Chapter 8 Kinship and non-kinship organization

Question 1

What is Residence

Answer 1

principle concerning where people live, especially after marriage

…and therefore what kinds of residential and corporate groups are found in the society and what tasks and values they are assigned

Question 2

Corporate Groups

Answer 2

A social group that shares some degree of practical interest, identity, residence, and destiny.

The basic organizational and functional units of a society.

Question 3

Kinship system is a product of what 3 distinct but interconnected principles?

Answer 3

Marriage

Residence

Descent

Question 4

Marriage

Answer 4

Socially recognized relationship between two or more people that establishes kin-based groups and provides norms and roles for residence, property, ownership and inheritance, labor, sexual relations and/or childrearing.

Question 5

Incest Taboo

Answer 5

the nearly universal rule against marrying or having sex with kin

Question 6

Social Reproduction

Answer 6

maintenance and perpetuation of the society

enculturation and teaching of members to take their place in society

Question 7

Exogamy

Answer 7

Marrying someone who is not in the same cultural category (e.g. marrying someone of a different sex/gender)

Question 8

Endogamy

Answer 8

Marrying someone who is in the same cultural category (e.g. marrying someone in their own race or religion)

Question 9

Polygyny

Answer 9

Marriage rule in which a MAN can or should marry two or more women

Women may become co-wife for purposes of shared housework, female companionship, and division among man’s sexual demands.

Question 10

Polyandry

Answer 10

Marriage rule in which a WOMAN may or should marry two or more men.

Question 11

Sororal Polygyny

Answer 11

Men marry sisters, which promises (but doesn’t guarantee) to provide more domestic tranquility.

Question 12

Arranged Marriage

Answer 12

Families of prospective marriage partners make the selection and plan the event.

Question 13

Bridewealth or Brideprice

Answer 13

Marriage wealth exchange practice in which a man or his family must pay an amount of property to his wife’s kin before he may assume rights over his wife.

Can be construed as “buying a wife”

Closely associated with pastoral societies, where men dominate and have transferable wealth to offer, namely their herds.

Question 14

Bride Service

Answer 14

Where men are expected give something in exchange but real wealth doesn’t exist, to where they may be required to provide service instead.

e.g. in foraging societies, a many may be obligated to bring meat from his hunts to the woman’s family for a period of years before the marriage is considered fully made or before he can remove her to his family.

Question 15

Dowry

Answer 15

The women’s family is required to provide the husband with property, money, land, goods, etc, to make the marriage

Question 16

Levirate

Answer 16

The practice in which the brother of the deceased former husband is expected

Question 17

Sororate

Answer 17

When the woman is expected to marry the husband of her sister in the event of the married sister’s death

nuer of east africa
- ghost husband” where a woman could be married to a man who had already died, particularly if he died young and without children. Any child she later had were looked upon as the dead man’s children and who would continue his male line.

Question 18

Preferential Cousin Marriage

Answer 18

the principle where a person ought to marry a preferred cousin

Question 19

Kindred

Answer 19

all of the people to whom a person considers himself/herself related by blood or marriage.

too large and dispersed to live in one house and can’t be considered a residential group

Question 20

Household

Answer 20

all the people who live together under one roof and act corporately within the residence.

Question 21

Patrilocality…for father (Virilocality / for man)

Answer 21

The residence practice of living with or near the husband’s family after marriage.

Question 22

Matrilocality…for mother (uxorilocality / for wife)

Answer 22

The residence practice of living with or near the residence of the woman or her family.

This practice tended to enhance female status, since, being the consistent factor in the household, women tended to own and control property, land, and wealth

Question 23

Avunculocal

Answer 23

The residence practice in which a married couple lives with or near an uncle, often a mother’s brother.

An adaptation to male property rights in a society that…you lived with the most important male relative.

Question 24

Ambilocality

Answer 24

Where a married couple chose which household to live with or elected to divide their time between the two household.

Adaptive for societies that lived in difficult environments or low-yield economies…giving maximal flexibility in their living arrangements. (foraging societies)

Question 25

Neolocality

Answer 25

The residence practice in which married people start their own household apart from their parents’ or families’ households.

Requires a fair amount of wealth and suited better to intensive agricultural and industrial/post-industrial societies.

Question 26

Descent

Answer 26

The kinship principle of tracing membership in a kin-based corporate group through a sequence of ancestors.

Question 27

Unilineal descent

Answer 27

Most common

a principle in which indv. trace their ancestry through a line of related kin. such that some blood relatives are included in the descent group or lineage and other relatives are excluded.

Question 28

Patrilineal Descent

Answer 28

Membership in the kin corporate group is reckoned through a line of male ancestors.

Children belong to their father’s corp. group
…not the mother…who is recognized as a relative and not part of the group. They belong to the lineage, but don’t perpetuate it

Father’s siblings belong to the same group.

men inheriting a surname is patrilineal.

Question 29

Matrilineal Descent

Answer 29

Membership in the kin corp. group is traced through a line of female ancestors.

Children belong to the mother’s group…siblings belong to the same group.

Since the children belong to the mother’s lineage (vs. the father’s), the most important male relative may be the mother’s brother - their maternal uncle.

Ulithi practice matrilineal descent…where lineages owned land and houses, matinee cooking hearths, and attended to their own ghosts at their shrines….however also practiced patrilocal residence.