Community and kinship in Talahara
Talahara's community and kinship structures are the fundamental social and economic building blocks of Talaharan culture and society. The most common familial structure is based on local kinship or community groupings; rather than patriarchal/matriarchal, extensive clan, or nuclear systems.
The template for Talaharan community and family structure comes from the traditional structures of the Kel Aman and Kel Hadar cultures. These two core cultures of the Talaharan nation each had distinct approaches to community structures which appear to have synthesized in the 18th century to form a common community structure along the coast and the foothills of the Adras Mountains. At the extremes, more traditional kinship associations have been maintained in Kel Aman communities on the coast and Kel Hadar communities in the mountains and desert. However, socio-political structures in the 19th and 20th centuries post-revolutionary era have predominantly promoted the synthesized Kel family structure.
As an element of the revolutionary program of the Talaharan Civil War, social and familial structures were rewritten and communities were reformed to promote social, political, and economic equity. This process is typically known as the Social Revolution, which spread through the country from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century. The Social Revolution upturned traditional gender roles, clan/caste structures, and community governance structures. Further developments in the 20th and 21st centuries have altered perceptions and approaches to the integration and inclusion of marginalized groups.
Community
Community in Talahara refers to both general and specific structures in Talaharan life. Both definitions frequently correlate but are not necessarily inclusive. In general, non-directly familial social environments make up a general nexus of community. These communities are ordinarily tight-knit and provide a bulk of informal supports and forums for socialization. Distinguished from direct family by an absence of notable blood ties, communities nevertheless play major roles in defining lifestyles and socialization in Talahara.
In the specific sense, community refers to the communal political structure. Communes are the most local level of political organization, identified more generally with their constituents than by strict geographic boundaries. In addition to political representation, communes are the primary providers of social services and informal economic and labour union districting.
Political structures
As formal political structures, communes are groupings of roughly 4,000 people, represented by a council of ten members. Constitutionally, communes are individually the most powerful political entities in the country. In practice, communes have historically delegated a great deal of their power up the chain to Talahara's regions and the Supreme Legislative Council. Some communes are subdivided into ten districts or neighbourhoods of roughly 400 people, each of which elects a representative for the Communal Council. Others exist as a single unit that elects their Communal Councils from a pool of candidates.
Despite their constitutional power, Talaharan communes are relatively intimate and often closed settings. Public services, including policing are officially administered at the commune-level. As such, various institutions are attuned to the specific concerns of the communards. The Communal Council also appoints and administers basic court services and Black Guard military units. In dense urban areas, many of the services administered at the commune-level may be pooled between inter-communal organizations or even devolved upward to regions which may in turn pool resources into an inter-regional urban agglomeration. These cooperative agreements lead to a great degree of interconnectedness between communes, but legally any commune is able to withdraw from these agreements and self-administer at any time.
Socio-political alienation is known to be a matter of concern in some communes, whereby certain members of the community facing ostracization may be informally presented with barriers to accessing certain services, particularly if the members have a history of differences or confrontations with core members of the community. These experiences are more common in relatively autonomous or isolated communes, particularly in Talahara's south. Common sources of ostracization/alienation include diversity factors and criminality. Despite this, communal services are guaranteed to all persons within a commune, not merely citizens or workers.
Movement between communes is legally protected, but membership in a specific commune is prioritized first by geography and then by seniority of a household. As such, a group or individual who moves to the edge of a new commune need only register with the commune council to participate in the commune's politics, but may be subjected to a future change via rezoning of communal boundaries while a long-standing community household also located on a boundary would remain.
Employment
The workplace in Talahara is also an important centre of community. Enshrined requirements of industrial democracy create highly participatory environments. Workplace politics and access to a voice in the direction of an enterprise are key socio-political values in Talahara. While not a formal component of government, workplaces are often considered an unofficial political subdivision below the level of the commune, with each workplace constituting its own political entity, networked with other outlets of a common enterprise or industry.
Workplace cohorts constitute a major social environment in Talahara - often even more than in other cultures. While labour hours tend to be strictly regulated in the maintenance of a healthy work-life balance, out-of-work socialization is especially common. Common social settings include formal recreational activities, local community events, or informal gatherings. Many workplace cohorts can take on quasi-familial relationships with a great deal of crossover with other community or kinship structures.
Time and holidays
The Talaharan workweek is typically structured on a 10-day cycle. Most people attend work 7/10 days of the week, typically broken up as three workdays, one day off, four workdays, two days off. Other, more progressive or established workplaces, may operate on 6/10 days of the week. On a standard 7/10 workweek, Talaharan's work approximately as many hours per annum as workers on a 5/7 day workweek.
In addition to three or four days off per week, Talahara has one work holiday on the first day of each month. Months in the Talaharan calendar are 30 days each. The additional five days on the calendar (six during leap years) are extramensal holidays, celebrated at the end of the year for the anniversary of the revolution.
| Occasion | Date (TRC) | Date (Gregorian) † |
|---|---|---|
| New Year/Revolution Day | 1 Yezawdayeɣet | June 20 |
| Clear Night | 1 Yeg'awdayeɣet | July 20 |
| Scorching Day | 1 Yezawzimet | August 19 |
| Bonfire Night | 1 Yeg'awzimet | September 18 |
| Water Festival | 1 Aysi | October 18 |
| Ploughing Day | 1 Nim | November 17 |
| White Night | 1 Tezayyuret | December 17 |
| Black Night | 1 Teg'ayyuret | January 16 |
| Wind Festival | 1 Yardut | February 15 |
| Spirits Day | 1 Sinwa | March 17 |
| Embers of the Sea | 1 Tezasra | April 16 |
| Embers of the Hills | 1 Teg'asra | May 16 |
| Year's End | Tafaska Brayur | June 15 - June 19 |
† All holidays except the Black Night and the Wind Festival are shifted one day forward in leap years.
Talaharan holidays are typically large community events that include traditional fairs, games, and public social celebrations. Other holidays, such as the White and Black Nights and the Embers, are more solemn or solitary occasions that are typically celebrated within smaller family units or are observed simply as time off from work. During the Year's End, most non-essential services close down. Daily parades and festivities are common, building to an ultimate celebration of the new year.
The summer solstice is the traditional Talaharan New Year. This date is standardized to June 20 (June 19 in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. Year 1 in the Talaharan count is equivalent to 749 BCE in common reckoning, approximating the date of the foundation of the city-state of Manassa. Thus, the year 2024 in the Gregorian calendar is 2774 in the Talaharan calendar. Dates written in the Talaharan system are noted "TR" (Talaharan reckoning) for dates after 749 BCE. Dates prior to 749 BCE are traditionally noted as "BM" (Before Manassa), but more commonly as "BTR" (Before Talaharan reckoning).
Education
Primary, secondary, and post-secondary education is publicly-funded in Talahara. Primary education is included with early child care in Communal Council programming, bridging age groups from infants to 13 years of age. Secondary education is also provided by commune-level institutions, but the curriculum is more intensive and has more divergent streams. Between 14 and 18 years of age, students can begin apprenticing with industrial unions in addition to completing required coursework. This process primes students to enter the workforce immediately upon graduation. Apprentices are remunerated for their work unlike pure academic stream students, but they are not conferred full academic rights until they attain the age of majority. By contrast, many purely academic streams in secondary school involve a democratic element in terms of defining the curriculum and governance of the program. Students can also be remunerated for academic output, and youth academic publications are commonly circulated within local communities.
Post-secondary educational institutions have their curriculums, mandates, and funding organized by Regional Councils. In practice, educational assets and governance duties are frequently combined between council areas to create larger, more substantial institutions. The largest post-secondary institution in Talahara is the University of West Maktarim-Mestaɣanim which offers liberal arts and STEM degree programs. General admission to universities relies on program-related standardized testing. University-bound students typically enroll in an additional year of secondary education to prepare directly for their desired programs' tests. General international students are subject to the same standardized tests but immigrants with foreign credentials are fast-tracked to have their credentials certified in the United Communes.
Kinship
Family/household structure
The Talaharan model of the family is quasi-nuclear in formation with a strong core based on two parents and their children. Outside this core, elders and the siblings of parents play important roles. It is common for two or three generations to either cohabitate in the same residence or reside in direct proximity to each other. In modern Talahara, the elderly are commonly the primary caretakers of the young. The eldest sibling among a group of parents also traditionally takes on a role as a lifestyle guide or advisor to their children and the children of their siblings. This role, referred to as the Orahamezzan, is not gendered. Parents are primarily responsible for providing for their families, though assets are typically pooled within a family unit.
The process of blending families and joining in marriage can be a complex affair in Talahara. Unlike other marriage traditions in which one spouse leaves their old family to join a new one, Talaharan marriages traditionally involved the uniting of the two broader families into a single clan on a permanent ongoing basis. In Kel Hadar culture, this process involved the physical merging of assets and properties across the family. For the more sedentary Kel Aman culture, new family assets became outposts of a broader clan organization, in which assets remained the property of the quasi-nuclear unit with traditions of hospitality for fellow clan members. In the present day, the traditions of the Kel Aman are relatively dominant, albeit with the absence of private property.
Name conventions
On average, Talaharans go though approximately three legal name changes over the course of their lives. Children are named at birth by their parents, comprised of a given name, their parents' surname, and their clan name. Upon coming of age which occurs with entry into the workforce, a young adult picks a new given name, with the previous given name being relegated to a middle name. With marriage, a couple picks a new surname entirely. This new surname is adopted by the parents of the married couple as a middle name directly preceding their own last name. Immigrants to Talahara are also afforded the opportunity to select a new name upon being granted citizenship.
A married adult Talaharan would have the following name structure: "[adult given name] [birth given name] [marriage surname] [clan name]".
Marriage surnames are traditionally unique and distinctive from the surnames of either member's parents. A novel trend in Talahara, some couples since the 1980s have opted to hyphenate their birth surnames to form their marriage surnames rather than invent an entirely new name.
Despite these conventions, Talaharan names are typically rendered simply as "[given name] [surname]" both in Talahara and abroad.
Gender roles and sexuality
Throughout the majority of Talahara's recorded history, adherence to strict gender roles was a societal expectation. These roles differed significantly across clan, class, and ethnic traditions. Comparatively, non-heteronormative relationships were significantly less stigmatized. It has been theorized that this was due in part to the broad clan systems of governance placing less emphasis on an individual's role in securing lineage and succession. Recent historical analysis has also demonstrated that many traditional gender roles were less rigid than popularly assumed.
Among the lower classes, labour had no real gender division with men and women working side-by-side in fields, mines, and fishing boats. While childrearing was assigned to women, past the age of nursing the task of raising children fell to the elderly, with the age divide proving generally more significant than the gender divide. Among the middle and propertied classes in early-modern Talahara, the division between professional labour and domestic labour was more pronounced as a gender binary. Women were historically accepted as the masters of the home including dominance over the management of the household and inter-household relations. Men were expected to manage commercial and economic interests outside of the home. This binary, however, was permeable and there are many examples of "effeminate" men who managed their households and "masculine" women who owned businesses and conducted transactions. Among the ruling classes, gender roles again were more nebulous. In the tradition of many Kel cultures, women commonly held leadership roles and sex was no barrier to accessing power.
The reorganization of Talaharan society beginning in 1838 with the conclusion of the Talaharan Civil War led to the upheaval of traditional Talaharan gender roles. The deconstruction of gender roles was encouraged through a period of major reforms through to the end of the 19th century. Despite these reforms, conservative outlooks on gender and sexuality persist to the modern day, though these views are typically fringe positions.