Anth 1150 Unit 7 Notes Kinship and Descent PDF

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Unit 7 Notes: Kinship and descent

Kinship System - Consists of people by "blood", marriage or adoption and the beliefs and practices by which people regard and treat one another as relatives. -

A System of determining who one's relatives are and what one's relationship is to them.

Consanguine - People related by blood. Affine - People related through marriage Fictive Kin - Unrelated individuals who are regarded and treated as relatives. Rules of Descent - Social rules that stipulate the nature of relationships from one generation to another. Bilateral Descent - Principles of descent in which people think of themselves related to both their mother's kin and their father's kin at the same time. -

The increasing prevalence of bilateral descent in the world is partly an outgrowth of the adaptive functions of bilateral descent groups in industrial societies and partly a result of the globalization of culture based on Euro-American power and influence.

Kindred - Kinship group consisting of known bilateral relatives with whom people interact, socialize and rely on for economic and emotional assistance. Unilineal descent - systems, people define themselves in relation to only one side, either their mother’s or their father’s Matrilineal - Descent system in which kinship group membership and inheritance pass through the female line. Patrilineal - Descent system in which kinship group membership pass through the male line. -

Of known cultures whose kinship systems were organized on principles of unilineal descent, the great majority were patrilineal. Possibly only about 15 percent were matrilineal

Patriarchy - Social system in which men occupy positions of social, economic, and political power from which women are excluded. Inheritance Rules - Rules for the passage of land, wealth and other property from one generation to the next.

Double Descent - Kinship principle in which people belong to kinship groups of both their mother and father. Parallel Descent - Kinship principle in which descent and inheritance follow gender-linked lines so that men consider themselves descended from their fathers and women consider themselves descended from their mothers. Ambilineal Descent - Principle of descent in which individuals may choose to affiliate with either their mother's or their father's kinship group. Unilineal Descent Groups - Four kinds of unilineal descent groupings are lineages, clans, phratries, and moieties -

Some cultures have all four types; others have only one or two.

The smallest kinship unit is a lineage, or a set of relatives tracing descent from a known common ancestor. -

Exogamy - Marriage principle in which people cannot marry members of their own lineage or clan but instead must forge alliances with members of other groups.

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Endogamy - Marriage principle in which people marry members of their own group. Parallel Cousin - A child of one’s mother’s sister or of one’s father’s brother

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Cross-cousin - A child of one’s mother’s brother or of one’s father’s sister.

Clans: -

Named groups of people who believe that they are relatives even though they may not be able to trace their actual relationships with all members of their group

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Clans differ from lineages in this feature. That is, members of lineages can trace their exact relationship to all other members of the same lineage, but members of clans, which are much larger kin groups, can trace relationships only to close relatives.

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Matriclans - Clans formed through descent and inheritance from women of their group.

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Patriclans - Clans formed through descent and inheritance from men of their group.

Totem - An animal or plant believed by a group of people to have been their primordial ancestor or protector. segmentary lineages - Lineages organized in a hierarchical structure, ranked according to the number of generations they encompass. Phratries - Groups of linked clans that are usually exogamous. Moieties - Groups of linked clans that divide a society into two halves, usually exogamous.

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A moiety is one of two groups of linked clans, whereas a phratry is one of three or more groups of linked clans.

Patterns of Change -

One pattern of change, for example, involves shifts from matrilineal descent to other rules of descent, based on changes in men’s and women’s subsistence roles

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Forces of cultural contact and change also bring about changes in the way people reckon their kin, identify their kin group, and interact with relatives. -

Patterns of change in kinship systems are based on the functions of kin groups in relation to environmental adaptations

Patterns of Relationships - Two common patterns that anthropologists observe in many cultures are avoidance relationships and joking relationships -

The term “avoidance” is the one traditionally used in anthropology but it is perhaps somewhat misleading because the word usually implies a negative feeling (we avoid something that we don’t like), but in kinship relationships, “respect” might be a better term

avoidance relationships - Patterns of behavior between certain sets of kin that demonstrate respect and social distance. avoidance relationships - Patterns of behavior between certain sets of kin that demonstrate respect and social distance. Kinship Terminology Systems -System of terms used to address and refer to relatives. Iroquois system - Kin terms that emphasize the difference between one’s parents’ same-sex siblings and parents’ opposite-sex siblings, classifying parallel cousins with one’s own siblings. Eskimo system - Kin terms making distinctions between the nuclear family and all other types of relatives and on gender. Hawaiian system - Kin terms making distinctions only of generation and gender. Crow system - Kin terms used by some matrilineal peoples that extend the term for father and father’s sister to include cross-cousins on the paternal side. Omaha system - Kin terms used by some patrilineal peoples that extend the term for mother and mother’s brother to include cross-cousins on the maternal side. Sudanese system - Kin terms that give separate words for all kin relationships. The ability of individuals to negotiate their relationships with others and to affiliate either side of the family....