Page 78 - DSOC402_SOCIOLOGY_OF_KINSHIP_ENGLISH

Sociology of Kinship

Notes

What is a kinship system?
Ans: The kinship system refers to a set of persons recognised as relatives, either,
by virtue of a blood relationship technically called consanguinity, or by
virtue of a marriage relationship, that is through what is called affinity.

Self Assessment

Fill in the Blanks:
1. …………………may be regarded as a branching process, as when two or three founders of
small lineages are represented as brothers or sisters.
2. Classical anthropologist divides descent groups into two fundamental types such as Patri-
lineal and……………………...
3. Both patrilineality and matrilineality are types of …………………….descent.

11.3 The Kinship Network and Social Change
One of the most important areas of social science is the study of the family as the basic social
unit for reproduction, residence and economic life in nearly all societies. But family structures
and family relationships (kinship) do have different forms in different parts of the world.
The basis of the family is biological:
• women produce children
• to do so they have to have sex with men
• usually brothers and sisters/parents and children do not mate with each other, so the regu-
lation of sex means establishing links (marriage) with other groups. There are a few unu-
sual cases in which brothers and sisters did mate with each, notably Egypt under Greek and
Roman rule from about 300 BC to 70AD – but it is unusual. (The usual explanation is that
children who grow up together find each other boring and look for other partners.)
• while children are young they are dependent, and it is the mother who does most of the
work of rearing them
• because men are larger and stronger than women, in most historical societies they have
tended to control women’s labor and reproduction
However, in addition to these biological factors, there are also problems related to property and
how to pass it down between the generations. There are three basic variations:
(a) Most of the property is controlled by men and is passed down from father to son: women
marry men in other groups and so do not inherit property from their fathers. The result is
“patrilineal” systems in which closely related men (fathers, sons, brothers) live together
with their wives and children. Where these men have a common ancestor they are some-
times called a “lineage”. This kind of system is found in China, the middle east and many
parts of Africa. It is particularly found among pastoral societies where men do most of
the work of raising the large animals, which involves moving around. This is difficult for
women looking after children. Most pastoral societies are patrilineal becaue men tend to
leave their livestock to their brothers or sons.
(b) The property is divided more evenly between men and women on the death of their par-
ents, so that women control some property of their own. These are called “bilateral” or
“cognatic” kinship systems, and are typical of Europe, though they are also found in some

72 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY