ANTH 207 Chapter Notes - Chapter Chapter 8: Matriarchy, Unilineality, Kinship Terminology
16 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Kinship- the various systems of social organization that societies have constructed on principles derived from the universal human experiences of mating, birth, and nurturance. Kinship is not the same thing as biology. Mating is not the same thing as marriage- although marriage does encourage it. All births do not constitute valid links of descent. Not all acts of nurturance are recognized as adoption. Mating, birth, and nurturance are ambiguous human experiences, and culturally constructed systems of kinship try to remove some of that ambiguity by paying selective attention to some aspects of these phenomena while downplaying or ignoring others. Every kinship system therefore emphasizes certain aspects of human reproductive experience and culturally constructs its own theory of human nature, defining how people develop from infants into mature social beings. Kinship is an idiom: a selective interpretation of the common human experiences of mating, birth, and nurturance.
