Marriage, Family, Kinship

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Marriage, Family, Kinship
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MAKING US, MAKING THEM Incest taboo

• The prohibition of sexual relations between
  specified individuals, usually parent-child and
  sibling relations at a minimum
• All cultures have an incest taboo
• The absence of a rule among other primates
  suggests perhaps an adaptive response for humans

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Social Explanation Levi-Strauss

• Incest promotes exogamy
• Seeking a mate outside ones own group
• Seeking others to become us
• Denotes them vs. us
• Establishes maintains alliances
• Promotes genetic admixture variation
• Preserves family roles
• Guards against socially destructive conflict

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The Incest Taboo The Threshold of Culture

• Levi-Strauss the incest taboo is in origin
  neither purely cultural nor purely natural, nor
  is a composite mixture of elements from both
  nature and culture. It is the fundamental step
  because of which, by which, but above all in
  which, the transition from nature to culture is
  accomplished.
• It brings about and is in itself the advent of a
  new order.

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Incest taboo, Exogamy, Endogamy

• Exogamy seeking people to have sexual relations
  outside ones group
• Seeking others to become us
• Endogamy mating or marriage within a group to
  which one belongs
• Most societies are endogamous groups
• Exogamy incest imply endogamy
• 3 basic models for (structures which lie
  underneath)

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Endogamy Implies Exogamy

• Exogamy links groups together
• Endogamy keeps groups apart
• Rules of endogamy help maintain social, economic,
  political distinctions preserve limitations
  to the access of wealth resources

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Marriage, Family, Kinship

• Marriage
• rules of sexual access
• form of exchange establishes alliances
• accords a child born to the woman under
  circumstances not prohibited by the rules of the
  relationship full birth-status rights common to
  normal members of his society or social stratum.
• family -- smallest, organized unit of kin and
  non-kin who interact daily, providing for the
  domestic needs of children and ensuring their
  survival
• descent group -- who one is related to beyond
  marriage
• Alliance -- relations between descent groups

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Marriage and the Family
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Marriage

• A relationship between one or more men (male or
  female) and one or more women (female or male)
  recognized by society as having a continuing
  claim to the right of access to one another
• All societies have marriage
• About the social control of sexuality

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Or Marriage.

• Marriage is a relationship established between a
  woman and one or more persons which provides that
  a child born to the woman under circumstances not
  prohibited by the rules of the relationship, is
  accorded full birth-status rights common to
  normal members of his society or social stratum.

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Forms of Marriage

• Monogamy marriage between two partners
• Polygamy plural marriage an individual has
  more than one spouse
• Polygyny one man many wives
• Polyandry one woman many husbands
• No marriage
• Serial monogamy preferred practice in the West?

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Forms of Marriage

• Levirate sororate
• Levirate a widow marries dead husbands brother
• Sororate a widower marries dead wifes sister
• Keeps inheritance within the same group

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Forms of Marriage

• Cousin marriage
• Patrilateral parallel-cousin marriage marriage
  of a man to his fathers brothers daughter
• Or of a woman to her fathers brothers son
• Preferred form in Bali
• Hint parallel refers to sex linking relative
• Property is retained in the male line of descent
• Often related to more property ownership

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Forms of Marriage

• Cousin marriage
• Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage
• Marriage of a woman to her fathers sisters son
• Or of a man to his mothers brothers daughter
• Less about property than about ties of solidarity
  between groups

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Levi-Strauss on Marriage as Exchange

• Levi-Strauss "It's not the man that marries the
  maid, but field marries field, vineyard marries
  vineyard, cattle marries cattle
• a set of rights the couple their families
  obtain over one another, including rights to the
  couple's children

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Marriage and wealth exchange

• Bridewealth
• payment to wife and/or wifes family
• pays for loss of daughter
• Dowry
• payment to husband and/or husband family
• correlated to low women gender status
• pays for adding women to descent group

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buying selling of commodities is a one time
event

• bridewealth establishes an enduring bundle of
  reciprocal rights obligations between relatives
  of the couple that will last as long as the
  marriage lasts

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MARRIAGE EXCHANGES

• marriage means alliances
• people don't just take a spouse they assume
  obligations to a group of in-laws
• often more a relationship between groups than one
  between individuals-marriage involves

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Levi-Strauss and women as objects of exchange

• marriage systems - a form of exchange - "that as
  soon as I am forbidden a woman, she thereby
  becomes available to another man, and somewhere
  else a man renounces a woman who thereby becomes
  available to me." (Levi-Strauss51)
• wife givers wife takers
• nevertheless, as exchange marriage implies
  reciprocity obligations assumed in creation
  maintenance of alliances

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Marriage and the Family

• Variation in forms of marriage related to
  variations in forms of family
• Nuclear family parents and children
• Extended family 3 or more generations
• Joint family or collateral household siblings,
  their spouses and children
• Forms of family change over time, over life cycle

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Forms of Family Subsistence

• Forager band group of nuclear families
• Industrial economy also nuclear family
• Neither foragers nor industrial societies tied to
  the land
• Emphasis on mobility, small-size,
  self-sufficiency
• Cultivators and Horticulturalists extended,
  joint, collateral households
• Extended family associated with sedentary
  cultivation, herding private property
• Keeps property in family
• Provides needed labor

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Family in Canada, Europe, US

• A unit bounded biologically legally
• Associated with property
• Economic self sufficiency
• Associated with emotional life
• Associated with a space inside a home
• Emerges in complex state-governed societies
• Keep neighbors out compared to others that add
  children neighbors as kin

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Post-Marital Residence Patterns

• Patrilocal
• Matrilocal
• Bi-local
• Neolocal
• Avunculocal living with mothers brother or
  fathers sister
• Virilocal living with husbands relatives
  (patrilineal descent)
• Uxorilocal living with wifes relatives
  (matrilineal descent)

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Post-Marital Residence Patterns

• 70 of all societies patrilocal
• Matrifocal households women headed households
  with no permanently resident husband-father
• Patrifocal 3 men and a baby?
• Post-marital residence patterns change during
  life cycle of marriage, over time

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Kinship Patterns

• Relations of descent (endogamy)
• Consanguineal relationships (sanguine red)
• Relations of blood
• Relations of alliance (exogamy)
• Affinal relationships (affinity)
• Through marriage (in-laws)

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Kinship Descent

• For many societies kinship descent lines are
  the main way people organize themselves
• The relationships we establish with others and
  within our biological group and outside our group
  are coded in kin terms

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kin terms

• sometimes mark specific relationships, sometimes
  lump together several genealogical relations
• lineal relatives - ancestor, descendent on direct
  line of descent to or from ego
• collateral kin - all other biological kin,
  siblings, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles
• affines - relatives by marriage

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Relationships are traced through a central
individual labelled EGO.
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kinship diagram
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Descent

• Unilineal Kinship and Descent
• unilineal descent groups, either patrilineages or
  matrilineages according to the prevailing descent
  rule
• over twice the number of descent system (70 of
  all groups considered in one sample) follow
  unilineal kinship rules (Murdock 194959
• In many societies unilineal descent groups assume
  important corporate functions such as land
  ownership, political representation and mutual
  aid and support

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Unilineal Descent

• Patrilineal systems are much more common than
  matrilineal ones, occurring at roughly twice the
  incidence
• the "tribes" of Israel were patrilineages and
  ancient Greek and Roman family organization.
• Matrilineal systems are less frequent but are
  still ethnographically important.
• West African Ashanti kingdom developed within a
  matrilineal society
• heir to the throne is not the king's
  (Asantehene's) own child but his sister's son
• Early British emissaries to Ashanti learned about
  this family system the hard way
• supported several of the Asantehene's sons to be
  educated in England only to realize that the
  allies they had so carefully cultivated were not
  in line to assume the throne.

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Matrilineal and Patrilineal Kin

• Patrilineal , or agnatic, relatives are
  identified by tracing descent exclusively through
  males from a founding male ancestor.
• Matrilineal , or uterine, relatives are
  identified by tracing descent exclusively through
  females from a founding female ancestor.

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Patrilineage -- male ego
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Patrilineage female ego
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cross relatives

• kin on each side, who are neither patrilineal or
  matrilineal
• cross cousins are of particular importance,
  especially for some marriage systems
• 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).

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Dual Descent or Ambilineal Descent
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Bilateral Descent

• Also called cognatic descent
• Canada, US, Europe
• ego sees his or her relatives on both sides as
  being of equal closeness relevance
• the degree of closeness is based on generational
  distance separating the individuals (our system)

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Bilateral Kindred

• a person's bilateral set of relatives who may be
  called upon for some purpose
• no two persons belong exactly to the same kin
  group
• ego centered with kindred of close relatives
  spreading out on both your mother's and father's
  sides
• connected only because of you

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Strengths of Bilateral System

• Overlapping membership
• Widely extended, can form broad networks
• Flexible
• Useful for groups that do not live in same place
• Useful when valued resources are limited

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Structures of Descent

• lineages (patri matri) - common ancestor
• clan several lineages common ancestor, usually
  large groups that are associated with mythical
  ancestors
• phratry - unilineal descent group composed of a
  number of supposedly related clans
• moieties - means half, when an entire society is
  divided into 2 unilineal descent groups
• many societies have 2 or more types of descent
  groups in various combinations
• some have lineages clans, others may have clans
  phrateries but no lineages

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Lineage

• a corporate descent group whose members trace
  their genealogical links to a common ancestor
• corporate shares resources in common
• own property
• organize labour
• assign status
• regulate relations with other groups
• endures beyond individual members

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Clan

• a non-corporate descent group whose members claim
  descent from a common ancestor without knowing
  the genealogical inks to that ancestor
• often produced through fission of lineage into
  newer, smaller lineage

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characteristics of the clan

• greater genealogical depth than lineage
• lacks residential unity (in contrast to lineage)
• a ceremonial unit that meets on special occasions
• handle important integrative functions
• may regulate marriage outside clan

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clans are often dependent on symbols as
integrative feature

• totem a symbol of a clans mythical origin that
  reinforces clan members common descent
• totem from Ojibwa ototeman he is a relative of
  mine

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totemism defined by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown

• a set of customs and beliefs by which there is
  set up a special system of relations between the
  society and the plants, animals, and other
  natural objects that are important in the social
  life
• among the Haida of west coast Canada
• Bear, Killer Whale, Cannibal Spirit, Salmon, and
  Beaver

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Phratries and Moieties

• less common forms of descent groups
• phratry a unilineal descent group composed of at
  least two clans that supposedly share a common
  ancestry, whether they do or not
• if a society is broken into only two large groups
  (clan or phratry), each group is referred to as a
  MOIETY
• moieties, phratries, clans and lineages
• from most inclusive to the least inclusive
• all typically associated with exogamy

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Functions of Kinship and Descent

• function as primary groups
• institutions which normally recruit personnel by
  the criterion of inherited status
• group's unity and character reflect bonds formed
  upon common origin and identity and which address
  the general welfare of the membership rather than
  a specific and intentionally defined objective
• type of functions varies crossculturally
• include the major activities of economic,
  political, and religious life
• In a general sense, the kinship unit often
  constitutes a corporate group which becomes a
  legal entity in itself and is assigned collective
  rights on behalf of its members and their estates