![Extended Family (4197770551)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Extended_Family_%284197770551%29.jpg)
In
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist
Robin Fox
Robin Fox (born 1934) is an Anglo-American anthropologist who has written on the topics of incest avoidance, marriage systems, human and primate kinship systems, evolutionary anthropology, sociology and the history of ideas in the social sci ...
says that the study of kinship is the study of what humans do with these basic facts of lifemating, gestation, parenthood,
socialization
In sociology, socialization or socialisation (see spelling differences) is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and cul ...
, siblingship etc. Human society is unique, he argues, in that we are "working with the same raw material as exists in the animal world, but
ecan conceptualize and categorize it to serve social ends." These social ends include the socialization of children and the formation of basic economic, political and religious groups.
Kinship can refer both to the patterns of social relationships themselves, or it can refer to the study of the patterns of social relationships in one or more human cultures (i.e. kinship studies). Over its history,
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
has developed a number of related concepts and terms in the study of kinship, such as
descent
Descent may refer to:
As a noun Genealogy and inheritance
* Common descent, concept in evolutionary biology
* Kinship, one of the major concepts of cultural anthropology
**Pedigree chart or family tree
** Ancestry
** Lineal descendant
**Heritag ...
, descent group,
lineage,
affinity/affine,
consanguinity/cognate and
fictive kinship. Further, even within these two broad usages of the term, there are different theoretical approaches.
Broadly, kinship patterns may be considered to include people related by both descent – i.e. social relations during development – and by
marriage
Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between ...
. Human kinship relations through
marriage
Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between ...
are commonly called "affinity" in contrast to the relationships that arise in one's group of origin, which may be called one's descent group. In some cultures, kinship relationships may be considered to extend out to people an individual has economic or political relationships with, or other forms of social connections. Within a culture, some descent groups may be considered to lead back to
gods
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater ...
or animal ancestors (
totem
A totem (from oj, ᑑᑌᒼ, italics=no or '' doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system.
While ''the ...
s). This may be conceived of on a more or less literal basis.
Kinship can also refer to a principle by which individuals or groups of individuals are organized into
social groups
In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties ...
, roles, categories and
genealogy
Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...
by means of
kinship terminologies.
Family
Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
relations can be represented concretely (mother, brother, grandfather) or abstractly by degrees of relationship (kinship distance). A relationship may be relative (e.g. a father in relation to a child) or reflect an absolute (e.g. the difference between a mother and a childless woman). Degrees of relationship are not identical to
heirship or legal succession. Many codes of
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
consider the bond of kinship as creating obligations between the related persons stronger than those between strangers, as in
Confucian
Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or ...
filial piety
In Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism, and Daoist ethics, filial piety (, ''xiào'') (Latin: pietas) is a virtue of respect for one's parents, elders, and ancestors. The Confucian '' Classic of Filial Piety'', thought to be written around the lat ...
.
In a more general sense, kinship may refer to a similarity or
affinity
Affinity may refer to:
Commerce, finance and law
* Affinity (law), kinship by marriage
* Affinity analysis, a market research and business management technique
* Affinity Credit Union, a Saskatchewan-based credit union
* Affinity Equity Par ...
between entities on the basis of some or all of their characteristics that are under focus. This may be due to a shared
ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...
origin, a shared historical or cultural connection, or some other perceived shared features that connect the two entities. For example, a person studying the ontological roots of human languages (
etymology
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...
) might ask whether there is kinship between the English word ''seven'' and the German word ''sieben''. It can be used in a more diffuse sense as in, for example, the news headline "
Madonna feels kinship with vilified
Wallis Simpson
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor (born Bessie Wallis Warfield, later Simpson; June 19, 1896 – April 24, 1986), was an American socialite and wife of the former King Edward VIII. Their intention to marry and her status as a divorcée caused a ...
", to imply a felt similarity or
empathy
Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, co ...
between two or more entities.
In biology, "kinship" typically refers to the degree of genetic relatedness or the
coefficient of relationship
The coefficient of relationship is a measure of the degree of consanguinity (or biological relationship) between two individuals. The term coefficient of relationship was defined by Sewall Wright in 1922, and was derived from his definition of th ...
between individual members of a species (e.g. as in
kin selection
Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even when at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Kin altruism can look like altruistic behaviour whose evolution i ...
theory). It may also be used in this specific sense when applied to human relationships, in which case its meaning is closer to
consanguinity
Consanguinity ("blood relation", from Latin '' consanguinitas'') is the characteristic of having a kinship with another person (being descended from a common ancestor).
Many jurisdictions have laws prohibiting people who are related by blood fr ...
or
genealogy
Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...
.
Basic concepts
Family types
![Orthodox priest family](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Orthodox_priest_family.jpg)
Family is a
group
A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together.
Groups of people
* Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity
* Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic ide ...
of
people
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
affiliated by
consanguinity
Consanguinity ("blood relation", from Latin '' consanguinitas'') is the characteristic of having a kinship with another person (being descended from a common ancestor).
Many jurisdictions have laws prohibiting people who are related by blood fr ...
(by recognized birth),
affinity
Affinity may refer to:
Commerce, finance and law
* Affinity (law), kinship by marriage
* Affinity analysis, a market research and business management technique
* Affinity Credit Union, a Saskatchewan-based credit union
* Affinity Equity Par ...
(by marriage), or co-residence/shared consumption (see
Nurture kinship
The concept of nurture kinship in the anthropological study of human social relationships (kinship) highlights the extent to which such relationships are brought into being through the performance of various acts of nurture between individuals. A ...
). In most societies, it is the principal institution for the socialization of children. As the basic unit for raising children, Anthropologists most generally classify family organization as
matrifocal
A matrifocal family structure is one where mothers head families and fathers play a less important role in the home and in bringing up children.
Definition
The concept of the matrifocal family was introduced to the study of Caribbean societie ...
(a mother and her children); conjugal (a husband, his wife, and children; also called
nuclear family);
avuncular
The avunculate, sometimes called avunculism or avuncularism, is any social institution where a special relationship exists between an uncle and his sisters' children. This relationship can be formal or informal, depending on the society. Early a ...
(a brother, his sister, and her children); or
extended family
An extended family is a family that extends beyond the nuclear family of parents and their children to include aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins or other relatives, all living nearby or in the same household. Particular forms include the stem ...
in which parents and children co-reside with other members of one parent's family.
However, producing children is not the only function of the family; in societies with a sexual division of labor,
marriage
Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between ...
, and the resulting relationship between two people, it is necessary for the formation of an economically productive
household
A household consists of two or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is i ...
.
Terminology
![Beowulf - cynne](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Beowulf_-_cynne.jpg)
Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology – for example some languages distinguish between
affinal and
consanguine
Consanguinity ("blood relation", from Latin '' consanguinitas'') is the characteristic of having a kinship with another person (being descended from a common ancestor).
Many jurisdictions have laws prohibiting people who are related by blood fro ...
uncles, whereas others
have only one word to refer to both a father and his brothers. Kinship terminologies include the terms of address used in different languages or communities for different relatives and the terms of reference used to identify the relationship of these relatives to ego or to each other.
Kin terminologies can be either descriptive or
classificatory. When a descriptive terminology is used, a term refers to only one specific type of relationship, while a classificatory terminology groups many different types of relationships under one term. For example, the word ''
brother
A brother is a man or boy who shares one or more parents with another; a male sibling. The female counterpart is a sister. Although the term typically refers to a familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to refer to non-familia ...
'' in English-speaking societies indicates a son of one's same parent; thus, English-speaking societies use the word ''brother'' as a descriptive term referring to this relationship only. In many other classificatory kinship terminologies, in contrast, a person's male first cousin (whether mother's brother's son, mother's sister's son, father's brother's son, father's sister's son) may also be referred to as brothers.
The major patterns of kinship systems that are known which
Lewis Henry Morgan
Lewis Henry Morgan (November 21, 1818 – December 17, 1881) was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist who worked as a railroad lawyer. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social evol ...
identified through kinship terminology in his 1871 work ''Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family'' are:
*
Iroquois kinship
Iroquois kinship (also known as bifurcate merging) is a kinship system named after the Haudenosaunee people, also known as the ''Iroquois'', whose kinship system was the first one described to use this particular type of system. Identified by L ...
(also known as "bifurcate merging")
*
Crow kinship (an expansion of bifurcate merging)
*
Omaha kinship
Omaha kinship is the system of terms and relationships used to define family in Omaha tribal culture. Identified by Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1871 work ''Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family'', the Omaha system is one of the s ...
(also an expansion of bifurcate merging)
*
Eskimo kinship (also referred to as "lineal kinship")
*
Hawaiian kinship
Hawaiian kinship, also referred to as the generational system, is a kinship terminology system used to define family within languages. Identified by Lewis H. Morgan in his 1871 work ''Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family'', th ...
(also referred to as the "generational system")
*
Sudanese kinship (also referred to as the "descriptive system")
There is a seventh type of system only identified as distinct later:
*
Dravidian kinship
Kinship terminology is the system used in languages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology; ...
(the classical type of
classificatory kinship, with bifurcate merging but totally distinct from Iroquois). Most
Australian Aboriginal kinship
Aboriginal Australian kinship comprises the systems of Aboriginal customary law governing social interaction relating to kinship in traditional Aboriginal cultures. It is an integral part of the culture of every Aboriginal group across Aust ...
is also classificatory.
The six types (Crow, Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Omaha, Sudanese) that are not fully classificatory (Dravidian, Australian) are those identified by Murdock (1949) prior to Lounsbury's (1964) rediscovery of the linguistic principles of classificatory kin terms.
Tri-relational Kin-terms
![Trirelational](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Trirelational.jpg)
While normal kin-terms discussed above denote a relationship between two entities (e.g. the word 'sister' denotes the relationship between the speaker or some other entity and another feminine entity who shares the parents of the former), trirelational kin-terms—also known as triangular, triadic, ternary, and shared kin-terms—denote a relationship between three distinct entities. These occur commonly in
Australian Aboriginal languages with the context of
Australian Aboriginal kinship
Aboriginal Australian kinship comprises the systems of Aboriginal customary law governing social interaction relating to kinship in traditional Aboriginal cultures. It is an integral part of the culture of every Aboriginal group across Aust ...
.
In
Bininj Kunwok
Bininj Kunwok is an Australian Aboriginal language which includes six dialects: Kunwinjku (formerly Gunwinggu), Kuninjku, Kundjeyhmi (formerly Gundjeihmi), Manyallaluk Mayali (Mayali), Kundedjnjenghmi, and two varieties of Kune (Kune Dulerayek a ...
, for example, the bi-relational kin-term ''nakurrng'' is differentiated from its tri-relational counterpart by the position of the possessive pronoun ''ke''. When ''nakurrng'' is anchored to the addressee with ''ke'' in the second position, it simply means 'brother' (which includes a broader set of relations than in English). When the ''ke'' is fronted, however, the term ''nakurrng'' now incorporates the male speaker as a propositus (P i.e. point of reference for a kin-relation) and encapsulates the entire relationship as follows:
* The person (R
eferent) who is your (P
Addressee) maternal uncle and who is my (P
Speaker) nephew by virtue of you being my grandchild.
Kin-based Group Terms and Pronouns
Many Australian languages also have elaborate systems of referential terms for denoting groups of people based on their relationship to one another (not just their relationship to the speaker or an external propositus like 'grandparents'). For example, in
Kuuk Thaayorre'','' a maternal grandfather and his sister are referred to as ''paanth ngan-ngethe'' and addressed with the vocative ''ngethin.'' In
Bardi, a father and his sister are ''irrmoorrgooloo''; a man's wife and his children are ''aalamalarr.''
In
Murrinh-patha, nonsingular pronouns are differentiated not only by the gender makeup of the group, but also by the members' interrelation. If the members are in a sibling-like relation, a third pronoun (SIB) will be chosen distinct from the Masculine (MASC) and Feminine/Neuter (FEM).
Descent
Descent rules
In many societies where kinship connections are important, there are rules, though they may be expressed or be taken for granted. There are four main headings that anthropologists use to categorize rules of descent. They are bilateral, unilineal, ambilineal and double descent.
* Bilateral descent or two-sided descent affiliates an individual more or less equally with relatives on his father's and mother's sides. A good example is the
Yakurr of the Crossriver state of Nigeria.
*
Unilineal
Unilineality is a system of determining descent groups in which one belongs to one's father's or mother's line, whereby one's descent is traced either exclusively through male ancestors (patriline), or exclusively through female ancestors (matrili ...
rules affiliates an individual through the descent of one sex only, that is, either through males or through females. They are subdivided into two:
patrilineal
Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritan ...
(male) and
matrilineal
Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline – their mother's lineage – and which can involve the inheritance ...
(female). Most societies are patrilineal. Examples of a matrilineal system of descent are the
Nyakyusa of Tanzania and the
Nair
The Nair , also known as Nayar, are a group of Indian Hindu castes, described by anthropologist Kathleen Gough as "not a unitary group but a named category of castes". The Nair include several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom histo ...
of
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
. Many societies that practise a matrilineal system often have a
matrilocal residence
In social anthropology, matrilocal residence or matrilocality (also uxorilocal residence or uxorilocality) is the societal system in which a married couple resides with or near the wife's parents. Thus, the female offspring of a mother remain ...
but men still exercise significant authority.
*
Ambilineal (or Cognatic) rule affiliates an individual with kinsmen through the father's or mother's line. Some people in societies that practise this system affiliate with a group of relatives through their fathers and others through their mothers. The individual can choose which side he wants to affiliate to. The
Samoans
Samoans or Samoan people ( sm, tagata Sāmoa) are the indigenous Polynesian people of the Samoan Islands, an archipelago in Polynesia, who speak the Samoan language. The group's home islands are politically and geographically divided between t ...
of the South Pacific are an excellent example of an ambilineal society. The core members of the Samoan descent group can live together in the same compound.
*
Double descent
In statistics and machine learning, double descent is the phenomenon where a statistical model with a small number of parameter
A parameter (), generally, is any characteristic that can help in defining or classifying a particular system ...
(or double unilineal descent) refers to societies in which both the patrilineal and matrilineal descent group are recognized. In these societies an individual affiliates for some purposes with a group of patrilineal kinsmen and for other purposes with a group of matrilineal kinsmen. Individuals in societies that practice this are recognized as a part of multiple descent groups, usually at least two. The most widely known case of double descent is the
Afikpo of Imo state in Nigeria. Although patrilineage is considered an important method of organization, the Afikpo considers matrilineal ties to be more important.
Descent groups
A descent group is a
social group
In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties ...
whose members talk about common ancestry. A
unilineal
Unilineality is a system of determining descent groups in which one belongs to one's father's or mother's line, whereby one's descent is traced either exclusively through male ancestors (patriline), or exclusively through female ancestors (matrili ...
society is one in which the descent of an individual is reckoned either from the mother's or the father's line of descent.
Matrilineal descent
Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline – their mother's lineage – and which can involve the inheritance o ...
is based on relationship to females of the family line. A child would not be recognized with their father's family in these societies, but would be seen as a member of their mother's family's line.
Simply put, individuals belong to their mother's descent group. Matrilineal descent includes the mother's brother, who in some societies may pass along inheritance to the sister's children or succession to a sister's son. Conversely, with
patrilineal descent
Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritanc ...
, individuals belong to their father's descent group. Children are recognized as members of their father's family, and descent is based on relationship to males of the family line.
Societies with the
Iroquois kinship
Iroquois kinship (also known as bifurcate merging) is a kinship system named after the Haudenosaunee people, also known as the ''Iroquois'', whose kinship system was the first one described to use this particular type of system. Identified by L ...
system, are typically unilineal, while the Iroquois proper are specifically matrilineal.
In a society which reckons descent bilaterally (bilineal), descent is reckoned through both father and mother, without unilineal descent groups. Societies with the
Eskimo kinship system, like the
Inuit
Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...
,
Yupik Yupik may refer to:
* Yupik peoples, a group of indigenous peoples of Alaska and the Russian Far East
* Yupik languages, a group of Eskimo-Aleut languages
Yupꞌik (with the apostrophe) may refer to:
* Yup'ik people
The Yup'ik or Yupiaq (sg ...
, and most Western societies, are typically bilateral. The egocentric kindred group is also typical of bilateral societies. Additionally, the Batek people of Malaysia recognize kinship ties through both parents' family lines, and kinship terms indicate that neither parent nor their families are of more or less importance than the other.
Some societies reckon descent patrilineally for some purposes, and matrilineally for others. This arrangement is sometimes called double descent. For instance, certain property and titles may be inherited through the male line, and others through the female line.
Societies can also consider descent to be
ambilineal (such as
Hawaiian kinship
Hawaiian kinship, also referred to as the generational system, is a kinship terminology system used to define family within languages. Identified by Lewis H. Morgan in his 1871 work ''Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family'', th ...
) where offspring determine their lineage through the
matrilineal line or the
patrilineal line.
Lineages, clans, phratries, moieties, and matrimonial sides
A lineage is a
unilineal descent
Unilineality is a system of determining descent groups in which one belongs to one's father's or mother's line, whereby one's descent is traced either exclusively through male ancestors (patriline), or exclusively through female ancestors (matril ...
group that can demonstrate their common descent from a known
apical ancestor
Common descent is a concept in evolutionary biology applicable when one species is the ancestor of two or more species later in time. All living beings are in fact descendants of a unique ancestor commonly referred to as the last universal comm ...
. Unilineal lineages can be matrilineal or patrilineal, depending on whether they are traced through mothers or fathers, respectively. Whether matrilineal or patrilineal descent is considered most significant differs from culture to culture.
A
clan is generally a descent group claiming common descent from an apical ancestor. Often, the details of parentage are not important elements of the clan tradition. Non-human apical ancestors are called
totem
A totem (from oj, ᑑᑌᒼ, italics=no or '' doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system.
While ''the ...
s. Examples of clans are found in
Chechen,
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
,
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
,
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
,
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
,
Scottish,
Tlingit
The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ), , and
Somali societies.
A
phratry
In ancient Greece, a phratry ( grc, φρᾱτρῐ́ᾱ, phrātríā, brotherhood, kinfolk, derived from grc, φρᾱ́τηρ, phrā́tēr, brother, links=no) was a group containing citizens in some city-states. Their existence is known in most I ...
is a descent group composed of three or more clans each of whose apical ancestors are descended from a further common ancestor.
If a society is divided into exactly two descent groups, each is called a
moiety
Moiety may refer to:
Chemistry
* Moiety (chemistry), a part or functional group of a molecule
** Moiety conservation, conservation of a subgroup in a chemical species
Anthropology
* Moiety (kinship), either of two groups into which a society is ...
, after the
French word for ''half''. If the two halves are each obliged to marry out, and into the other, these are called matrimonial
moieties. Houseman and White (1998b, bibliography) have discovered numerous societies where kinship network analysis shows that two halves marry one another, similar to matrimonial moieties, except that the two halves—which they call matrimonial ''sides''—are neither named nor descent groups, although the egocentric kinship terms may be consistent with the pattern of sidedness, whereas the sidedness is culturally evident but imperfect.
The word ''deme'' refers to an endogamous local population that does not have unilineal descent. Thus, a deme is a local endogamous community without internal segmentation into clans.
= House societies
=
In some societies kinship and political relations are organized around membership in corporately organized dwellings rather than around
descent group
Descent may refer to:
As a noun Genealogy and inheritance
* Common descent, concept in evolutionary biology
* Kinship, one of the major concepts of cultural anthropology
**Pedigree chart or family tree
**Ancestry
**Lineal descendant
**Heritage
** ...
s or
lineages, as in the "
House of Windsor
The House of Windsor is the reigning royal house of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms. In 1901, a line of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (itself a cadet branch of the House of Wettin) succeeded the House of Hanover to th ...
". The concept of a house society was originally proposed by
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social An ...
who called them "''sociétés à maison''".
The concept has been applied to understand the organization of societies from
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica ...
and the
Moluccas
The Maluku Islands (; Indonesian: ''Kepulauan Maluku'') or the Moluccas () are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located ...
to
North Africa
North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...
and medieval Europe. Lévi-Strauss introduced the concept as an alternative to 'corporate kinship group' among the cognatic kinship groups of the Pacific region. The socially significant groupings within these societies have variable membership because kinship is reckoned bilaterally (through both father's and mother's kin) and comes together for only short periods. Property, genealogy and residence are not the basis for the group's existence.
Marriage (affinity)
Marriage is a socially or ritually recognized union or legal contract between
spouses that establishes rights and obligations between them, between them and their children, and between them and their in-laws. The definition of marriage varies according to different cultures, but it is principally an
institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually
intimate
Intimate may refer to:
* Intimate examination, a physical examination for medical purposes that includes examination of the breasts, genitalia, or rectum of a patient
* Intimate ion pair, the interactions between a cation, anion and surrounding sol ...
and sexual, are acknowledged. When defined broadly, marriage is considered a
cultural universal
A cultural universal (also called an anthropological universal or human universal) is an element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all known human cultures worldwide. Taken together, the whole body of cultural universals is known ...
. A broad definition of marriage includes those that are
monogamous,
polygamous
Crimes
Polygamy (from Late Greek (') "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is marrie ...
,
same-sex and temporary.
The act of marriage usually creates
normative
Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A norm in ...
or legal obligations between the individuals involved, and any offspring they may produce. Marriage may result, for example, in "a union between a man and a woman such that children born to the woman are the recognized legitimate offspring of both partners."
Edmund Leach argued that no one definition of marriage applied to all cultures, but offered a list of ten rights frequently associated with marriage, including sexual monopoly and rights with respect to children (with specific rights differing across cultures).
There is wide cross-cultural variation in the social rules governing the selection of a partner for marriage. In many societies, the choice of partner is limited to suitable persons from specific social groups. In some societies the rule is that a partner is selected from an individual's own social group –
endogamy
Endogamy is the practice of marrying within a specific social group, religious denomination, caste, or ethnic group, rejecting those from others as unsuitable for marriage or other close personal relationships.
Endogamy is common in many cultu ...
, this is the case in many class and caste based societies. But in other societies a partner must be chosen from a different group than one's own –
exogamy
Exogamy is the social norm of marrying outside one's social group. The group defines the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. One form of exogamy is dual exogamy, in which two groups c ...
, this is the case in many societies practicing
totem
A totem (from oj, ᑑᑌᒼ, italics=no or '' doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system.
While ''the ...
ic religion where society is divided into several exogamous totemic clans, such as most
Aboriginal Australian
Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Isl ...
societies. Marriages between parents and children, or between full siblings, with few exceptions, have been considered
incest
Incest ( ) is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by affinity (marriage or stepfamily), adopti ...
and forbidden. However,
marriages between more distant relatives have been much more common, with one estimate being that 80% of all marriages in history have been between second cousins or closer.
Alliance (marital exchange systems)
Systemic forms of preferential marriage may have wider social implications in terms of economic and political organization. In a wide array of lineage-based societies with a
classificatory kinship system, potential spouses are sought from a specific class of relatives as determined by a prescriptive marriage rule. Insofar as regular marriages following prescriptive rules occur, lineages are linked together in fixed relationships; these ties between lineages may form political alliances in kinship dominated societies. French
structural
A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such ...
anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social An ...
developed the
alliance theory
The alliance theory, also known as the general theory of exchanges, is a structuralist method of studying kinship relations. It finds its origins in Claude Lévi-Strauss's ''Elementary Structures of Kinship'' (1949) and is in opposition to the ...
to account for the "elementary" kinship structures created by the limited number of prescriptive marriage rules possible.
Claude Lévi-Strauss argued in ''The Elementary Structures of Kinship'' (1949), that the
incest taboo
An incest taboo is any cultural rule or norm that prohibits sexual relations between certain members of the same family, mainly between individuals related by blood. All human cultures have norms that exclude certain close relatives from ...
necessitated the exchange of women between kinship groups. Levi-Strauss thus shifted the emphasis from descent groups to the stable ''structures'' or relations between groups that preferential and prescriptive marriage rules created.
History
One of the foundational works in the anthropological study of kinship was
Morgan's
Henry Morgan & Company ( colloquially Morgan's) was a Canadian department store chain founded by Henry Morgan in 1845. The first store was located in Montreal, and expanded to include 11 stores in Ontario and Quebec before being bought by Hudson's ...
''
Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family
''Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family'' is an 1871 book written by Lewis Henry Morgan (1818 - 1881) and published by the Smithsonian Institution. It is considered foundational for the discipline of anthropology and particular ...
'' (1871). As is the case with other social sciences, Anthropology and kinship studies emerged at a time when the understanding of the Human species' comparative place in the world was somewhat different from today's. Evidence that life in stable social groups is not just a feature of humans, but also of many other
primates, was yet to emerge and
society
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soci ...
was considered to be a uniquely human affair. As a result, early kinship theorists saw an apparent need to explain not only the details of ''how'' human social groups are constructed, their patterns, meanings and obligations, but also ''why'' they are constructed at all. The ''why'' explanations thus typically presented the fact of life in social groups (''which appeared to be unique to humans'') as being largely a result of human ideas and values.
Morgan's early influence
![Kinship Systems](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Kinship_Systems.svg)
Morgan's explanation for why humans live in groups was largely based on the notion that all humans have an inherent ''natural valuation'' of genealogical ties (an unexamined assumption that would remain at the heart of kinship studies for another century, see below), and therefore also an inherent desire to construct social groups around these ties. Even so, Morgan found that members of a society who are ''not'' close genealogical relatives may nevertheless use what he called ''kinship terms'' (which he considered to be originally based on genealogical ties). This fact was already evident in his use of the term ''affinity'' within his concept of the ''system of kinship''. The most lasting of Morgan's contributions was his discovery of the difference between descriptive and
classificatory kinship terms, which situated broad kinship classes on the basis of imputing abstract social patterns of relationships having little or no overall relation to genetic closeness but instead cognition about kinship, social distinctions as they affect linguistic usages in
kinship terminology, and strongly relate, if only by approximation, to patterns of marriage.
Kinship networks and social process
A more flexible view of kinship was formulated in British
social anthropology. Among the attempts to break out of universalizing assumptions and theories about kinship,
Radcliffe-Brown
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, FBA (born Alfred Reginald Brown; 17 January 1881 – 24 October 1955) was an English social anthropologist who helped further develop the theory of structural functionalism.
Biography
Alfred Reginald Radcli ...
(1922, The
Andaman Islands; 1930, The social organization of Australian tribes) was the first to assert that kinship relations are best thought of as concrete networks of relationships among individuals. He then described these relationships, however, as typified by interlocking interpersonal roles.
Malinowski
Malinowski (Polish pronunciation: ; feminine: Malinowska; plural: Malinowscy) is a surname of Polish-language origin. It is related to the following surnames:
People
* Agnieszka Malinowska, Polish mathematician
* (born 1954), Polish Army gene ...
(1922, Argonauts of the Western Pacific) described patterns of events with concrete individuals as participants stressing the relative stability of institutions and communities, but without insisting on abstract systems or models of kinship.
Gluckman (1955, The judicial process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia) balanced the emphasis on stability of institutions against processes of change and conflict, inferred through detailed analysis of instances of social interaction to infer rules and assumptions.
John Barnes
John Charles Bryan Barnes MBE (born 7 November 1963) is a former professional football player and manager. He currently works as an author, commentator and pundit for ESPN and SuperSport. Initially a quick, skilful left winger, he moved to ce ...
,
Victor Turner
Victor Witter Turner (28 May 1920 – 18 December 1983) was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals, and rites of passage. His work, along with that of Clifford Geertz and others, is often referred to as ...
, and others, affiliated with Gluckman's Manchester school of anthropology, described patterns of actual network relations in communities and fluid situations in urban or migratory context, as with the work of
J. Clyde Mitchell (1965, Social Networks in Urban Situations). Yet, all these approaches clung to a view of stable
functionalism, with kinship as one of the central stable institutions.
"Kinship system" as systemic pattern
The concept of “system of kinship” tended to dominate anthropological studies of kinship in the early 20th century. Kinship systems as defined in anthropological texts and ethnographies were seen as constituted by patterns of behavior and attitudes in relation to the differences in terminology, listed above, for referring to relationships as well as for addressing others. Many anthropologists went so far as to see, in these patterns of kinship, strong relations between
kinship categories and patterns of marriage, including forms of marriage, restrictions on marriage, and cultural concepts of the boundaries of
incest
Incest ( ) is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by affinity (marriage or stepfamily), adopti ...
. A great deal of inference was necessarily involved in such constructions as to “systems” of kinship, and attempts to construct systemic patterns and reconstruct kinship evolutionary histories on these bases were largely invalidated in later work. However, anthropologist Dwight Read later argued that the way in which kinship categories are defined by individual researchers are substantially inconsistent. This not only occurs when working within a systemic cultural model that can be elicited in fieldwork, but also when allowing considerable individual variability in details, such as when they are recorded through relative products.
Conflicting theories of the mid 20th century
In trying to resolve the problems of dubious inferences about kinship "systems",
George P. Murdock (1949, Social Structure) compiled kinship data to test a theory about universals in human kinship in the way that terminologies were influenced by the behavioral similarities or social differences among pairs of kin, proceeding on the view that the psychological ordering of kinship systems radiates out from ego and the
nuclear family to different forms of
extended family
An extended family is a family that extends beyond the nuclear family of parents and their children to include aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins or other relatives, all living nearby or in the same household. Particular forms include the stem ...
.
Lévi-Strauss (1949, Les Structures Elementaires), on the other hand, also looked for global patterns to kinship, but viewed the
“elementary” forms of kinship as lying in the ways that families were connected by marriage in different fundamental forms resembling those of
modes of exchange: symmetric and direct, reciprocal delay, or
generalized exchange
Generalized exchange is a type of social exchange in which a desired outcome that is sought by an individual is not dependent on the resources provided by that individual. It is assumed to be a fundamental social mechanism that stabilizes relati ...
.
Recognition of fluidity in kinship meanings and relations
Building on Lévi-Strauss's (1949) notions of kinship as caught up with the fluid languages of exchange,
Edmund Leach
Sir Edmund Ronald Leach FRAI FBA (7 November 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a British social anthropologist and academic. He served as provost of King's College, Cambridge from 1966 to 1979. He was also president of the Royal Anthropologi ...
(1961, Pul Eliya) argued that kinship was a flexible idiom that had something of the grammar of a language, both in the uses of terms for kin but also in the fluidities of language, meaning, and networks. His field studies criticized the ideas of structural-functional stability of kinship groups as corporations with charters that lasted long beyond the lifetimes of individuals, which had been the orthodoxy of
British Social Anthropology
Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In ...
. This sparked debates over whether kinship could be resolved into specific organized sets of rules and components of meaning, or whether kinship meanings were more fluid, symbolic, and independent of grounding in supposedly determinate relations among individuals or groups, such as those of descent or prescriptions for marriage.
From the 1950s onwards, reports on kinship patterns in the New Guinea Highlands added some momentum to what had until then been only occasional fleeting suggestions that living together (co-residence) might underlie social bonding, and eventually contributed to the general shift away from a genealogical approach (see below section). For example, on the basis of his observations, Barnes suggested:
Similarly, Langness' ethnography of the ''Bena Bena'' also emphasized the primacy of residence patterns in 'creating' kinship ties:
In 1972
David M. Schneider
David Murray Schneider (November 11, 1918, Brooklyn, New York – October 30, 1995, Santa Cruz, California) was an American cultural anthropologist, best known for his studies of kinship and as a major proponent of the symbolic anthropology app ...
raised
[Schneider, D. 1972. What is Kinship all About. In ''Kinship Studies in the Morgan Centennial Year'', edited by P. Reining. Washington: Anthropological Society of Washington.] deep problems with the notion that human social bonds and 'kinship' was a natural category built upon genealogical ties and made a fuller argument in his 1984 book ''A critique of the study of Kinship''
[Schneider, D. 1984. A critique of the study of kinship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.] which had a major influence on the subsequent study of kinship.
Schneider's critique of genealogical concepts
Before the questions raised within anthropology about the study of 'kinship' by
David M. Schneider
David Murray Schneider (November 11, 1918, Brooklyn, New York – October 30, 1995, Santa Cruz, California) was an American cultural anthropologist, best known for his studies of kinship and as a major proponent of the symbolic anthropology app ...
and others from the 1960s onwards, anthropology itself had paid very little attention to the notion that kinship bonds were anything other than connected to consanguineal (or genealogical) relatedness (or its local cultural conceptions). Schneider's 1968 study
[Schneider, D. 1968. American kinship: a cultural account, Anthropology of modern societies series. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.] of the symbolic meanings surrounding ideas of kinship in American Culture found that Americans ascribe a special significance to 'blood ties' as well as related symbols like the naturalness of marriage and raising children within this culture. In later work (1972 and 1984) Schneider argued that unexamined genealogical notions of kinship had been embedded in anthropology since Morgan's early work
[Morgan, Lewis Henry. 1870. Systems of consanguity and affinity of the human family. Vol. 17, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.] because American anthropologists (and anthropologists in western Europe) had made the mistake of assuming these ''particular cultural values'' of 'blood is thicker than water', common in their own societies, were 'natural' and universal for all human cultures (i.e. a form of ethnocentrism). He concluded that, due to these unexamined assumptions, the whole enterprise of 'kinship' in anthropology may have been built on faulty foundations. His 1984 book ''A Critique of The Study of Kinship'' gave his fullest account of this critique.
Schneider himself emphasised a distinction between the notion of a social relationship as intrinsically ''given'' and inalienable (''from birth''), and a social relationship as created, constituted and maintained by a process of interaction, or ''doing'' (Schneider 1984, 165). Schneider used the example of the citamangen / fak relationship in Yap society, that his own early research had previously glossed over as a ''father / son'' relationship, to illustrate the problem;
Schneider preferred to focus on these often ignored processes of "performance, forms of doing, various codes for conduct, different roles" (p. 72) as the most important constituents of kinship. His critique quickly prompted a new generation of anthropologists to reconsider how they conceptualized, observed and described social relationships ('kinship') in the cultures they studied.
Post-Schneider
Schneider's critique is widely acknowledged to have marked a turning point in anthropology's study of social relationships and interactions. Some anthropologists moved forward with kinship studies by teasing apart biological and social aspects, prompted by Schneider's question;
Schneider also dismissed the sociobiological account of biological influences, maintaining that these did not fit the ethnographic evidence (see more below).
Janet Carsten employed her studies with the Malays to reassess kinship. She uses the idea of ''relatedness'' to move away from a pre-constructed analytic opposition between the biological and the social. Carsten argued that relatedness should be described in terms of indigenous statements and practices, some of which fall outside what anthropologists have conventionally understood as kinship;
Philip Thomas' work with the Temanambondro of
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
highlights that nurturing processes are considered to be the 'basis' for kinship ties in this culture, notwithstanding genealogical connections;
Similar ethnographic accounts have emerged from a variety of cultures since Schneider's intervention. The concept of
nurture kinship
The concept of nurture kinship in the anthropological study of human social relationships (kinship) highlights the extent to which such relationships are brought into being through the performance of various acts of nurture between individuals. A ...
highlights the extent to which kinship relationships may be brought into being through the performance of various acts of nurture between individuals. Additionally the concept highlights ethnographic findings that, in a wide swath of human societies, people understand, conceptualize and symbolize their relationships predominantly in terms of giving, receiving and sharing nurture. These approaches were somewhat forerun by
Malinowski
Malinowski (Polish pronunciation: ; feminine: Malinowska; plural: Malinowscy) is a surname of Polish-language origin. It is related to the following surnames:
People
* Agnieszka Malinowska, Polish mathematician
* (born 1954), Polish Army gene ...
, in his
ethnographic
Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...
study of
sexual behaviour
Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality. People engage in a variety of sexual acts, ranging from activities done alone (e.g., masturbation) ...
on the
Trobriand Islands
The Trobriand Islands are a archipelago of coral atolls off the east coast of New Guinea. They are part of the nation of Papua New Guinea and are in Milne Bay Province. Most of the population of 12,000 indigenous inhabitants live on the main isla ...
which noted that the Trobrianders did not believe pregnancy to be the result of
sexual intercourse between the man and the woman, and they denied that there was any physiological relationship between father and child. Nevertheless, while paternity was unknown in the "full biological sense", for a woman to have a child without having a husband was considered socially undesirable. Fatherhood was therefore recognised as a social and nurturing role; the woman's husband is the "man whose role and duty it is to take the child in his arms and to help her in nursing and bringing it up"; "Thus, though the natives are ignorant of any physiological need for a male in the constitution of the family, they regard him as indispensable socially".
Biology, psychology and kinship
Like Schneider, other anthropologists of kinship have largely rejected sociobiological accounts of human social patterns as being both reductionistic and also empirically incompatible with ethnographic data on human kinship. Notably,
Marshall Sahlins strongly critiqued the sociobiological approach through reviews of ethnographies in his 1976 ''The Use and Abuse of Biology'' noting that for humans "the categories of 'near' and 'distant'
invary independently of consanguinal distance and that these categories organize actual social practice" (p. 112).
Independently from anthropology, biologists studying organisms' social behaviours and relationships have been interested to understand under what conditions significant social behaviors can evolve to become a typical feature of a species (see
inclusive fitness
In evolutionary biology, inclusive fitness is one of two metrics of evolutionary success as defined by W. D. Hamilton in 1964:
* Personal fitness is the number of offspring that an individual begets (regardless of who rescues/rears/supports them ...
theory). Because complex social relationships and cohesive social groups are common not only to humans, but also to most primates, biologists maintain that these biological theories of sociality should in principle be generally applicable. The more challenging question arises as to how such ideas can be applied to the human species whilst fully taking account of the extensive ethnographic evidence that has emerged from anthropological research on kinship patterns.
Early developments of biological
inclusive fitness
In evolutionary biology, inclusive fitness is one of two metrics of evolutionary success as defined by W. D. Hamilton in 1964:
* Personal fitness is the number of offspring that an individual begets (regardless of who rescues/rears/supports them ...
theory and the derivative field of
Sociobiology
Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behavior in terms of evolution. It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics. Within ...
, encouraged some
sociobiologists
Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behavior in terms of evolution. It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics. Within t ...
and
evolutionary psychologists
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evol ...
to approach human kinship with the assumption that
inclusive fitness
In evolutionary biology, inclusive fitness is one of two metrics of evolutionary success as defined by W. D. Hamilton in 1964:
* Personal fitness is the number of offspring that an individual begets (regardless of who rescues/rears/supports them ...
theory predicts that kinship relations in humans ''are indeed'' expected to depend on genetic relatedness, which they readily connected with the ''genealogy'' approach of early anthropologists such as Morgan (see above sections). However, this is the position that Schneider, Sahlins and other anthropologists explicitly reject.
Nonreductive biology and nurture kinship
In agreement with Schneider,
Holland
Holland is a geographical regionG. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, ''Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel I'', Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1105 and former province on the western coast of the Netherlands. From the 10th to the 16th c ...
argued
[Holland, Maximilian. (2012) ''Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship: Compatibility between Cultural and Biological Approaches''. North Charleston: Createspace Press.] that an accurate account of biological theory and evidence supports the view that social bonds (and kinship) are indeed mediated by a shared social environment and processes of frequent interaction, care and nurture, rather than by genealogical relationships ''per se'' (even if genealogical relationships frequently correlate with such processes). In his 2012 book ''Social bonding and nurture kinship'' Holland argues that sociobiologists and later evolutionary psychologists misrepresent biological theory, mistakenly believing that
inclusive fitness
In evolutionary biology, inclusive fitness is one of two metrics of evolutionary success as defined by W. D. Hamilton in 1964:
* Personal fitness is the number of offspring that an individual begets (regardless of who rescues/rears/supports them ...
theory predicts that genetic relatedness ''per se'' is the condition that ''mediates'' social bonding and social cooperation in organisms. Holland points out that the biological theory (see
inclusive fitness
In evolutionary biology, inclusive fitness is one of two metrics of evolutionary success as defined by W. D. Hamilton in 1964:
* Personal fitness is the number of offspring that an individual begets (regardless of who rescues/rears/supports them ...
) only specifies that a statistical relationship between social behaviors and genealogical relatedness is a criterion for the ''evolution'' of social behaviors. The theory's originator,
W.D.Hamilton considered that organisms' social behaviours were likely to be mediated by general conditions that typically ''correlate'' with genetic relatedness, but are not likely to be mediated by genetic relatedness ''per se''
[Hamilton, W.D. 1987. Discriminating nepotism: expectable, common and overlooked. In ''Kin recognition in animals'', edited by D. J. C. Fletcher and C. D. Michener. New York: Wiley.] (see
Human inclusive fitness
Inclusive fitness in humans is the application of inclusive fitness theory to human social behaviour, relationships and cooperation.
Inclusive fitness theory (and the related kin selection theory) are general theories in evolutionary biology th ...
and
Kin recognition Kin recognition, also called kin detection, is an organism's ability to distinguish between close genetic kin and non-kin. In evolutionary biology and psychology, such an ability is presumed to have evolved for inbreeding avoidance, though animals d ...
). Holland reviews fieldwork from social mammals and primates to show that social bonding and cooperation in these species is indeed mediated through processes of shared living context, familiarity and
attachments, not by genetic relatedness ''per se''. Holland thus argues that both the biological ''theory'' and the biological ''evidence'' is nondeterministic and nonreductive, and that biology as a theoretical and empirical endeavor (as opposed to 'biology' as a cultural-symbolic nexus as outlined in Schneider's 1968 book) actually supports the ''
nurture kinship
The concept of nurture kinship in the anthropological study of human social relationships (kinship) highlights the extent to which such relationships are brought into being through the performance of various acts of nurture between individuals. A ...
'' perspective of cultural anthropologists working post-Schneider (see above sections). Holland argues that, whilst there is nonreductive compatibility around human kinship between anthropology, biology and psychology, for a full account of kinship in any ''particular'' human culture, ethnographic methods, including accounts of the people themselves, the analysis of historical contingencies, symbolic systems, economic and other cultural influences, remain centrally important.
Holland's position is widely supported by both cultural anthropologists and biologists as an approach which, according to Robin Fox, ''"gets to the heart of the matter concerning the contentious relationship between kinship categories, genetic relatedness and the prediction of behavior"''.
Evolutionary psychology
The other approach, that of Evolutionary psychology, continues to take the view that genetic relatedness (or genealogy) is key to understanding human kinship patterns. In contrast to Sahlin's position (above), Daly and Wilson argue that "the categories of 'near' and 'distant' do not 'vary independently of consanguinal distance', not in any society on earth." (Daly et al. 1997, p282). A current view is that humans have an inborn but culturally affected system for detecting certain forms of genetic relatedness. One important factor for
sibling
A sibling is a relative that shares at least one parent with the subject. A male sibling is a brother and a female sibling is a sister. A person with no siblings is an only child.
While some circumstances can cause siblings to be raised separa ...
detection, especially relevant for older siblings, is that if an infant and one's mother are seen to care for the infant, then the infant and oneself are assumed to be related. Another factor, especially important for younger siblings who cannot use the first method, is that persons who grew up together see one another as related. Yet another may be genetic detection based on the
major histocompatibility complex (See
Major Histocompatibility Complex and Sexual Selection
The major histocompatibility complex in sexual selection concerns how major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules allow for immune system surveillance of the population of protein molecules in a host's cells. In 1976, Yamazaki et al. demonstr ...
). This kinship detection system in turn affects other genetic predispositions such as the
incest taboo
An incest taboo is any cultural rule or norm that prohibits sexual relations between certain members of the same family, mainly between individuals related by blood. All human cultures have norms that exclude certain close relatives from ...
and a tendency for
altruism towards relatives.
One issue within this approach is why many societies organize according to descent (see below) and not exclusively according to kinship. An explanation is that kinship does not form clear boundaries and is centered differently for each individual. In contrast, descent groups usually do form clear boundaries and provide an easy way to create cooperative groups of various sizes.
[The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, Edited by Robin Dunbar and Louise Barret, Oxford University Press, 2007, Chapter 31 Kinship and descent by Lee Conk and Drew Gerkey]
According to an evolutionary psychology hypothesis that assumes that descent systems are optimized to assure high genetic probability of relatedness between lineage members, males should prefer a patrilineal system if paternal certainty is high; males should prefer a matrilineal system if paternal certainty is low. Some research supports this association with one study finding no patrilineal society with low paternity confidence and no matrilineal society with high paternal certainty. Another association is that
pastoral societies are relatively more often patrilineal compared to
horticultural
Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...
societies. This may be because wealth in pastoral societies in the form of mobile cattle can easily be used to pay
bride price
Bride price, bride-dowry ( Mahr in Islam), bride-wealth, or bride token, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the woman or the family of the woman he will be married to or is just about to marry. Bride dow ...
which favor concentrating resources on sons so they can marry.
The evolutionary psychology account of biology continues to be rejected by most cultural anthropologists.
Extensions of the kinship metaphor
Fictive kinship
Detailed terms for parentage
As social and biological concepts of parenthood are not necessarily coterminous, the terms "pater" and "genitor" have been used in anthropology to distinguish between the man who is socially recognised as father (pater) and the man who is believed to be the physiological parent (genitor); similarly the terms "mater" and "genitrix" have been used to distinguish between the woman socially recognised as mother (mater) and the woman believed to be the physiological parent (genitrix). Such a distinction is useful when the individual who is considered the legal parent of the child is not the individual who is believed to be the child's biological parent. For example, in his ethnography of the
Nuer Nuer may refer to:
* Nuer people
* Nuer language
The Nuer language (Thok Naath) ("people's language") is a Nilotic language of the Western Nilotic group. It is spoken by the Nuer people of South Sudan and in western Ethiopia (region of Gamb ...
,
Evans-Pritchard notes that if a
widow
A widow (female) or widower (male) is a person whose spouse has died.
Terminology
The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed ''widowhood''. An archaic term for a widow is "relict," literally "someone left over". This word can so ...
, following the death of her husband, chooses to live with a lover outside of her deceased husband's kin group, that lover is only considered genitor of any subsequent children the widow has, and her deceased husband continues to be considered the pater. As a result, the lover has no legal control over the children, who may be taken away from him by the kin of the pater when they choose. The terms "pater" and "genitor" have also been used to help describe the relationship between children and their parents in the context of divorce in Britain. Following the divorce and remarriage of their parents, children find themselves using the term "mother" or "father" in relation to more than one individual, and the pater or mater who is legally responsible for the child's care, and whose
family name the child uses, may not be the genitor or genitrix of the child, with whom a separate parent-child relationship may be maintained through arrangements such as
visitation rights or
joint custody
Joint custody is a form of child custody pursuant to which custody rights are awarded to both parents. Joint custody may refer to ''joint physical custody'', ''joint legal custody'', or both combined.
In joint legal custody, both parents of a ...
.
It is important to note that the terms "genitor" or "genetrix" do not necessarily imply actual biological relationships based on
consanguinity
Consanguinity ("blood relation", from Latin '' consanguinitas'') is the characteristic of having a kinship with another person (being descended from a common ancestor).
Many jurisdictions have laws prohibiting people who are related by blood fr ...
, but rather refer to the socially held belief that the individual is physically related to the child, derived from culturally held ideas about how biology works. So, for example, the
Ifugao
Ifugao, officially the Province of Ifugao ( ilo, Probinsia ti Ifugao; tl, Lalawigan ng Ifugao), is a landlocked province of the Philippines in the Cordillera Administrative Region in Luzon. Its capital is Lagawe and it borders Benguet to the ...
may believe that an illegitimate child might have more than one physical father, and so nominate more than one genitor.
J.A. Barnes therefore argued that it was necessary to make a further distinction between genitor and genitrix (the supposed biological mother and father of the child), and the actual
genetic father and mother of the child making them share their genes or genetics .
Composition of relations
The study of kinship may be abstracted to
binary relations between people. For example, if ''x'' is the
parent
A parent is a caregiver of the offspring in their own species. In humans, a parent is the caretaker of a child (where "child" refers to offspring, not necessarily age). A ''biological parent'' is a person whose gamete resulted in a child, a male t ...
of ''y'', the relation may be symbolized as ''xPy''. The
converse relation
In mathematics, the converse relation, or transpose, of a binary relation is the relation that occurs when the order of the elements is switched in the relation. For example, the converse of the relation 'child of' is the relation 'parent&n ...
, that ''y'' is the child of ''x'', is written ''yP''
T''x''. Suppose that ''z'' is another child of ''x'': ''zP''
T''x''. Then ''y'' is a
sibling
A sibling is a relative that shares at least one parent with the subject. A male sibling is a brother and a female sibling is a sister. A person with no siblings is an only child.
While some circumstances can cause siblings to be raised separa ...
of ''z'' as they share the parent ''x'': . Here the relation of siblings is expressed as the composition ''P''
T''P'' of the parent relation with its inverse.
The relation of
grandparent is the composition of the parent relation with itself: . An
uncle
An uncle is usually defined as a male relative who is a sibling of a parent or married to a sibling of a parent. Uncles who are related by birth are second-degree relatives. The female counterpart of an uncle is an aunt, and the reciprocal rela ...
or
aunt
An aunt is a woman who is a sibling of a parent or married to a sibling of a parent. Aunts who are related by birth are second-degree relatives. Known alternate terms include auntie or aunty. Children in other cultures and families may re ...
is the sibling of a parent, ''(P''
T''P)P'', which can also be interpreted as the child of a grandparent, ''P''
T''(PP)''. Suppose ''x'' is the grandparent of ''y'': ''xGy''. Then ''y'' and ''z'' are
cousin
Most generally, in the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a cousin is a type of familial relationship in which two relatives are two or more familial generations away from their most recent common ancestor. Commonly, ...
s if ''yG''
T''xGz''.
The symbols applied here to express kinship are used more generally in
algebraic logic to develop a calculus of relations with sets other than human beings.
Appendix
Degrees
See also
*
Ancestry
*
Kin selection
Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even when at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Kin altruism can look like altruistic behaviour whose evolution i ...
*
Kinism
Kinism is a white nationalist interpretation of Christianity. The ideology is a "movement of anti-immigrant, 'Southern heritage' separatists who splintered off from Christian Reconstructionism to advocate the belief that God's intended order is 'lo ...
*
Kinship analysis
*
Kinship terminology
*
Australian Aboriginal kinship
Aboriginal Australian kinship comprises the systems of Aboriginal customary law governing social interaction relating to kinship in traditional Aboriginal cultures. It is an integral part of the culture of every Aboriginal group across Aust ...
*
Bride price
Bride price, bride-dowry ( Mahr in Islam), bride-wealth, or bride token, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the woman or the family of the woman he will be married to or is just about to marry. Bride dow ...
*
Bride service
*
Chinese kinship
The Chinese kinship system () is classified as a "Sudanese" or "descriptive" system for the definition of family.
The Chinese kinship system is among the most complicated of all kinship systems. It maintains a separate designation for almost ev ...
* Cinderella effect
* Clan
* Consanguinity
* Darwinian anthropology
* Dynasty
* Ethnicity
*
Family
Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
* Family history
* Fictive kinship
* Genealogy
* Genetic genealogy
* Godparent
* Heredity
* Inheritance
* Interpersonal relationships
* Irish Kinship
* Lineage (anthropology)
*
Nurture kinship
The concept of nurture kinship in the anthropological study of human social relationships (kinship) highlights the extent to which such relationships are brought into being through the performance of various acts of nurture between individuals. A ...
* Serbo-Croatian kinship
* Tribe
* House society
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Introduction into the study of kinship AusAnthrop: research, resources and documentation
The Nature of Kinship: An Introduction to Descent Systems and Family OrganizationDennis O'Neil, Palomar College, San Marcos, CA.
Brian Schwimmer, University of Manitoba.
Degrees of Kinship According to Anglo-Saxon Civil Law – Useful Chart (Kurt R. Nilson, Esq. : heirbase.com)
{{Authority control
Kinship and descent,
Anthropology
Lineage (series)
Lineage societies