Unit 4
What term refers to the kind of descent in which people choose the descent group that they join?
Ambilineal
Which of the following kin types is not ego's lineal relative?
B
Polygamy, although formally outlawed, has survived in Turkey since the Ottoman period, when having several wives was viewed as a symbol of power, wealth, and sexual prowess. Unlike the past, when the practice was customary and not illegal, polygamy can put contemporary women at risk. How?
Because their marriages have no official status, secondary wives who are abused or mistreated have no legal recourse.
In what kind of kinship calculation are kin ties traced equally through males and females?
Bilateral
What kind of kinship is most common in the contemporary United States?
Bilateral kinship
Contemporary North American adults usually define their families as consisting of their husbands or wives and their children. In contrast, when middle-class Brazilians talk about their families, they mean their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and on, down to their children. They rarely mention the spouse. Which of the following is among the reasons for this stark cultural contrast?
Brazilians live in a less mobile society and so stay in closer contact with their relatives, including members of their extended family, than do North Americans.
What term refers to a gift made by the husband and his kin to the kin of the bride?
Bridewealth
What is the term for the marital exchange in which the bride's family or kin group provides substantial gifts when their daughter marries?
Dowry
What term refers to the culturally sanctioned practice of marrying someone within a group to which one belongs?
Endogamy
Which of the following marital customs functions to maintain distinctions between groups?
Endogamy
Why does exogamy, the practice of seeking a husband or wife outside one's own kin group, have adaptive value outside of biological concerns?
Exogamy creates new social ties and alliances, providing access to more resources and social networks.
Which of the following does not belong to ego's matrilineage?
FM
A descent group consists only of a married couple and their children. T/F
False
A nuclear family includes ego, ego's parents, and ego's grandparents. T/F
False
After reaching an all-time low for the 20th century in the 1970s, the nuclear family is now making a rebound, accounting for a greater number of U.S. households each year.
False
Cross-culturally, divorce is known only in industrialized societies where a high percentage of women are gainfully employed. T/F
False
Dowries are most common in societies in which women occupy an elevated status position. T/F
False
Exogamy is the practice of seeking out a mate within one's own social group. T/F
False
In tribal societies, unlike industrial ones, marriage entails only an agreement between the people getting married; descent groups play only a minor role. T/F
False
Incest is a cultural universal that is defined the same way by all cultures. T/F
False
Same-sex marriages are not culturally viable institutions. T/F
False
Serial polygamy is the practice of having more than one wife, but never more than one at the same time. T/F
False
The most common postmarital residence rule is matrilocality, in which the married couple moves in with the husband's family. T/F
False
With patrilineal descent, someone takes his or her father's last name but recognizes descent through both parents. T/F
False
Your family of procreation is the one into which you were born. T/F
False
What is the name of the family in which a child is raised? The
Family of orientation
What term refers to the biological father of a child?
Genitor
Anthropologists distinguish between kin terms and genealogical kin types. What is the difference?
Kin terms are the words used for different relatives in a particular language, but genealogical kin types refer to the actual genealogical relationship.
In a society with two exogamous lineages, who is the preferred cross-cousin bride for a male ego?
MBD
Which of the following is ego's cross-cousin?
MBS
In general, what happens as the value of bridewealth increases? Marriages become
More stable
What is the name of the postmarital residence pattern in which the married couple is expected to establish its own home?
Neolocality
With unilineal descent, sex with cross-cousins is proper, but sex with parallel cousins is considered incestuous. Why?
Parallel cousins are considered closer relatives than cross-cousins.
What is the term anthropologists use to identify ego's socially recognized father?
Pater
What term is synonymous with bridewealth?
Progeny price
What does it mean that kinship, like race, is culturally constructed?
Some genealogical kin are considered to be relatives whereas others are not, and the rules underlying such considerations vary across cultures.
What is the name of the custom by which a widower marries the sister of his deceased wife?
Sororate marriage
Although the incest taboo is a cultural universal, cultures define incest differently. For example, in many cultures it is incestuous to marry parallel cousins but not cross-cousins. What is the difference?
The children of two brothers or two sisters are parallel cousins. The children of a brother and a sister are cross-cousins.
A functional explanation attempts to correlate particular customs (in this case kinship terms) to other features of society. T/F
True
A progeny price is paid to the bride's family so that her children will permanently belong to the husband's group. T/F
True
Although nuclear families are found in many societies around the world, this phenomenon is not a cultural universal. T/F
True
Comparing notions of family between the United States and Brazil, the extended family still plays a central role for most Brazilians. T/F
True
Cultures have different definitions and expectations of relationships that are biologically or genetically equivalent. In other words, kinship is socially constructed. T/F
True
If John marries his deceased brother's widow, this arrangement is called a levirate marriage. T/F
True
In the caste system of India, failure to adhere to class endogamy rules traditionally resulted in a ritually impure marriage. T/F
True
In unilineal descent, one's ancestry is traced through only one line of descent. T/F
True
Like race, kinship is a cultural construction in that it exhibits considerable cultural diversity T/F
True
Members of a clan stipulate descent from a common apical ancestor. T/F
True
Neolocal postmarital residence rules require newly married couples to establish their own residence. T/F
True
One theory regarding the universality of the incest taboo argues that by forcing people to marry outside their immediate kin group, peaceful alliances between people would extend to include a greater number of individuals. T/F
True
Outside North America, Western Europe, and the European-derived cultures of Latin America, neolocal residence isn't all that common. T/F
True
Polygynous marriages often serve important economic and political functions, with the number of wives a man has serving as an indicator of his wealth, prestige, and status. T/F
True
Recent census data reveal that more U.S. women are now living without a husband than with one T/F
True
Royal endogamy among Hawaiians functioned to limit the number of conflicts about royal succession, this explanation being an example of the latent function of a social custom. T/F
True
The "instinctive horror" explanation for the incest taboo has been rejected in part because if it were instinctive, a formal incest taboo would be unnecessary. T/F
True
The children of your father's sister are your cross-cousins. T/F
True
The higher proportion of expanded family households among poorer Americans has been explained as an adaptation to poverty. T/F
True
U.S. kinship calculation is bilateral, traced equally through males and females; for example, father and mother. T/F
True
With polyandry, a woman takes more than one husband. T/F
True
With unilineal descent, one's lineage affiliation is ascribed at birth, but with ambilineal descent, lineage affiliation is more fluid, because each member chooses his or her own descent group. T/F
True
industrialization increases mobility, which plays a major role in the disappearance of extended families in the United States.T/F
True
All of the following are a form of polygamy except
a man who marries, then divorces, then marries again, then divorces again, then marries again, each time to a different woman.
A recent cross-cultural study of 87 societies, all of which had incest taboos, investigated the rate at which such taboos were broken. The results of this study add to the evidence that
although tabooed, incest does happen
To understand royal endogamy, it is useful to distinguish between the manifest and latent functions of customs and behavior. The manifest function of a custom refers to the reasons people in a society give it. Its latent function is
an effect the custom has on the society that its members don't mention or recognize.
In North America, the relatively high incidence of expanded family households in the lower class is
an important strategy the urban poor use to adapt to poverty.
Although the nuclear family remains a cultural ideal for many Americans, nuclear families accounted for just 22.5 percent of American households in 2007. In fact, other domestic arrangements outnumber the traditional U.S. household more than four to one. All of the following are among the reasons for these trends except that
contrary to expectations, the importance of kinship is growing in contemporary nations.
Among the Yanomami of Venezuela and Brazil, as in many societies with unilineal descent, which of the following is true? Marriage between
cross-cousins is preferred; marriage between parallel cousins is considered incest.
A cross-cultural study, systematically comparing romantic love in many cultures, found
evidence that romantic love may be a universal, although romantic love and marriage do not necessarily go together.
Which of the following statements about polygynous marriages is true? They
frequently involve a hierarchical arrangement among the wives.
Anthropologist Edmund Leach (1955) observed that, depending on the society, several different kinds of rights are allocated by marriage. According to Leach, marriage can, but doesn't always, accomplish each of the following except
give either or both spouses rights over the latent and manifest functions of the other
In the United States, the rise in female employment, especially in professional careers, when coupled with __________, has dramatically increased household incomes in the upper classes. This pattern has been one factor sharpening the contrast in household income between the richest and poorest populations of Americans.
homogamy
A Nuer woman married to a woman can be the pater of a child she did not father. Native American berdaches, biological men who represent a third gender, sometimes assume the role of a wife when married to a man with whom they share the products of their labor. Cross-cultural examples such as these illustrate
how, when they are made legal, same-sex marriages could easily benefit from the same legal rights different-sex marriages already enjoy.
Divorce tends to be more common
in matrilineal than in patrilineal societies.
All cultures have taboos against _________, sexual relations with someone considered to be a close relative, although precisely what constitutes a close relative varies across cultures.
incest
Kinship terminology is a classification system, a taxonomy or typology. More generally, a taxonomic system
is based on how people perceive similarities and differences in the things being classified.
Understanding kinship systems is an important part of anthropology because
kinship ties are important to the people anthropologists study; they are a key component of people's everyday social relations.
A unilineal descent group whose members demonstrate their common descent from an apical ancestor is a(n)
lineage.
There is no simple or universally accepted explanation for the fact that all cultures ban incest. However, the most accepted explanation for the incest taboo is
marry in or die out
The incest taboo is a cultural universal, but
not all cultures define incest the same way.
What makes up ego's nuclear family of orientation?
parents and siblings
In the Sudan, a Nuer woman can marry a woman if her father has only daughters but no male heirs. This is done to maintain the patrilineage. The "wife" has sex with one or more men until she gets pregnant. The children born are then accepted as the offspring of both the female husband and the wife. What is important in this example is
social rather than biological paternity, again illustrating how kinship is socially constructed.
How do the rules of endogamy function in society? They
tend to maintain social distinctions between groups.
The Bari of Venezuela recognize multiple fathers, even though biologically there can be only one actual genitor. This example shows
that like race and gender, kinship is culturally constructed.
Which of the following is an example of a rule of endogamy?
the Nazi law forbidding people classified as Aryans from marrying anyone but other Aryans
What are the two basic social units of foraging societies?
the nuclear family and the band
What does ego stand for in a depiction of a kinship system?
the point of reference used to determine which kin terms go where
Anthropologists are interested in kinship calculation, which is
the system by which people in a society reckon their kin relationships
Which of the following best defines polygyny?
the type of marriage in which there is more than one wife
Traditionally, in some areas of the former Yugoslavia, several nuclear families were embedded in an extended family household called a zadruga. Among the Nayars in southern India, it was typical for people to live in matrilineal extended family compounds called tarawads. Descriptions of these two culturally specific cases highlight that
there are many alternatives to the nuclear family.
