North American Kinship Terms:
- Ego = who's kinship where analyzing
- Circles = females
- Triangles = males
- Huge part of social organization is how we organize and make sense of our world through kinship, marriage, sex/gender, race, ethnicity, etc
- David Schneider: defined kinship in North American context
o Calling it “familial love” -> “enduring diffuse solidarity”
Kinship Systems:
- Systems for determining relatives and relationships
- Organize relationships and categorize people
- Kin terms: words that we have for different kinds of relationship in different cultures
- Biological kin types:
o Ego = point of reference of who you're analyzing
o F = father
o M = mother
o S = son
o D = daughter
o B = brother
o Z = sister
o C = child
o H = husband
o W = wife
- Types of kin:
o Consanguines - people that you are related to by blood
o Affines - people that you are related to by law
o Fictive kin - people who you consider apart of your family, but who are not
- Rules of descent:
o Bilateral descent - trace lineage through both mother and father
- Kindred - huge kin group
- Common in modern industrial and in small foraging societies o Unilateral descent
- Matrilineal - trace lineage through mother (father not apart of your kin group)
- Patrilineal - trace lineage through father (mother not apart of your kin group)
- Common in horticultural, partoralist and agrarian societies
Matrilineal and Patrilineal Systems:
- Matrilineal descent much less prevalent than patrilineal
o Concentrated in horticultural societies
o Only about 15% of kin groups that have been studied have been matrilineal decent
- Subsistence plays role in shaping kinship patters, but does not determine them
Patrilineal Descent:
- Most common kinship pattern
- Kinship traced from male ancestor in a descent line through subsequent male descendants
- Variation in women's roles and status within patrilineal societies
- Patriarchy: most, but not all, patrilineal societies are also strongly patriarchal (males rule)
- Patrilineal kin = agnatic
o Ego (female) - females children are not part of her lineage, males children are
o Ego (male) - males children are part of his lineage, females children are not
Matrilineal Descent:
- Kinship traced from female ancestor in a descent line through subsequent female descendants
- Males often still have greater access to wealth, power and status
- Matrilineal kin = uterine
o Ego (female) - females children are part of her lineage, males children are not
o Ego (male) - males children are not part of his lineage, females children are
Unilineal Descent Groups:
- Lineages:
o Smallest kinship group formed through unilineal descent
o Martilineages or patrilineages
o Lineage can only traced back to a common ancestor
o Spouses are not part of each others lineages
o Clan = a lineage that cannot be traced
- Believe they descend from a common ancestor
o Ascendants = anyone above the ego in question
o Descendants = anyone bellow the ego in question
- Exogamy and Endogamy:
o Parallel cousins and cross-cousins
- Parallel cousins: children of parents same-sex sibling (fathers brothers children and mothers sisters children)
- Cross-cousins: children of parents opposite sex siblings (mothers brothers children and fathers sisters children)
n Further away, but still in same lineage
o Gamy = marriage
o Exogamy = marry outside your lineage
- Why would you want to do this?
n Expand lineage/family
n Creates bonds and builds alliances
o Endogamy = marry inside your lineage
- Why would you want to do this?
n Keep relations intact
n Maintain status, hierarchy
n Ex: Hutterites, Indian cast system
Complex Forms of Descent:
- Double descent
o Both matrilineal and patrilineal descent
o Different kinds of property inherited along each line
- Ambilineal descent
o Either matrilineal or patrilineal descent
o Individuals may choose to affiliate with either group (at a certain age)
Patterns of Change:
- Kinship systems may change in response to internal and external forces
David Schneider:
- Wrote a book called “American Kinship”
- Part of the Kinship Project (kinship in the UK and North American)
- Worked in inner city Chicago
- Enduring diffuse solidarity
o Nothing about blood or law
o Fictive kin - people you consider in your family, but are not
o Social/cultural considerations are much more important than blood or law
Kath Weston:
- 20 years after Schneider (1991)
- Wrote book called “Family We Choose”
- Worked in San Francisco at time of AIDS crisis
- Made de facto families - went against the traditional family
Surrogacy:
- Happens during the conception process
- Class, race, feminism
- Surrogate pregnancy exposes motherhood not as a fact of nature, but as a social fact
- There is also usually an assumption of heterosexual marriage or coupling
- Threatens the natural process of birth - shared process (motherhood as well)
o Shared motherhood
- Belonging of the child - tradition dictates that the mother raises the child that she births
- Sometimes seen as unnatural or abnormal
Father:
- Genitor = sperm donor
- Pater = father (socially defined)