KINSHIP : CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Kinship

The ways people are grouped together as relatives and non-relatives. The social system that organizes people in families. discourse on the relationship between the biological and social 

“Nature’s” 3 varieties

shared biogenetic substance, what animals do, “human nature”

Bridewealth

where dowries have to be exchanged, much more difficult for dissolution

Marriage Payments

transfer or exchange of property/wealth

Ideal of democracy

citizens enjoy equal standing regardless of family (contra dynastic rule)

Genealogy

hierarchies based on ancestry; lineages/dynasties claim power

Origin stories

links ruling dynasties to sacred or supernatural ancestors. (traditional state) (ex. Egyptian pharaohs, Jews, Christians and Muslims claim descent from Abraham)

Who is genealogical records kept by?

religious and/or kin-based authorities. (ex. tablets of Chinese ancestral halls, lists of births and deaths kept by Sanatani pandas)

How does genealogical authority shift in modern times?

Shifts to government officials who certify births, register deaths, probate wills. Identity documents emerged with “race science” and ethno-nationalists. 

All genealogies are…

selective. Kinships and naming practices designate some family members as more significant than others

Net worth

the capacity of parents to assist their adult children at critical times (buying 1st home, paying for private schooling, medical bills)

Head start assets

puts a young family on economic/social path beyond means of their salaries

Kinship in tribal societies

most noticeable and powerful in tribal society. Determines who can marry who. Establishes basis for reciprocity and the division of labor. Most important: ownership of land.

Patronym

component of s personal name based on the given name of one’s father, grandfather or an earlier male ancestors.

Matronym 

component personal name based on the given name of one’s mother, grandmother, or any female ancestor

Tekonym

Identified by kin relationship; “father (or mother) of so and so (their first child)’

Exogamy

require members of group to seek spouses outside their own group (extension of the incest taboo)

Endogamy

requires individuals to marry w/in their own group and forbids them to marry beyond it. Preserves separateness & exclusivity of groups 

Virilocal residence

lives w/ grooms parents 

uxorilocal

lives w/bride’s parents

avunculocal residence

wife join’s husband who is living with his mother’s brother

Descent Groups

groups based upon shared kinship and descent from a common ancestor = clans; may have a totem 

Unilineal descent 

Bc of exogamy, mother and father are of different clans but child can only belong to one

Patrilineal

a child belongs to his father’s clan. Daughter belongs to father’s clan but her children will not. Almost always virilocal.

Matilineal

A child belongs to the clan of its mother. (Triobrand: continuity of clan depends not on the man’s own children but through those of his sister) Avunculocal or uxorilocal.

Kinship system = 2 different orders of reality

1) the terms and relationships; 2) prescribed behaviors; system of terms and attitudes

Describe the conflictual relationship of Patrilineal and avunculate societies

The avunculate refers to the special relationship between a mother’s brother (the maternal uncle) and his sister’s son. Anthropologists noticed that in many societies, this relationship is unusually close, authoritative, or emotionally significant. The “problem” is explaining why this happens. In patrilineal societies, there is often tension between fathers and sons because they compete within the same descent line. This makes the mother’s brother a safer and more affectionate ally for the boy. In matrilineal societies, fathers and sons are not in the same descent group, so their conflict disappears; instead, the maternal uncle becomes the main authority over the sister’s son, which can create tension there. Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that you cannot understand the avunculate by looking at just two people. It depends on a four-term structure: brother, sister, mother’s brother, and sister’s son—a whole relational system linking marriage, descent, and authority.

Kinship’s three relationships: Consanguinity (which is what) Affinity (which is what) and descent (which is what)

Consanguinity: siblings, Affinity: spouses, descent: parent/child

Incest theories

Freud: At the dawn of human culture some rebellious sons killed their father. Then, feeling remorse they set up the first prohibitions by forbidding themselves the very women they had desired (sisters/mothers) 

Durkheim: Related incest taboos to religious prohibitions concerning menstrual blook, linked symbolically in turn to the blood of the clan and totem

Levi-Strauss: Less about prohibiting marriage w/ mother, sister, daughter and more about giving them away to others (clans/tribes)

What is important about the incest taboo?

“first rule” shifting form a state of nature to a state of culture

How is Kinship still relevant?

Urbanism and transnational communities (often follow kin
lines; so they may survive the nation state)