Human Kinship

Kinship

Kinship is the web of social relationships formed among individuals who are related by descent, marriage, or shared social and economic interests

Human kinship is biologically based, but it is also culturally constructed, because:

Kinship categories reflect not only biological relationships, but also relationship formed via marriage, shared interests, co-residence, fictive relations, etc

• Ex.) who are uncles and aunts?

Societies differ in how they classify their relatives into various kinds

• Ex.)

  • English: brothers and sisters

  • Chinese:兄 (older brother); 弟 (younger
    brother); 姐(older sister); 妹(younger sister)

Types of kin groups

• family

• descend groups

• fictive kin

Family

A family is a group of people affiliated by blood, marriage, co-residence, or shared consumption

Types of family

• nuclear family

• extended family

• matrifocal family

• avuncular family

The nuclear family

A nuclear family consists of a married couple with their unmarried children, normally living together in the same household

The nuclear family in the industrial societies

• the most common kin group and a cultural preference

• this type of family is closely related to social mobility caused by industrialism

• Neolocality: living situation in which married couples establish a new place of residence

The nuclear family in foraging societies

For foragers with a highly mobile life, the nuclear family is the most significant and stable kin group (one may shift one’s band membership)

Extended families

An extended family usually consists of a group of related nuclear families and includes three or more generations of family members

Extended families often function as an economic strategy. Higher proportion of extended family are often found among

• Pre-industrial or non-industrial societies

• Ethnic groups or low-income populations of
  industrial societies

Matrifocal family

Family group consisting of a mother and her children, with a male only loosely attached or not present at all.

Avuncular families

A household headed by a senior woman, her children, and her brother(s).

• Ex.)

  • Nayars of Malabar Coast of India

  • Mosuo people in southwest China

Factors that have caused the different types of famlies amogn human populations:

• different social and economic contexts

• cultural and emotional preferences

Understanding changes—USA

• Nuclear families account for only 21% of American households in 2010

• Declining importance of kinship and narrower kin attachments (especially among the middle class) in recent decades

Diverse forms in recent decades:

• single-parent families

• heterosexual couples raising adopted children

• gay couples raising children

• birth mothers vs adoptive mothers; sperm dads vs adoptive father

Will the new forms change our conception of family?

Descent groups

A kin group whose members believe themselves to be descended from a common ancestor

Types of descent groups

• unlineal descent groups

  • lineage

    • patrilineal

    • matrilineal

  • clan

• Non-unilineal

  • Ambilineal descent groups

Unilineal descent groups

A group of relatives/families, who traces their genealogical links through only one sex (male of female)

• Lineage: unilineal group whose members can actually trace how they are related (demonstrated descent)

• Clan: unilineal group whose members may not always be able to trace how they are related, but who still believe themselves to be kinfolk (stipulated descent)

Lineage

• unilineal group whose members can actually
  trace how they are related (demonstrated descent)

  • patrilineal

  • matrilineal

Clan

• unilineal group whose members may not always be able to trace how they are related, but who still believe themselves to be kinfolk (stipulated descent)

Patrilineal lineage

individuals trace their genealogical links and kinship relationship through their fathers

Matrilineal lineage

individuals trace their genealogical links and kinship relationship through their mothers

Ambilineal descent groups (non-unilineal)

• descent groups with flexible descent rule

• Individuals can make choices about whom to live with, whose land to use, and so forth.

Fictive kin

• Kinship relations based on neither blood nor marriage ties, but on a variety of forms of familiarity such as shared residence, shared economic ties, nurture relationship, etc

• Fictive kin relations exist in both the family and descent
  groups; they are not an independent, separate category