Anthropology of Family, Kinship, and Social Relationships

Kinship

The system of social relationships based on family ties, descent, and marriage that organizes belonging and obligations in a society.

Family (Anthropological View)

A socially constructed group of people connected through kinship, not a universal biological unit.

Nuclear Family

A household consisting of parents and their children.

Household

People who live together and share daily economic and domestic activities.

Post-Marital Residence

The place where a couple lives after marriage.

Neolocal Residence

When a newly married couple lives independently from both families.

Patrilocal Residence

When a wife moves to live with the husband's family.

Matrilocal Residence

When a husband moves to live with the wife's family.

Avunculocal Residence

When a married couple lives with the husband's maternal uncle.

Ambilocal Residence

When a couple can choose either the husband's or wife's family residence.

Domestic Sphere

Activities centered around the home, childcare, and family life.

Public Sphere

Activities related to politics, economy, and public institutions.

Domestic/Public Dichotomy

The idea that women belong in the domestic sphere while men dominate public life.

Sexual Asymmetry

The unequal distribution of power and status between men and women.

Settler Colonialism

A system where colonizers permanently settle on Indigenous land and attempt to erase Indigenous societies.

Residential Schools

Government and church institutions in Canada designed to assimilate Indigenous children by removing them from their culture and families.

Sixties Scoop

The removal of Indigenous children from their families into non-Indigenous foster or adoptive homes between the 1950s and 1980s.

Nuclear Family Bias

The assumption that a proper family must consist of a mother, father, and children.

Doxic Racism

Racism embedded in everyday social norms and assumptions that people may not recognize as racism.

Looping Effects

The process where classifications change how people see themselves and behave.

Interactive Kinds

Categories applied to people that influence their behavior and identity.

Indifferent Kinds

Categories that do not affect the objects being classified.

Citizenship

Legal membership in a nation-state with associated rights and responsibilities.

Belonging

The social and political inclusion of individuals within a community or nation.

Nation as Family

The use of kinship metaphors like "brotherhood" or "children of the nation" to build national identity.

Reproduction (Anthropology)

The biological and social processes involved in producing and raising children.

Politics of Reproduction

The idea that reproduction is shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces.

Stratified Reproduction

A system where some groups are encouraged to reproduce while others are discouraged.

Medicalization of Birth

The shift of childbirth from traditional community practices to hospital-based medical control.

Reproductive Governance

The ways institutions regulate reproduction through laws, policies, and social pressures.

Necropolitics

The power of governments or institutions to determine who lives and who dies.

Reproductive Necropolitics

Systems where racialized state power determines whose reproduction is supported and whose is undermined.

Structural Racism

Institutional systems that create unequal outcomes for different racial groups.

Sojourner Syndrome

The chronic stress experienced by Black women who must constantly resist racism while caring for their communities.

New Reproductive Technologies (NRTs)

Technologies like IVF and prenatal testing that assist human reproduction.

Surrogacy

An arrangement where a woman carries a pregnancy for another person or couple.

Population Control

Policies designed to influence birth rates in a population.

Anthropocentrism

The belief that humans are the most important beings in the world.

Totemism

A belief that humans share kinship relationships with animals, plants, or natural forces.

Indigenous Cosmology

Belief systems that see humans, nature, and spiritual forces as interconnected.

Evolutionary Kinship

The biological idea that all species share common ancestry.

More-Than-Human Kinship

Kinship relationships that include humans and non-human beings like animals.

Multispecies Care

Mutual care relationships between humans and animals.

Multispecies Ethnography

Anthropological research that studies relationships between humans and non-human species.

Response-Ability

The ethical responsibility humans have to respond to and care for other species.

Proximal Loneliness

Loneliness caused by lack of physical closeness with others.

Emotional Loneliness

Loneliness caused by lack of intimate relationships.

Social Loneliness

Loneliness caused by lack of social networks.

Cultural Loneliness

Loneliness experienced when someone is separated from their familiar culture.

Personhood

How societies define what it means to be a person.

Dividuals

People whose identities are defined through relationships with others.

Joined-Up Persons

Individuals whose identities are embedded in social networks.

Mutuality of Being

The idea that kin share aspects of each other's existence.

Embeddedness

The idea that individuals are deeply connected within social and economic networks.

Biopower

Foucault's concept of power that regulates bodies and populations.

Eugenics

The belief that some people should reproduce while others should not.

Extensive Production

Low-intensity food production systems like foraging, pastoralism, and horticulture.

Intensive Production

High-intensity systems like agriculture and industrial economies.

Cultural Relativism

Understanding cultures based on their own values and context rather than judging them by another culture's standards.

Social Construction

The idea that many social realities (family, gender, race) are created by society rather than determined biologically