ANTH100 Lecture 13: Kinship

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTH100
• Professor: Gotz Hoeppe

Document Summary

Chapter 13: kinship and other forms of grouping. Kinship is a social network of relatives within which individuals possess certain mutual rights and obligations. In nonindustrial societies, kin groups deal with challenges that families and households cannot handle alone-defense, resource allocation, cooperative labor. In larger and more complex societies, formal political systems take over many of these matters. A descent group is any kin group whose members share a direct line of descent from a real (historical) or fictional common ancestor. Unilineal descent establishes kin group membership exclusively through the male line (patrilineal) or female line (matrilineal). Matrilineal descent does not automatically confer gender authority. There is a close relationship between a culture"s infrastructure and its descent system. Generally, patrilineal descent predominates where male labor is seen as primary, as among pastoralists and agriculturalists. Matrilineal descent predominates mainly among horticulturalists where female subsistence work is vital. Double descent (matrilineal for some purposes, patrilineal for others) is rare.