communality. Theresa Smith illustrates the point: "Deaf Americans feel a kinship with Deaf Italians in a way that is closer, deeper than they do with hearing Americans."99 The Deaf belief in transnationalism is founded on language.100 Laurent C1ercD tells what transpired when he visited a school for the Deaf in London:
    As soon as I beheld [the students] my face became animated, I was as agitated as a traveler of sensibility would be on meeting all of a sudden in distant regions a colony of his countrymen. On their side, those deaf and dumb persons fixed their looks on me, and recognized me as one of them. An expression of surprise and pleasure enlivened all their features. I approached them. I made some signs and they answered me by signs. This communication caused a most delicious sensation in each of us.... 101
    Sign languages have enough properties in common that early Deaf scholars even claimed sign language to be universal, though that is not true literally.102 When Deaf people from different countries meet, their exchanges will be in a prominent sign language such as ASL, or in a contact variety, or in pantomime. (There is also International Sign, which has arisen from contact among Deaf participants at international meetings. And there was a proposed international sign vocabulary, analogous to Esperanto, called Gestuno, which is not in use nowa- days).103 In addition to international meetings, communication among Deaf people from different nations takes place using the internet, print publications, and individual travel.104
    KINSHIP
    Practices related to kinship vary widely in ethnic groups around the world. In the West, kinship among the members of an ethnic group is largely based on the blood relations they have in common and some scholars insist that there is no ethnicity without such shared ancestry. In many societies, however, kinship depends on socialization, not on shared ancestry.105 A few examples of this decoupling of ancestry and kinship may suffice. In Langkawi, a Malaysian archipelago, when a mother feeds her biological children along with unrelated foster children, all these children are seen as kin. They are not allowed to marry one another and all are said to resemble the people who raise them, in the same way that children are said to resemble their birth parents106 Among the Trobrianders, in New Guinea, "The children of a union are not in any way regarded as kin to their father or to his lineage. They are of the same body as their mother."107 The Yao peoples in southern China adopt many non-Yao children; these foster children are seen as kin in all respects, including participating as Yao in the many rituals of this ethnic group, such as ancestor worship.108 Among the Inupiat of northern Alaska most families include adopted children who are seen as kin since the kinship bonds that really matter are with those who raised you, not with those who gave birth to you.109 For the Navajo, kinship is defined by helping, protecting, and sharing: When two people are bonded in these ways, they see one another as kin.110 In such ethnic groups, the claim of common ancestors is inaccurate but "as long as people regard themselves as alike because of a perceived heritage, and as long as others in the society so regard them, they constitute an ethnic group.""'
    Further evidence that kinship need not be based on shared ancestry: there are means for acquiring and for losing it.112 Entire tribes may acquire kinship to members of other tribes without blood relation. Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan recognize unrelated tribes as sharing their ethnic identity.113 Some cultures reinforce the bonding of their members with claims about kinship and ancestry while others achieve the same end by claiming connections to similar cultures in ancient times.114 In the United States and Europe, most people have many different ethnic groups in their ancestry due to inter-ethnic marriages; the people we consider kin are