Anthropology Ch.9- Kinship, Family, and Marriage

In the United States, we practice kindred exogamy

We avoid, either by force of law or by power of tradition, marriage with certain relatives. At the same time, we also follow clear patterns of class, race, and religious endogamy.

Exogamy

marriage to someone outside the group

Polyandry

marriages between one woman and two or more men(least common)

Early anthropologists identified only 6 general patterns worldwide for classifying relatives when starting with the ego's generation

Eskimo, Hawaiian, Sudanese, Omaha, Crow, and Iroquois

Eskimo system

Members of the nuclear family are given terms of reference based only on their gender and generation. No other relative is referred to by any of these terms.

Descent groups constructions

may be matrilineal, constructing the group through female ancestors, or patrilineal, tracing kinship through male ancestors. Both matrilineal and patrilineal patterns reflect unilineal descent because they build kinship groups through either one line or the other. In contrast, ambilineal descent groups—including Samoans, Maori, Hawaiians, and others in Southeast Asia and the Pacific—trace kinship through both the mother and the father. This alternative pattern is sometimes called cognatic or bilateral.

Melanie Medeiro

did a study of a small town of Brogodo in the rural interior of Northeast Brazil reveals the local impacts of these transformations( the changing notions of marriage( arranged to companionate) are combining with expanding economic opportunities for women to spur a rapid rise of divorce and marriage dissolution)

Kath Weston

ethnographic study of the construction of gay and lesbian families in San Francisco in the 1980s, Families We Choose, revealed the ways chosen families can take on the characteristics of stability, continuity, endurance, and permanence to become "real" when biologically related families are inadequate or fail.

Fictive kinship

people take on kinship roles, despite no biological connection

Endogamy

requires marriage inside the group

Incest taboo

rules that forbid sexual relations with certain close relatives

Polygyny

several marriages involving one man and two or more women

Serial monogamy

when monogamous marriages follow one after the other

Industrialization/globalization

has damaged kinship relationship

Hypergamy

is marrying someone of a higher social or economic status

Endogamy vs. Exogamy

is the practice of marrying someone from within a specified group - Maintains social difference and stratification - Ex. Race, caste, religion Exogamy is the practice of marrying someone from OUTSIDE your group - Ex. Tribe, Village, Family

Kinship

is the system of meaning and power that cultures create to determine who is related to whom and to define their mutual expectations, rights, and responsibilities

4 primary systems have been identified to classify relatives in the parental generation

lineal, bifurcate, merging, generational, and bifurcate collateral.

Companionate marriage

marriage built on love, intimacy, and personal choice rather than social obligations

Monogamy

marriages between two partners(most common)

Arranged marriage

marriages orchestrated by the families of the bride and groom

Kinship, Descent, and Change in a Chinese Village

90% of the men in the village had the surname Chen and traced their origins back to the founding Chen-the apical ancestor-whom they believed had settled in the area more than 700 years earlier. In the late 1960s, family and temple ancestral records were destroyed as part of a chaotic and brutal national political movement known as the Cultural Revolution. Only in the 1990s did political and economic conditions improve enough for local villagers to consider reconstructing their lost records. Without written records, the reconstruction descent-based genealogy relied primarily on oral histories stored in the memories of village elders. Most of the generations prior to 1900 had been left blank. The genealogical details, if they had ever existed, had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

Cultures make many decisions about who we are related to.

Biology plays a definite role. • Family is culturally constructed • Family ties are not guaranteed by blood relation

Hawaiian system

Relatives within the extended family are distinguished only by generation and gender. - This results in just four different terms of reference. - Ego's father and all male relatives in his generation have the same kin name (1). - Likewise, ego's mother and all female relatives in her generation are referred to by the same kin term(2).

The Langkawi of Malaysia-Janet Carsten

The Langkawi horse and its hearth serve as places to construct kinship. In particular, Langkawi kinship is acquired through co-residence and co-feeding. In the local thinking, "blood" and other bodily substances are formed by eating food cooked at home. So, a husband and a wife gradually become more similar by living and eating together. Siblings have the closest kinship relationship in childhood because they group up in the same household eating the same food; but as they marry and move out, their "blood" becomes less similar

The Nuer of Southern Sudan- E.E. Evans-Pritchard

They constituted a patrilineal descent group. The Nuer clans were exogamous( marriages within the group were not allowed). Cattle were the center of Nuer economic life.

Certainly the forces of globalization, including migration and time-space compression, are placing stress on kinship systems worldwide.

This is occurring as members of kinship groups relocate temporarily or permanently to nearby factories or jobs in other countries to seek improved economic and educational opportunities or to avoid natural disasters and political upheavals. Although generalized kinship categories developed by an earlier generation of anthropologists have provided insights into broad patterns of kinship, anthropologists who study kinship today confront more fluid kinship patterns maintained through flexibility and creativity.

Patrilineal descent group

a kinship group in which membership passes to the next generation from father to son

Descent groups

a kinship group in which primary relationships with certain consanguineal relatives ("blood" relatives)

Affinal relationships

a kinship relationship established through marriage and/or alliance, not through biology or common descent

Nuclear family

a kinship unit of mother, father, and children

Clans

a type of descent group based on a claim to a founding ancestor but lacking genealogical documentation

lineages

a type of descent group that traces genealogical connection through generations by linking persons to a common ancestor

Reproducing Jews: Issues of Artificial Insemination in Israel- Susan Kahn

she examined a group of single Jewish mothers who are giving birth through artificial insemination. In the eyes of the Israeli state, any offspring conceived through artificial insemination and born to unmarried Jewish women are legitimate citizens. The line of descent and religious inheritance through the mother is clear. The state provides these unmarried mothers with a wide range of support, including housing, child care, and tax breaks.

Janet Carsten

she suggests that nationalism draws heavily on ideas of kinship and family to create a sense of connection among very different people.

Black networks near Chicago- Carol Stack

she uncovered a dynamic set of kinship networks based on mutual reciprocity through which residents managed to survive conditions of intense structural poverty and long-term unemployment. It includes all those willing to participate in a system of mutual support.

Marriages

socially recognized relationships that may involve physical and emotional intimacy, sexual pleasure, reproduction and raising of children, mutual support and companionship, and shared legal rights to property and inheritance

Family of orientation

the family group in which they grow up and develop life skills

Family of procreation

the family group in which they reproduce and raise their own children

Dowry

the gifts of goods or money from the bride's family to the groom's family as part of the marriage process

Bridewealth

the gifts of goods or money from the groom's family to the bride's family as part of the marriage process

Kinship labels can be

very specific or very general.