Kinship and Descent - Text Flashcards
What is a kinship?
the people we are related to through blood (consanguineal) and marriage (affinal).
What are the three groups kin may be divided into?
nominal, effective, and infinite or core.
What is nominal kin?
we may have little or no contact with nominal kin, even though we are usually aware of their existence.
What are effective kin?
We meet effective kin fairly regularly, at family functions such as weddings, funerals, and reunions.
What are intimate kin?
We maintain continuing, close relationships with our intimate kin, who usually include our extended family–parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and grandparents, both affinal and consanguineal.
What is the focal point of social organization in rural and preindustrial societies?
kinship
- because members live in close proximity and generally form economic bonds
What involves not only how we classify our relatives but also how we organize our family, the support and assistance we can count on, whom we will marry, our residential patterns, and how we view our world and our future?
kinships
What defines our gender roles, how many children we will bear, what will happen to us when we grow old, and even what faith we will practice?
kinship
Kinship is culturally___and it is___.
- diverse
- dynamic
What is the modified extended family?
Does not require residential proximity or restrictive rights and obligations; it maintains close emotional ties and a network of reciprocal support, and it is still common in 21st-century Canadian families.
What is fictive kinship?
Friends not biologically related but considered part of a kin group. New immigrants often substitute friends, especially of the same ethnic origin, if they do no shave any family in Canada; or, as with Italian Canadians, they include neighbours and friends in their kinship network.
True or False: In Canada kinship tends to be voluntary and selective, with no strong obligations.
True
What is a descent group?
Any publicly recognized social entity requiring lineal descent from a particular real or mythical ancestor for membership. Members of a descent group trace their connections back to a common ancestor through parent-child links.
What is the most common ay of tracing membership?
through one sex
- in this way, each individual is automatically assigned from birth to the mother’s or father’s group and to that group only
What is unilinear descent?
Descent that establishes group membership exclusively through either the mother’s or the father’s line.
What is matrilineal descent?
Descent traced exclusively through one’s mother’s grandmother’s line, etc., to establish group membership.
What is patrilineal descent?
Descent traced exclusively through one’s father’s grandfather’s line, etc., to establish group membership.
Where is unilinear descent common?
horticultural and pastoral societies
Where is patrilineal descent predominate?
Where the man is the breadwinner, as among pastoralists and intensive agriculturalists, where male labour is a primary factor.
Where is matrilineal descent important?
Mainly among horitulcuralists, where women are the breadwinners.
Patrilineal descent: which descent group do brothers and sisters belong to?
The descent group of their father’s father, their father, their father’s siblings, and their father’s brother’s children.
In a typical patrilineal group, who is responsible for training the children?
Rests with the father or his elder brother
In a patrilineal descent group, a woman belongs to the same descent group as her father and his brother, but her children___trace their descent through them.
cannot
How does matrilineal descent differ from patrilineal descent, besides the obvious?
The matrilineal pattern differs from the patrilineal in that descent does not automatically confer authority. Thus, although patrilineal societies are patriarchal, matrilineal cultures are not necessarily matriarchal.
Who holds authority in matrilineal descent groups?
Women do not hold exclusive authority in the descent group: they share it with men. These are the brothers, rather than the husbands, of the women through whom descent is reckoned.
What is the adaptive purpose of matrilineal descent?
The adaptive purpose of the matrilineal system is to provide continuous female solidarity within the female labour pool.
Where are matrilineal descent groups usually found?
In farming communities where women undertake much of the productive work.
In the matrilineal system, in whose descent group do brother and sisters belong?
To the descent group of the mother’s mother, the mother, the mother’s siblings, and the mother’s sister’s children.
In the matrilineal system, which descent group do males belong to? What about this male’s children?
Males belong to the same descent group as their mother and sister, but their children cannot trace their descent through them.
What is a common feature of matrilineal systems that involves the husband and the wife? Explain and describe.
The weak link between husband and wife. The husband has legal authority not in his own household but in that of his sister. Furthermore, his property and status are inherited by his sister’s son rather than by his son. Thus, brother sand sisters maintain lifelong ties with one another, whereas marital ties can easily be severe.
What formed the basis of Iroquoian kinship?
Matrilineal class. Iroquois culture was egalitarian: neither men nor women dominated the culture.
What is double descent, also called double unilinear descent?
A system tracing descent matrilineally for some purposes and matrilineally for others. It is very rare.
What is ambilineal descent?
Descent in which the individual may affiliate with either the mother’s or the father’s descent group.
What is lineage?
A corporate descent group who’s members trace their genealogical links to a common ancestor.
What is the benefit of ambilineal descent?
Provides a measure of flexibility no normally found under unilinear descent; each individual has the option of affiliating with either the mother’s or the father’s descent group.
In which societies do descent groups take on a more corporate function?
In societies that lack civil institutions, or where the liberal-democratic model is followed. In what are mainly nonindustrialised societies, they are tightly organized working units providing security and services in what bad be difficult, uncertain life.
How is the lineage oriented?
The lineage is ancestor-oriented; membership in the group is recognized only if relationship to a common ancestor can be traced and proved.
Why does the lineage have a perpetual existence that enables it to take corporate actions? What are these actions?
Because the corporate lineage endures after the deaths of members with new members continually born into it, it has a perpetual existence that enables it to take corporate actions, such as owning property, organizing productive activities, distributing goods and labour power, assigning status, and regulating relations with other groups The lineage is a strong, effective base of social organization.
What is a common feature of lineages?
Exogamy. That is, lineage members must find their marriage partners in other lineages.
What are the 3 advantages of lineage exogamy?
- One advantage of lineage exogamy is that potential sexual competition within the group is curbed, promoting the group’s solidarity.
- Lineage exogamy also means that each marriage is more than an arrangement between two individuals; it amounts as well to a new alliance between lineages.
- Finally, lineage exogamy supports open communication within a culture by promoting the diffusion of knowledge form one lineage to another.
What is fission?
The splitting of a descent group into two or more new descent groups
What is a clan?
A non corporate descent group whose members claim descent from a common ancestor without actually knowing the genealogical links to that ancestor.
