week:10-unit-10 Kinship System: Structure, Terminology, Rules and Types of Descent

FAMILIES The kinds of societies anthropologists have studied traditionally, including many examples considered in this chapter, have stimulated a strong interest in families, along with larger systems of kinship, descent, and marriage. Cross-culturally, the social construction of kinship illustrates considerable diversity. Understanding kinship systems has become an essential part of anthropology because of the importance of those systems to the people we study. We are ready to take a closer look at the systems of kinship and descent that have organized human life during much of our history. Ethnographers quickly recognize social divisions—groups—within any society they study. During i eldwork, they learn about signii cant groups by observing their activities and composition. People often live in the same village or neighborhood, or work, pray, or celebrate together because they are related in some way. To understand the social structure,an ethnographer must investigate such kin ties. For example, the most signii cant local groups may consist of descendants of the same grandfather. These people may live in neighboring houses, farm adjoining i elds, and help each other in everyday tasks. Other sorts of groups, based on different or more distant kin links, get together less often. The nuclear family is one kind of kin group that is widespread in human societies. The nuclear family consists of parents and children, normally living together in the same household. Other kin groups include extended families (families consisting of three or more generations) and descent groups— lineages and clans. Such groups are not usually residentially based, as the nuclear family is. Extended family members get together from time to time, but they don’t necessarily live together. Branches of a given descent group may reside in several villages and rarely assemble for common activity. Descent groups, which are composed of people claiming common ancestry, are basic units in the social organization of nonindustrial farmers and herders.

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