Topic 16: Kinship

Learning Objectives

• What is kinship?

• What are the major family types?

• How do anthropologists classify descendants?

Kinship

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

• humans are the most social mammals

• We need kindship to handle some of the most basic needs in life: making a living, parenting, mating, etc

• kinship is a crucial way which humans live their lives. (Ex: parents provide children with food, shelter, education, etc)

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

• kinship catergories reflect not only biological relaionships, but also relationship formed via marriage, shared interests, co-resisence, fictive relationships

• example: who are aunts and uncles?

societies can classify their relatives

human kinship is biologically based, but also culturally constructed, becuase

• socieites differ in how they classify their relatives into various kinds

• How to address siblings in different societies

—English: brothers and sisters

—chiinese: older brother, younger brother, older sister, younger sister

types of kin groups

• family

• descent groups:

• (fictive kin):

a family is a group of people affikiated by blood, marriage, co-residence, or shared consuption

types of family

• nuclear family

• extended family

• matrifocal family

• avuncular family

Types of families (1)

Nuclear family

Family that consists of a married couple with their unmarried children, usually living together in the same house

In the industrial societies:

• The most common kin group and a cultural prefrence

• 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

In foragin societies:

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

What socieal and economic factors promote the nuclear family?

• mobility

• emphasis on small and economically self-suficient;mmdf

Types of families (2) - extended families

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

• extended families often function as an economic strategy. Higher proportion of extended family are found amoung:

• -Pre-industrial or non industrial societies

• - ethnic groups or low-income populations of industrial societies

Types of Families (3) - matrifocal family

family group consosting of a mother and her children, with a male only loosely attatched or not present at all —> couple could still be married/have ties with biological father

(DIFFERENT FROM A SINGLE MOTHER FAMILY)

Types of Families (4)

Avuncular Families

A household headed by a senior woman, her children, and her brothers

• Nayars of Malabar Coast of India

• Mosuo people in Southwest China

factors that have caused the different tyoes of families among human populations

• different societal and economic contexts

• cultural and emotional prefrences

Understanding Changes

Changes in the USA

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

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

Appreciating Diversity

Diverse forms in recent decades

• single-parent families

• heterosexual couples adopting children

• gay couples raising children

• Birth mothers vs adoptive mothers; sperm dads vs dads of the heart

• ….

Descent groups

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

Types of Descent Groups

1. Unilineal Descent groups

• Lineage

• patrilineal

• matrilineal

• clan

2. Ambilineal Descent Group (Non-unlineal)

Type (1) - Unilineal descent groups

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

• Lineage: unilineal grouop 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

• Patrilineal lingeage: linages from the father’s side

• Matrilineal lineage: lineages from the mother’s side

Ambilineal Descent group (non-ulineal)

Descent groups with flexible descent rule. Individuals can make choices about whom to live with, whose land to use, and so fourth

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, godmother/godfather, etc

Fictive kinship relations exist in both the family and descent groups; they are not an independed, separate category