Kinship
Key Terms
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families
Relationships in which people live together with
commitment, form an economic unit, care for
young, and consider their identity attached to
the group.
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extended family
A unit composed of relatives in addition to
parents and children who live in the same
household.
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nuclear family
Composed of one or two parents and their
dependent children, all of whom live apart from
other relatives.
• kinship
Refers to a social network of people based on common
ancestry, marriage, or adoption.
Classified roles and categories – i.e, father, mother, brother,
uncle, aunts, grandparents
Keeps people who are related by lineage and marriage
Way to transmit status and property from one generation to the
next
Examples:
American family – kinship works with inheritance and the
wills of the deceased; closet of kin usually spouse or children
receive the inheritance before other distant relatives
Hindu family – after the death of a family member, the rest
of the family don’t bath for sometimes 10 – 11 days.
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Patrilineal Descent
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Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic
kinship, is a common kinship system/family organization in which an
individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their
father's lineage. {Found in 44% of all cultures}
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It generally involves the inheritance of property, rights, names, or titles by
persons related through male kin.
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A patriline ("father line") is a person's father, and additional ancestors, as
traced only through males.
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Traditionally and historically people would identify the person's ethnicity with the
father's heritage and ignore the maternal ancestry in the ethnic factor
Matrilineal Descent
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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 of property and/or titles. {Found among 15% of all
cultures, i.e. Kerala and some provinces of China}
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A matriline is a line of descent from a female ancestor to a descendant (of
either sex) in which the individuals in all intervening generations are
mothers.
Early human kinship everywhere was matrilineal according to historians.
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To better understand the concept:
Shiites 12 imams are said to be from the lineage of the prophet’s
daughter Fatima termed as "sons of Fatima".
There is little evidence of the existence of this concept in PreIslamic era among the Amorites of Yemen and the Nabateans in
the north of Arabia Peninsula.
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Bilateral Descent
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A system of family lineage in which the relatives on the
mother's side and father's side are equally important
for emotional ties or for transfer of property or wealth.
A system of tracing descent through both the mother
and father's sides of the family.
Under bilateral descent, every tribe member belongs to
two clans, one through the father (a patriclan) and
another through the mother (a matriclan).
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Examples : Javanese people, the largest ethnic group in Indonesia,
Some Kinship Terms
Hypergamy – a woman marrying into a
higher class than herself (higher education,
financial status, social status)
Hypogamy – a man marrying a woman of
lower social class or status (colloquially "marrying
down")
Polygamy: is the practice of marrying multiple spouses. When
a man is married to more than one wife at the same time
What is monogamy? One wife at a time- De facto
What is Polyandry? A wife having more than one husband at the
same time. Among Tibetans in Nepal, parts of China and part of northern India, in which
two or more brothers are married to the same wife.
Bigamy: The offence of marrying someone while already legally
married to another person.
Make your own Kinship Chart
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Just up to your grandparents generation
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHVz
pRwmdNE