Lecture 12: Kinship and Descent Flashcards
what is kinship?
what is it based on?
• not based on shared blood
• 1/2 genetic material: mother, brother, etc
• 1/4 genetic material: grandparents, cousins
• more complicated than just based on love
• kinship signifies 3 things
1: totality of relationships based on ideas of shared substance and mutuality that links individuals in a web of special rights and obligations
2: the kind of groups formed in a society based on these ideas and relationships
3: systems of terms used to classify relatives and distinguish them
nuclear family
• parents and their biological children
• typical American family is small and impermanent
• matrilaterally skewed: women seem to be doing most
of the work of kinship
• rely on non-kinship based institutions to survive (kin
substitutes? married to our jobs?)
other families
• expanded, extended households: kinship network of social and economic ties composed of the nuclear family (parents and children) plus other, less immediate relatives
ex: aunts, uncles, cousins
• nuclear not as popular today compared to 1970 (in text)
• increase in divorce ratios
changes in NA kinship
- more women joining workforce
- first marriage at later age
- higher divorce rate
- increase in single parent families
Scheper-Hughes “Death Without Weeping” in Brazil
• people didn’t become attached to their babies until they knew they were going to survive
Nayar of India
•
Matrilineal society in which extended families live in compounds called theravad ‘‘terawads” each headed by a senior female, without emphasis on biological paternity
-many Nayar children did not know who their biological father was
-total disregard for paternity
-this shows that the nuclear family is NOT universal
descent groups
permanent social units whose members claim common ancestry
Patrilineal: membership based on relatedness through male ancestors
Matrilineal: || mother’s line
Unilineal: either Patrilineal OR Matrilineal
Ambilineal: individual gets to choose Patrilineal or Matrilineal
Bilateral: no descent groups: mother’s and father’s side are to be the same kind of relative (US)
common descent group locations
- non-industrial economies: horticultural, agricultural, pastoral
- descent groups are not constituted with high mobility or flexibility
family of orientation
•classic nuclear family in which you are born and grow up
family of procreation
•family which you form when you marry and have children
Virilocality
living with residents/family of the groom
Uxorilocality
living with relatives of the bride
Neolocality
living apart from relatives of the bride and groom
most common in US
Patrilocality vs Matrilocality
moving to the husband’s community
moving to the bride’s community
kinship calculation
system through which people in a society conceptualize kin relationships
involves distinguishing b/w varieties of relatedness
•blood, marriage, descent
kin type vs kin term
descent
- collateral: siblings, aunts, nieces
* lineal: parents, grandparents, children
blood and marriage
- affines/affinal: through marriage
* consanguines/consanguineal: through blood
parallel cousins vs cross cousins
sex/gender of the linking relative is same
opposite (mother’s brothers children)
fictive kin
ex: funcle who actually isn’t
distinctions in kin terms
sex generation affinity (mother vs mother-in-law) bifurcation relative age sex of linking relative
bilateral kinship calculation
kin ties calculated equally through men and women.
Iriquois Kinship Terms
matrilateral distinctions
-Ego’s mother’s sister is also referred to mother, and her offsprings will be Ego’s brother and sister too
Bifurcate Merging Kinship
unilineal descent (patrilineal or matrilineal) group
Bifurcate Merging Residence Rule
unilocal- patrilocal or matrilocal
Bifurcate Collateral Kinship
6 terms for parental kin, M,F,MB,MZ,FB,FZ
Kinship Systems
1) Bifurcate Collateral Kinship
- distinguishing collateral relatives both from lineal relatives of the same generation and from one another on the basis of the sex of connecting relatives
2) Bifurcate Merging Kinship
- identifying collateral relatives with lineal relatives of the same sex and generation when the connecting relative is of the same sex but distinguishing them when the connecting relative is of the opposite sex in a bifurcate merging terminology a father’s brother would be identified as father but a mother’s brother as uncle
3) Lineal Kinship
