Chapter 10 (Anthropology)

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881)

"father of kinship studies" A 19th century founder of American anthropology. Found himself lobbying on behalf of the Seneca Iroquois against an attempted land-grab on the part of Ogden Land Company. The Seneca adopted him in 1847 as one of their own. Studies the Iroquois!

Lineage Implications

1. Membership restricted by the limitations of the human memory and usually tops out at 125 or so persons. 2. Usually a residential, strongly corporate group holding economic resources (land, livestock) in common 3. Once lineage membership surpasses the ability of its members to reckon their exact relationship to all others, lineages usually split, or fission into two, one of which relocates to another territory.

clans

A clan is a group of people who view themselves as related by virtue of descent from an assumed common ancestor. Typically dispersed, non-residential groups that may consist of several lineages living in separate communities. Clans are only weakly corporate. Unilineal descent groups, usually compromising ten or more generations, consisting of members who claim a common ancestry even though they cannot trace step by step their exact connection to that ancestor.

ambilineal descent

A form of descent in which a person chooses to affliate with a kin group through either the male or female line.

matrilineal descent

A form of descent in which people trace their primary kin connections through their mothers.

patrilineal descent

A form of descent in which people trace their primary kin relationships through their fathers.

cognatic descent

A form of descent traced through both females and males.

Iroquois Kinship (system) terms

A kinship system associated with unilineal descent in which the father and father's brother are called by the same term, as are the mother and the mother's sister. Emphasizes the importance of unilineal descent groups by distinguishing between members of one's own lineage and members of other lineages.

neolocal residence

A residence pattern in which the married couple has its own place of residence apart from the relatives of either spouse.

avunculocal residence

A residence pattern in which the married couple lives with or near the husband's mother's brother.

patrilocal resisdence

A residence pattern in which the married couple lives with or near the relatives of the husband's father.

matrilocal resisdence

A residence pattern in which the married couple lives with or near the relatives of the wife.

ambilocal residence

A residence pattern in which the married couple may choose to live with either the relatives of the wife or the relatives of the husband.

double descent

A system of descent in which individuals receive some rights and obligations from the father's side of the family and others from the mother's side.

bilateral descent

A type of kinship system in which individuals emphasize both their mother's kin and their father's kin relatively equally.

lineages

A unilineal descent group whose members can trace their line of descent back to a common ancestor.

fictive kinsmen

Adopted children

Morgan's Research Protocol

After first establishing the terms an individual used for his biological father, mother, brother, and sister, Morgan proceeded to ask his informant the name given to one's father's brother. He was told it was the same term as that applied to father. One's mother's sisters were also given the "mother" term.

kindreds

All of the relatives a person recognizes in a bilateral kinship system.

Iroquois Kinship Terminology (Ego Centered System)

Created by Lewis Henry Morgan. One of the first things that impressed him was the totally unexpected system they used to name kinsmen. Kinship terms applied to specific individuals will differ depending on the perspective of the speaker. Systems of kinship terminology are therefore defined from the perspective of a specific individual, or ego.

Descent Group Exogamy

Descent groups provide for all of life's necessities for their members save one- procreation. That is because clans and lineages are always subject to incest regulations forbidding sexual relations among certain categories of relatives. That is why when there is one lineage, there must always be another unrelated lineage, and where there is a clan, there must always be another unrelated one.

unilineal descent groups

Especially common in traditional, kinship based societies. Such a relationship at first glance seems to be counterproductive since unilineal descent, by eliminating half of one's biological relations from the category of consanguines appears to lessen the number of one's kinsmen. But that turns out not to be the case, as it is only through unilineal descent that one can form corporate kinship groups that in some cases may number in the several thousands. Less means more.

collateral relatives

Includes one's own siblings. "to the side"

Eskimo kinship (system) terms

Morgan came from a society which uses Eskimo kinship terms. The kinship system most commonly found in the US; it is associated with bilateral descent. Usually a mother, father, and their children live together. Lack large descent groups such as lineages and clans. Most common in areas where economic conditions favor an independent nuclear family. It is almost always the case that the nuclear family is an important social unit in societies employing the Eskimo system.

classificatory relatives

One of the implications of applying the brother and sister terms to parallel cousins is that every generation the numbers of one's "brothers" and "sisters" multiplies exponentially, as does the number of one's "mothers" and "fathers." After only a few generations, one may have hundreds of classificatory brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers.

consanguines

One's real kinsmen, one's in our own culture that we consider "blood" relations.

affines

Persons to whom we are related through a marriage tie (i.e., "in-laws")

ramages

Resemble lineages in their corporate ownership of economic resources. They differ in that members may be related to others in the group through a patrilineal or matrilineal tie. Because individuals in some societies are allowed to later shift their membership to another group, in-group loyalties are much weaker than is the case in lineages.

descent systems

Reveal how a culture defines a consanguineal relationship. Classified into either of two categories: unilineal and cognatic. In the former, descent is strictly reckoned through only one parental line, either the father ("patrilineal descent") or the mother ("matrilineal descent"). In cognatic systems, on the other hand, kinship ties are traced through both males and females. Cognatic systems include ambilineal descent, double descent, and bilateral descent.

moieties

Serve the same function of marriage regulation and in addition divide the society into two mutually interdependent halves.

totemic clans

That non-human ancestor is referred to as the clan totem, and the groups themselves as being totemic clans.

cross-cousins

The children of opposite-sexed siblings; hence the children of a brother and sister are cross-cousins of one another.

parallel cousins

The children of same-sexed siblings; hence, the children of two brothers, or of two sisters, are parallel cousins to one another.

lineal relatives

Those who stand in an ancestor-descendant relationship to one another. In other words, an ego's lineal relatives in ascending generations include all those persons who, had they never lived, ego would never have been born-his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.

unilineal descent

Tracing descent through a single line (such as matrilineal or patrilineal) as compared to both sides (bilateral descent)

post-marital residence

Where a couple decides to live following marriage is critical to their future prospects since it determines who they will late be able to depend on in times of need. It also determines the composition of the residential group.

phratries

Where a society is made up of several clans, those clans may be grouped into 2 or more phratries. If only 2 phratries are recognized, that society is said to have a dual division into moieties. Phratry organization, where present, typically functions only in terms of marriage regulation, with each phratry being an exogamous unit. In other words, an individual must seek a mate outside of all the clans in his or her phratry.