Week 5 - Kinship

Question 0

What is unilineal, patrilineal and matrilineal descent?

Answer 0

Unilineal - tracing descent through either male or the female line.
Patrilineal - tracing descent through the male line, father to son to son.
Matrilineal - tracing descent through the female line.

Question 1

What did Lewis Henry Morgans discover about kinship?

Answer 1

That the connection through blood as kin is universal.

Question 2

What are basic kin terms and derivative kin terms?

Answer 2

Basic kin terms are things such as mother, father, sister, brother. They define what relationship you have with that person. Derivative kin terms indicate if it’s a blood relation or if it’s through marriage, Distance and old/current relationships. EG: step, great, ex

Question 3

What two forms of relatedness did David Schneider derive?

Answer 3

By nature and by law. ‘ American kinship is built out of two elements, relationships of natural substance and relationships as code for conduct.’

Question 4

What other forms of relatedness, aside from those derived by Schneider, exist in the world?

Answer 4

Milk kinship in Islamic societies - this is when you are related through the sharing of breast milk. If a woman feeds a child that is not biologically hers she becomes the child’s milk mother and her children become the child’s milk siblings.
The Hua’s relatedness through nu - who you are related to can change through the process of eating another family’s nu (substances of the family EG: hair, blood ect…) this change occurs after birth and when married.

Question 5

What issues have arisen in defining kinship with the modern advances in sexual health, such as contraception and IVF?

Answer 5

Introduction of the contraceptive pill meant a separation of reproduction and sex, two things that until the 60’s had been tightly entwined. IVF open the doors to surrogacy and pregnancies late in life. It also means that same sex couples can have children that are genetically related to one of the. It now means that their can be 5+ potential parents to one child. This of course creates issues with who legally has the right to the child once the relationship disperses