kinship Socially recognized relationship between people who are or are held to be biologically related or who are given the status of relatives by marriage, adoption, or other ritual. Kinship is the broad term for all the relationships that people are born into or create later in life that are con¬ sidered binding in the eyes of society. Every person belongs to a family of orientation (e.g., mother, father, brothers, and sisters); many adults also belong to a family of procreation (which includes a spouse or spouses and children). Familial bonds of descent and marriage may be traced through a genealogy, a written or oral statement of the names of individuals and their kin relations to one another. Inheritance and succession (the trans¬ mission of power and position in society) usually follow kinship lines. See also exogamy and endogamy; incest.
kiosk \'ke-ask\ Originally, in Islamic architecture, an open circular pavil¬ ion consisting of a roof supported by pillars. The word has been applied to a Turkish summer garden pavilion and a type of early Persian mosque. Today the term refers to any small urban booth that dispenses newspa¬ pers, information, or tickets.
Kiowa Vkl-o-.woV North American Indian people living mostly in Okla¬ homa, U.S., on a reservation they share with Comanche and Apache. Their language is of Kiowa-Tanoan language stock. The name Kiowa may be a variant of their name for themselves, Kai-i-gwu, meaning “Principal People.” The Kiowa moved southward from western Montana and adopted the lifestyle of the Pains Indians. They hunted buffalo on horseback and lived in large three-poled tepees. They had warrior societies, the members of which attained rank according to their exploits in war. They believed that dreams and visions gave them supernatural power, and they participated in the sun dance ceremony. They were also noted for their pictographic por¬ trayals, or “calendar histories,” of important tribal events. They were among the last of the Plains peoples to capitulate to the U.S. Some 8,600 peoples claimed sole Kiowa descent in the 2000 U.S. census.
Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard (b. Dec. 30, 1865, Bombay, India—d. Jan. 18, 1936, London, Eng.) Indian-born British novelist, short-story writer, and poet. The son of a museum curator, he was reared in England
but returned to India as a journalist.
He soon became famous for volumes of stories, beginning with Plain Tales from the Hills (1888; including “The Man Who Would Be King”), and later for the poetry collection Barrack-Room Ballads (1892; including “Gunga Din” and “Manda¬ lay”). His poems, often strongly rhythmic, are frequently narrative ballads. During a residence in the U.S., he published a novel, The Light That Failed (1890); the two Jungle Book s (1894, 1895), stories of the wild boy Mowgli in the Indian jungle that have become children’s classics; the adventure story Captains Coura¬ geous (1897); and Kim (1901), one of the great novels of India. He wrote six other volumes of short stories and several other verse collections. His Rudyard Kipling.
children’s books include the famous ELLIOTTANDFRY _
Just So Stories (1902) and the fairy¬ tale collection Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His extraordinary popularity in his own time declined as his reputation suffered after World War I because of his wide¬ spread image as a jingoistic imperialist.
Kirchhoff \'kirk-hof\, Gustav Robert (b. March 12, 1824, Konigs- berg, Prussia—d. Oct. 17, 1887, Berlin, Ger.) German physicist. Kirch¬ hoff’s laws (1845) allow calculation of the currents, voltages, and resistances of electrical networks (he was the first to show that current flows through a conductor at the speed of light) and generalized the equa¬ tions describing current flow to three dimensions. With Robert Bunsen, he demonstrated that every element emits coloured light when heated at wave¬ lengths specific to it, a fact that is the basis of spectrum analysis. They used this new research tool to discover cesium (1860) and rubidium (1861), and began a new era in astronomy when they applied it to the spectrum of the sun.
Kirchhoff's circuit rules Vkir-,k6fs\ or Kirchhoff's laws Two
statements, developed by Gustav Kirchhoff, about complex circuits that embody the laws of conservation (see conservation aw) of electric charge and energy. They are used to determine the value of the electric current in each branch of the circuit. The first law states that the sum of the currents into a junction in the circuit equals the sum of the currents out of the junction. The second law states that around each loop in an electric cir¬ cuit, the sum of the electromotive force is equal to the sum of all the poten¬ tial drops (changes in voltage) across components in the loop. Using these rules, algebraic equations can be formulated to determine the value of currents in different loops in a circuit.
Kirchner Vkirk-norV Ernst Lud¬ wig (b. May 6, 1880, Aschaffen- berg, Bavaria—d. June 15, 1938, near Davos, Switz.) German painter, printmaker, and sculptor. He was among the founders of the Expres¬ sionist group Die Brucke. Kirchner’ s highly personal style, influenced by Albrecht Durer, Edvard Munch, and African and Polynesian art, was noted for its psychological tension and eroticism. He used simple, pow¬ erfully drawn forms and often garish colours to create intense, sometimes threatening works, such as his two versions of Street, Berlin (1907,
1913). Highly strung and often depressed, he took his own life when the Nazis declared his work “degen¬ erate.”
Kiribati X.kir-o-'ba-te, ,kir-i-'bas,
'kir-i-,bas\ officially Republic of Kiribati Island country, central
Street, Berlin, oil on canvas by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1913; in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK CITY
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
1040 I Kirin ► Kitakami Mountains
Pacific Ocean. It consists of 33 islands. The three major island groups are the Gilbert, Phoenix, and Line islands (excluding the three Line Islands that are U.S. territories); Kiribati also includes Banaba Island, the former capi¬ tal of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony. Area (land): 313 sq mi (811 sq km). Population (2005 est.): 95,300. Capitaclass="underline" Bairiki, on Tarawa Atoll. The indigenous people are mostly Micronesians. Languages: English (official), Gilbertese. Religions: Christianity (mostly Roman Catholic; also Protes¬ tant); also Baha’i. Currency: Australian dollar. With the exception of Banaba (which is a coral island and higher in elevation), all the islands of Kiribati are low-lying coral atolls built on a submerged volcanic chain and encircled by reefs. Only about 20 of the islands are inhabited; nearly all of the population of Kiribati live in the Gilbert Islands. The economy is based on subsistence farming and fishing. Kiribati is a republic with one legislative house; its head of state and government is the president. The islands were settled by Austronesian-speaking people before the 1st century ad. Fijians and Tongans arrived c. the 14th century. In 1765 the British commodore John Byron discovered the island of Nikunau; the first permanent European settlers arrived in 1837. In 1916 the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and Banaba became a crown colony of Britain; the Phoe¬ nix Islands joined the colony in 1937. Most of the Line Islands joined the colony in 1972, but in 1976 the Ellice Islands were separated and in 1978 formed the country of Tuvalu. The colony became self-governing in 1977, and in 1979 it became the Republic of Kiribati.
Kirin See Jilin
Kiriwina Islands See Trobriand Islands