Chapter 10Kinship and Descent

Kinship

• Kinship is how people are related to you– Fictive – adaptive (godparents, step-siblings, etc)

– Consanguine – blood

– Conjugal – marriage

• In kin groups certain people belong and others do not.

• Kinship plays a very important role in non-industrial societies

Industrial societies and kinship

• Most things run by non-in groups• Non-kin based group – voluntary membership• Non-overlapping – Institutions do not

overlap; school separate from job

Non-Industrial Societies

• Multifunctional kin groups- kin group manages where you live, work, worship, etc.

• All of the social structure is related to kin group

Functions of Kin-Ordered Groups

• Kin-ordered groups are social organizational devices for solving challenges that commonly confront human societies:

– Maintaining the integrity of resources that cannot be divided without being destroyed.

– Providing work forces for tasks that require a labor pool larger than households can provide.

– Rallying support for purposes of self-defense or offensive attack.

What Are Descent Groups?

• A descent group is a kind of kinship group in which being in the direct line of descent from a real or mythical ancestor is a criterion of membership.

• Descent may be traced exclusively through men or women, or through either at the discretion of the individual.

Descent Groups

• Members share descent from a common ancestor through a series of parent-child links.

• Unilineal descent establishes kin group membership exclusively through the male or female line.

• Bilateral descent – trace descendants on both sides of family

Functions of Descent Groups

• Provide aid and security to their members.• Repositories of religious tradition, with group

solidarity enhanced by worship of a common ancestor.

Descent Groups• Unilineal descent

– Descent that establishes group membership through either the mother’s or the father’s line.

• Matrilineal descent

– Descent traced exclusively through the female line to establish group membership.

• Patrilineal descent

– Descent traced exclusively through the male line to establish group membership.

Patrilineal Descent Groups

• Male members trace their descent from a common male ancestor.

• A female belongs to the same descent group as her father and his brother.

• Authority over the children lies with the father or his elder brother.

Matrilineal Descent Groups

• Descent is traced through the female line. • Does not confer public authority on women,

but women have more say in decision making than in patrilineal societies.

• Common in societies where women perform much of the productive work.

White Mountain Apaches

• White Mountain Apaches in Arizona are organized in matrilineal clans.

• Small groups of these women lived and worked together, farming on the banks of streams in the mountains and gathering wild foods in ancestral territories.

• They trace their ancestry to Changing Woman, a mythological founding mother.

Unilineal Descent Groups• Lineage

– A unilineal kinship group descended from a common ancestor or founder who lived four to six generations ago, and in which relationships among members can be stated genealogically.

• Clan

– An extended unilineal kinship group, often consisting of several lineages, whose members claim common descent from a remote ancestor, usually legendary or mythological.

Unilineal Descent Groups (con’t.)• Phratry– A unilineal descent group composed of two or

more clans that claim to be of common ancestry. If only two such groups exist, each is a moiety.

• Moiety– Each group that results from a division of a

society into two halves on the basis of descent.

Lineages

• Made up of consanguineal kin who can trace their genealogical links to a common ancestor.

• Marriage of a group member represents an alliance of two lineages.

• Lineage exogamy maintains open communication and fosters exchange of information among lineages.

Lineage Exogamy

• Lineage members must find their marriage partners in other lineages.

• This curbs competition for desirable spouses within the group and promotes group solidarity.

• Lineage exogamy also means that marriage is more than a union between two individuals; it is also a new alliance between lineages.

Clans

• Created when a large lineage group splits into new, smaller ones.

• Members claim descent from a common ancestor without knowing the genealogical links to that ancestor.

• Clan identification is often reinforced by totems.

Clan

• In the highlands of Scotland clans have been important units of social organization.

• Now dispersed all over the world, clan members gather and express their sense of kinship with one another by wearing a tartan skirt, or kilt, with a distinct plaid pattern and color identifying clan membership.

Moieties

• Many Amazonian Indians in South America’s tropical woodlands traditionally live in circular villages socially divided into moieties.

• This is the Canela Indians’ Escalvado village as it was in 1970.

• Nearly all 1,800 members of the tribe reside in the village during festival seasons, but are otherwise dispersed to smaller, farm-centered circular villages.

Organizational Hierarchies

• This diagram shows how lineages, clans, phratries, and moieties form an organizational hierarchy. Each moiety is subdivided into phratries, each phratry is subdivided into clans, and each clan is subdivided into lineages.

Terms

• Fission – The splitting of a descent group into two or more new descent groups.

• Totems – The belief that people are related to particular animals, plants, or natural objects by virtue of descent from common ancestral spirits.

Totems

• Tsimshian people of Metlakatla, Alaska, raise a memorial totem pole gifted to the community by carver David Boxley, a member of the Eagle clan.

• Totem poles display a clan or lineage’s ceremonial property and are prominently positioned in a place of significance.

Kindred

• A small circle of paternal and maternal relatives.

• A kindred is never the same for any two persons except siblings.

• EGO is the central person from whom the degree of each relationship is traced.

The Kindred

Patrilineal Descent Diagram

Tracing Matrilineal Descent

Kinship Terminologies

• The Hawaiian system• The Eskimo system• The Iroquois system• Omaha system• Crow system• Sudanese or descriptive system

Eskimo System

• System of kinship terminology, also called lineal system, that emphasizes the nuclear family by specifically identifying the mother, father, brother, and sister, while lumping together all other relatives into broad categories such as uncle, aunt, and cousin.

Eskimo System

Hawaiian System

• Kinship reckoning in which all relatives of the same sex and generation are referred to by the same term.

Hawaiian System

Iroquois System• Kinship terminology wherein a father and

father’s brother are given a single term, as are a mother and mother’s sister, but a father’s sister and mother’s brother are given separate terms.

• Parallel cousins are classified with brothers and sisters, while cross cousins are classified separately, but (unlike Crow and Omaha kinship) not equated with relatives of some other generation.

Iroquois System