1. Chapter 10
Kinship and Descent

2. What Is Kinship?
Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin (biological, cultural, or historical).
Kinship is the most basic principles for organizing individuals into social groups, roles, categories, and genealogy.
One’s kinship status, determines these rights and obligations.
Kinship is especially important in societies where institutions such as a centralized government, a professional military, or financial banks are absent or ineffective.
In modern industrial communities family structures have been weakened by the dominance of the market economy and the provision of state organized social services. However, the nuclear family household is still the fundamental institution responsible for rearing children and organizing consumption. In nonindustrial contexts, kinship units normally have a much wider array of functions. They often serve as basic units of production, political representation and even as religious bodies for the worship of spiritual beings, who are themselves considered members of the kin group.
Anthropologists are interested in the comparative study of kinship for the purposes of discovering universal patterns and the variable forms that they assume in specific societies. We are widely divided as to which, if any, features can be viewed as invariant and why regularities and variations occur. On one side, sociobiologists take a reductionist position and see all family institutions as conforming to a basic plan which reflects human biological and evolutionary necessities. On the other, relativists, such as David Schneider, maintain that kinship has no intrinsic relationship to biology and is unlimited in its possible forms. I will assume a middle ground and maintain that kinship is constructed from a set of categories, groups, relationships, and behaviors based upon culturally determined beliefs and values concerning human biology and reproduction. Accordingly, an underlying common framework is present but is substantially modified by culture and ideology. Furthermore, the variations on the themes are considerably more interesting and instructive than the tenuous universals.
Universal features of kinship systems that have been proposed include the following:
1. A lengthy infant maturation period that requires a major commitment from one and usually both parents to nurture and educate dependent children,
2. The presence of a marital bond that creates an enduring and socially regulated sexual and domestic relationship between two or more people,
3. A division of labor based on gender,
4. A prohibition on intercourse and marriage between close kin, which creates a widely articulated network of relationships between individuals related by marriage.
These postulated universals are subject to extreme ranges of variation which often challenge the validity of any generalizations. For example the extension of kinship ties and the binding of individuals into kinship relationships assumes a basic theory of sex and birth. However, cultures have different views about the "facts" of life and the meaning of marriage, parentage, and birth. The Trobriand Islanders maintain that the sex act has nothing to do with a child's birth, which is the result of impregnation by the mother's ancestral totemic spirit. Accordingly kinship is determined only according to links through females in a matrilineal system. Fathers and people linked through males are technically not relatives at all, although they may assume important social roles and relationship. Similarly, the Yanomamo group people into localized patrilineages, whose members regularly marry into the same groups generation after generation. Therefore a man's wife and mother usually belong to the same lineage, creating a situation where mothers are considered as in-laws (affinal relatives) rather than biological (consanguineous) kin.
An different perspective is taken by long standing Catholic views on consanguinity and affinity. Marriage is seen as a literal union of the husband and wife, who become "one flesh" as a consequence of the wedding sacrament. The resulting network of people linked by marriage become more than mere affines; they are transformed into kin in both spirit and substance. Consequently, canon regulations, impose incest prohibitions are applied to a range of a person's spouse's relatives, which has varied over time but at one period included distant affinal cousins. In addition to this regulation, the Church applies standards of kinship to an individual's baptismal sponsors, or godparents, who are unrelated to the child by birth or marriage but who have entered into kinship through a shared sacrement. Anthropologists term this relationship fictive kinship, but this is an inaccurate designation for Catholic practice, which at one time prohibited marriage not only between godparents and godchildren, but also between a godparent and a sponsored child's parent (i.e. coparents) and between otherwise unrelated godchildren of the same godparents on the basis of shared substance.
Another example of the development of strong ties on the basis of fictive kinship is provided by the "namesake kin" system of the San peoples of the Kalahari desert. They believe that everyone who bares the same name is the descendent of a common ancestor, even when genealogical connections are not documented. Residence rights and incest prohibitions are frequently extended solely on the basis of people's names.

3. Functions of Kinship Groups
Vertical function: provides social continuity by binding together a number of successive generations
Horizontal functions: solidify a society across a single generation typically through marriage.
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.

4. Yoruba Egungun Dancer
The Yoruba of West Africa commemorate family ancestors in the form of masked dancers who become possessed by the spirits of the dead to commune with their descendants.
Image credit: © 1997 by Egba-Egbado Descendants Association. All rights reserved.
For further information visit the Egba-Egbado Descentdants Association Web Site

5. Kinship studies

6. Kinship Diagrams - Basic Elements

7. Kinship Diagram - EGO
Relationships are traced through a central individual labeled the Ego.
The various elements are joined to produce a kinship diagram.

8. Review of Terms Consanguineal kin:
Affinal kin:
Are relatives by blood, as determined by the local socio-cultural system.
Are relatives acquired by marriage either from the:
Family of origination or the
Family of procreation

9. Identify the Ego’s relatives?
Can you identify all of Ego’s relatives below?

10. Lineal & Collateral Kin
Lineal kin: are either direct ancestors or descendants of a particular Ego.
Collateral kin: are composed of Ego’s siblings and their descendants & the siblings lineal kin of ascending generations and their descendants as well.

11. What Are Descent Groups?
A descent group is made up of relatives who live their lives in close proximity to one another.
Have a strong sense of identity.
Often share communally held property
Provide economic assistance to one another.
Engage in mutual civic & religious ceremonies.

12. Functions of Descent Groups
Mechanism for inheriting property & political office.
Provide aid and security to their members.
Repositories of religious tradition, with group solidarity enhanced by worship of a common ancestor.
Control behavior.
Regulate marriages.
Structure primary political units.

13. Descent Systems
Unilineal systems: descent is traced through parents and ancestors of only one sex (i.e mother’s line or father’s line, but not both).
Non-unilineal (Cognatic) systems: descent is traced through either or both parents.
While people of European ancestry are more familiar with cognatic kinship institutions, only 30% of the world's cultures view descent and group membership on this basis. The remaining majority of societies, including India and China, follow unilineal principles (Murdock 1949:59).

14. Unilineal Descent Groups
Matrilineal descent (uterine)
Descent traced exclusively through the female line to establish group membership.
Patrilineal descent (agnatic)
Descent traced exclusively through the male line to establish group membership.
A woman’s children are not included in her patrilineal group.
The tracing of patrilineal descent for a female ego dipicted above glosses over a major difference between two different ways of treating women's kingroup membership and participation in patrilineal societies. In most African systems, female lineage members play important roles, sometimes crucial ones. in the patrilineages into which they were born, even though they normally reside with their husband's family after marriage. (See a discussion of Igbo women's participation in patrilinel descent groups.) In those of Europe and Asia, however, the a woman's natal group membership is much less important after she marries. Wives may even become formally incorpated as members of their husbands' lineages. For example, in ancient Rome, all children were placed under their father's authority through the institution of pater postestas, which gave him wide ranging rights in their persons and property. Upon marriage, at least under the more traditional form of cum manu union, this power was transferred from father to husband, and a wife in essence became adopted into her husband's lineage. (Stone 1997:64-66). The transfer normally included a portion of her father's estate in the form of a dowry that was inherited by her children. As such the property was passed down across patrilineal lines. A similar situation developed within traditional Chinese families, where girls were betrothed an an early age and adopted into their husband's families to be raised by their in-laws. In this situation, a woman's became a member of her husband's lineage by both adoption and marriage. (Wolf 1980: ).
In many societies, unilineal descent groups assume important corporate functions such as land ownership, political representation and mutual aid and support.

15. Matrilateral & Patrilateral Kin
Matrilateral kin (uterine): family members associated through Ego’s mother.
Patrilateral kin (agnatic): family members associated through Ego’s father.
Unlike the patrilateral and matrilateral grouping, these unilineal connections are consistently traced through a single sexed relative. Accordingly there are kin on each side, who are neither patrilineal or matrilineal. These are known as cross relatives. Among the members of this category, cross cousins are of particular importance, especially for some marriage systems we shall discuss. In the above diagram 19, 20, 27, and 28 are Ego's cross cousins while 21, 22, 25, and 26 are his parallel cousins. Cross cousins can be identified as the children of opposite sexed siblings (of a brother and sister) and parallel cousins as the children of same sexed siblings (of two brothers or two sisters).

16. Patrilineal descent Most common unilineal descent group.
A man, his children, his brother’s children, and his son’s children are all members of the same descent group.
Females must marry outside their patrilineages and belongs to her father’s and his brother’s group.
A woman’s children belong to the husband’s lineage rather than her own.
Authority over the children lies with the father or his elder brother.
The Yanomamo are organized into named localized lineage groupings on the basis of patrilineal descent. Lineage groups are quite shallow and small. They seldom extend beyond three adult generations (the descendants of a single great-grandfather) or include as many as 100 members.
Division usually occurs because of disputes between cousins over rights to women who are due to marry into the group in the system of exchange marriage. Ensuing fights lead to internal violence, separation of segments (usually groups of brothers), and relocation to new settlement and farming locations
The newly formed daughter lineages retain no ties with each other and are normally opposed as enemies. Genealogical connections are fogotten with the passing of the generations because of a stipulation forbidding the mention of the names of the dead and, thereby, of any connecting ancestral links (Chagnon 1983).
Lineages function as territorial units, inhabiting a common settlement and normally foster mutual cooperation and support among their members, often focusing on organizing alliances and battles in a cycle of endemic warfare. Their central dynamics are set in motion by their role in the marriage exchange system. They are exogamous and their members consult jointly in the selection of marriage partners for their sons and daughters within the web of marriage exhanges with allied lineage groups.
The marriage system normally acts to construct regular relationship between pairs of lineages who regularly intermarry through a system of bilateral cross cousin marriage. Intermarrying units tend to pair off and exclusively occupy the same village, thereby generating a moiety system. Members from other lineages may also reside in the village and marry within it, but two intermarrying moieties will usually dominate the settlement both numerically and socially. When lineages segment they usually include their closest affines when migrating to a new settlement, thereby reproducing the moiety structure.
Yanomamo lineages may be said to exert a limited range of corporate functions through collective rights to marry off their women and claim wives in exchange within the marriage system. Beyond this, the group does not manage joint assets, such as land, that frequently assume importance in other unilineal societies.
The Yanomamo in fact do practice a system of bilateral cross cousin marriage, based upon two principles:
1. a direct exchange initial marriage pattern, in which two men marry each other's sisters,
2. a perpetuation of exchanges and alliance between the two lineages involved through the inter-marriage of subsequent children, who are doubly related as cross cousins through both fathers and mothers.
The Yanomamo elucidate this marriage system through an additional denotation of the cross-cousin terms. A man's term for his female cross-cousin, suaboya, is also the term for wife, which should probably be considered as its primary meaning. The term for male cross-cousin, soriwa, also denotes brother-in-law, in both senses of the term, since ego's wife's brother will normally be married to ego's sister. In a similar fashion women classifies male cross cousins and husbands within one category, heroya, and female cross cousins and sisters-in-law within another natohiya.
Photo source: YANOMAMO INTERACTIVE CD/ROM
Peter Biella, Napoleon A. Chagnon and Gary Seaman
© 1997 by Harcourt Brace & Company

17. Patrilineal Descent – The Nuer
The Nuer are organized into sub-divisions of clan lineages descended through the male line from a single ancestor. The lineages are a major structural factor for political order. These lineages are significant in the control and distribution of resources, and tend to coalesce with the territorial sections. Marriages must be outside one's own clan, and are made legal by the payment of cattle by the man's clan to the woman's clan, shared among various persons in the clan. The territorial groupings and lineage groupings are more closely aligned for some purposes than for others.

18. Matrilineal Descent
A woman, her siblings, her children, her sister’s children, and her daughters children.
Does not confer public authority on women, but women have more say in decision making than in patrilineal societies.
15% of the unilineal descent groups found among contemporary societies including:
Native Americans (Hopi, Navajo, Cherokee & Iroquois).
Truk & Trobrianders of the Pacific
Bemba, Ashanti, & Yao of Africa.
Hopi mother and child, c Click on image for detail. Photo NAU.PH by Edward S. Curtis, courtesy of Cline Library Special Collections, Northern Arizona University
Common in societies where women perform much of the productive work.

19. White Mountain Apaches & Matrilineal Descent
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.

20. Question
In a/an ___________ descent group, membership is traced either through males or through females but not both.
matrilineal
patrilineal
unilineal
double
ambilineal

21. Answer: C
In a/an unilineal descent group, membership is traced either through males or through females but not both.

22. Question If you are a member of a patrilineal descent group.
descent is traced exclusively through females.
your sisters belong to the same patrilineal descent group that you do.
you are likely to live in a horticultural society.
your brothers belong to the same descent group but your sisters do not.
you do not have a mother.

23. Answer: B
If you are a member of a patrilineal descent group, your sisters belong to the same patrilineal descent group that you do.

24. Organizational Hierarchies of Lineages
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.

25. Types of Unilineal Descent Groups
Moiety
Each group that results from a division of a society into two halves on the basis of descent.
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.

26. Types of Unilineal Descent Groups
Clan
An extended unilineal kinship group, often consisting of several lineages, whose members claim common descent from a remote ancestor, usually legendary or mythological.
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.

27. 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.

28. Lineage Exogamy
Western Marriage
Prohibition Variants
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.
Red circle marks range when first cousin marriage is allowed.
Yellow extension marks range when first cousins marriage is prohibited.

29. 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.
In the highlands of Scotland clans have been important units of social organization.
THE SEVEN CHEROKEE CLANS

30. Totemism
The belief that people are related to particular animals, plants, or natural objects by virtue of descent from common ancestral spirits.
Kwakiutl totem poles and house of Nimpkish Chief Tlah-Co-Glass
The figures carved on Northwest Coast poles generally represent ancestors and supernatural beings that were once encountered by the ancestors of the lineage, who thereby acquired the right to represent them as crests, symbols of their identity, and records of their history.

31. 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.

32. Question
When the membership of a descent group grows too large, ___________ may occur, creating two new, smaller lineages.
fusion
lineal decrease
fission
exogamy
moietization

33. Answer: C
When the membership of a descent group grows too large, fission may occur, creating two new, smaller lineages.

34. Question
Membership in a __________ is determined not by descent from a common ancestor (as in descent groups) but by the fact that they share a living relative (ego).
clan
lineage
phratry
kindred
moiety

35. Answer: D
Membership in a kindred is determined not by descent from a common ancestor (as in descent groups) but by the fact that they share a living relative (ego).

36. Kinship Terminologies
One of the founders of the anthropological relationship research was Lewis Henry Morgan.
The major patterns of kinship systems which Lewis Henry Morgan identified through kinship terminology in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family are:
The Hawaiian system
The Eskimo system
The Iroquois system
Omaha system
Crow system
Sudanese or descriptive system

37. 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.

38. Hawaiian System
Kinship reckoning in which all relatives of the same sex and generation are referred to by the same term.
Polynesian societies throughout the Pacific Ocean are traditionally structured conforming to the Hawaiian system of kinship terminology.

39. 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.