Marriage, Family, and Kinship

Question 1

What is Family?

Answer 1

• We (more or less) have two types of relatives
  
  • People we are related to by way of common descent
    
    • Often, we share the “same blood”, and anthropologists call these relatives consanguines
      
      • from Latin consanguineus ‘of the same blood’ (con- ‘together’ + sanguis ‘blood’)
• A social unit consisting of adults, who maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and children, and is characterized by economic cooperation and the reproduction and raising of children in a common residence.
• People we are related to by way of marriage
  
  • People with which we have an affinity (meaning a strong connection or relationship). Anthropologists call these relatives affines
  • Affinal kin

Question 2

Consanguineal Relations

Answer 2

• biological/blood relatives
• Two types
  
  • One person descended from another
  • Two people descended from a third person (an ancestor or ancestress)
• Organize social interaction and cooperation
• Most societies include social groups made up of people who are related by descent
  
  • Have economic, political, and ritual significance
• Remember, in many societies, genetics are not important – social roles are
  
  • The father is the person recognized socially as the father, even if he has been off travelling or has died (even if there is no possibility that he is the progenitor of the offspring)

Question 3

Personal Kinship

Answer 3

• All societies recognize a set of personal consanguineal kin
• People who share an essential substance (eg., blood, genes, sperm, bone)
• Recognition that people share direct descent does not mean social groups are based on descent

Question 4

Bilateral Relations

Answer 4

• Personal kinship is always bilateral
• Bilateral – relatives from both the mother’s side and the father’s side
• Unilineal descent group membership is always through one side (patriline or matriline)

Question 5

Descent

Answer 5

• Unilineal
  
  • Patrilineal, Matrilineal
• Multilineal (aka cognatic)
  
  • Double descent (rare!), ambilineal descent, bilateral (kindred)
• Organizational advantages of unilineal descent: *
• Durable rights
• They endure
• Fixed boundaries (not networks)

Question 6

Unilineal Descent

Answer 6

• Number of lineal kin doubles each generation
• Descent restricted to a single line
• Patrilineal (aka agnatic) and matrilineal (the former is found about 3 times more often than the latter)

Question 7

Who does Ego inherit from?

Answer 7

Moms brother

Question 8

Groups Formed by Unilineal Descent

Answer 8

• Lineages
  
  • Associations of kin who trace descent from a specific ancestor through an established pathway of lineal ancestors of one sex
  • Segmentation at different scales of order
  • “Me and my brothers against my cousins; me and my cousins against the world.”
• Clans
  
  • A group formed according to unilineal descent when the exact genealogical connections are not known
  • Formed according to ideology of descent rather then genealogical fact
    
    • Phratries (from the Latin for brother)– clans grouped together into multi-clan organizations
    • Moieties (from the French for half) – when the whole society is divided into 2 clans

Question 9

Cognatic (Multilineal) Descent

Answer 9

• Membership through lineal kin of either sex
• Individual choice (mostly)
• Land shortage?
• Agamous marriage (no marriage rules)

Question 10

Types of Kin Classification

Answer 10

• Six main types have been discovered
• Each type named after the first culture in which anthropologists observed the classification system
• Hawaiian, Eskimo, Sudanese, Crow, Omaha, and Iroquois * Iroquois – found in more cultures than any other system of classification
• Eskimo – the type of classification found among Euro- Canadians
• Iroquois terms
  
  • F and FB are “father”, MB is “uncle”
  • M and MZ are “mother”
  • FZ is “aunt”
  • Children of FB and MZ (parallel cousins) are “brothers” and “sisters”
  • Children of FZ and MB (cross cousins) are “cousins”
  • Why are Iroquois terms so common?
    
    • Accommodate both bilateral kinship systems and unilineal descent Recognize both sides
    • In the case of unilineal descent, cross cousins are outsiders

Question 11

Eskimo Terms and the Nuclear Family

Answer 11

• Lineals are distinguished from collaterals in every generation senior to the speaker
• Siblings are distinguished from all other collaterals
• Kin terms emphasize the nuclear family
• Subsistence strategies favor the elementary family

Question 12

Fictive or Elective Kinship

Answer 12

• Forms of “kinship” that are based on neither consanguineal nor affinal ties
  
  • “brother from another mother”
  • A close family friend called aunt or uncle
  • Godparents
  • Guilds, sororities, secret societies (brotherhoods)
  • Organ transplant recipients
• Generally, denotes respect and intense, enduring social bonds
  
  • Widespread, but not part of those kinship diagrams

Question 13

Milk Kinship

Answer 13

• Milk kinship is a kinship relation constituted through the nursing of a baby by a woman other than the biological mother (an intimacy generated by the growing of flesh and bone)
• Part of what we call “elective kinship”
• Historically prevalent in the Islamic world (formalized in Islamic law)
  
  • Waned in recent decades
• Some of its “tactical” uses include preventing unsuitable marriage alliances and working around adoption

Question 14

What is Marriage?

Answer 14

• An interpersonal relationship
• Connects social groups into co- operative alliances
• Sanctioned rights and obligations
  
  • Rights, but not necessarily exclusive rights, of sexual access
  • Rights to a portion of the spouse’s domestic labor
  • Rights to a portion of spouse’s property or income
  • The right to be recognized as a parent of any offspring the union produces

Question 15

Marriage Rules

Answer 15

• All societies restrict choice of partners
• Negative Rules
  
  • Incest taboo
  • The exogamy rule: A rule requiring marriage outside a specified social or kinship group.
• Positive rules
  
  • Endogamy: A rule requiring marriage within a specified social or kinship group.
  • Substitution marriage – Levirate, Sororate, Inheritance Marriage
  • Cross cousin marriage
  • Parallel cousin marriage

Question 16

Substitution Marriage

Answer 16

• Rules for remarrying
• Maintains relationships between spousal exchanging groups
  
  • The levirate – woman widow marries brother of deceased husband
  • The sororate – man widower marries sister of deceased wife
  • Inheritance marriage – man inherits wives from deceased senior male of kin group (rights to wife’s production but not sex)

Question 17

Cross Cousin Marriage

Answer 17

• Unilineal descent (either matri- or patri-) is the most common form of kinship group organization
• Unilineal descent + exogamy rule = cross cousins do not belong to the same kin group
  
  • Patrilineal descent
  • Matrilineal descent
• Most common positive marriage rule in Iroquois system
• Preferred partners are cross first cousins (same grandparent)
• The offspring of Ego’s parents’ cross sex siblings

Question 18

Parallel Cousin Marriage

Answer 18

• Children of the parents’ same sex siblings
• Parallel cousin marriage and patrilineal descent
  
  • Marriage of brothers’ children
• Spouses come from the same kinship groups
• All close relatives come from the same natal group

Question 19

Families and Households

Answer 19

• Families and households are not the same thing
• Families
  
  • Kinship associations
  • Rights, intimacy, obligation
  • Members are family regardless of where they live
• Three main types of household organization
  
  • nuclear
  • compound
  • extended

Question 20

Post Marital Residence

Answer 20

Post Marital Residence

• Neolocal - couple creates and resides in a new residence
• Preferred pattern in modern industrial nations
• Places emphasis on the nuclear family
• Patrilocal - couple resides with the husband’s father, or other close male relative of father’s generation
  
  • Found in the majority of societies that practice patrilineal descent
• Matrilocal - couple resides with bride’s mother or other close female relative of the bride’s mother’s generation
  
  • Found in about half the societies that practice matrilineal descent
• Avunculocal - couple resides with the husband’s maternal uncle
  
  • Found in the other half of societies that practice matrilineal descent
  • Keeps male members of the matriline together
• ambilocal (bilocal) residence: A residence pattern in which the married couple may choose to live with either the relatives of the wife or the relatives of the husband.
• Neolocal residence. The married couple establishes an independent place of residence away from the relatives of either spouse.

Question 21

The Nuclear Household

Answer 21

• Nuclear household - an adult couple and their sub-adult offspring
  
  • Two key relationships: marriage bond, and parent-child
  • Dominant household type in industrial societies for the last 200 years
  • Also dominant family structure at the other end of the technological spectrum – common amongst hunter-gatherers
  • Facilitates mobility

Question 22

Compound Households

Answer 22

• Compound households - created by multiple simultaneous marriages of a household head, who brings two or more spouses into residential association
  
  • Polyandrous households - an adult female, two or more simultaneous husbands, and the woman’s sub-adult offspring
  • Polygynous household - an adult male head, two or more simultaneous wives and their sub-adult offspring
  • Type of polygynous situation depends on…

Question 23

Extended Households

Answer 23

• Consanguineal kin including at least three generations
• The organizing principle “extends,” or multiplies * Favored offspring are retained
• Patrilocally-extended, matrilocally-extended, and avunculocally-extended household

Question 24

Hows these ideas relate to research in cultural anthropology?

Answer 24

• Kinship relations are the single most important aspect of social structure
  
  • Aligns people and resources
  • Sets roles, responsibilities and expectations
• The household is a basic feature of domestic organization in every society
  
  • Consists of the core group of people through which most daily activities and the more mundane processes of life take place
  • An important social, economic, and even political and ritual institution in many settings.

Question 24

Summary

Answer 24

• We have two types of relatives – affinal and consanguineal
• Descent can be unilineal or multilineal (cognatic)
  
  • Unilineal descent can form larger units such as clans
• Kin classification includes Iroquois and Eskimo systems
• Marriage creates families – it is a social and economic union, generally for the rearing of children
  
  • Societies have negative and positive marriage rules
• Anthropologists recognize several types of post marital residence patterns
• There are three main types of household organization – nuclear, compound and extended