Kinship, Marriage, Gender, Family

Kinship and Gender

- Gender and Kinship reflect the most basic principles of organizing individuals into
social groups, roles in society.
- Kinship and Gender Distinctions are Universal - Some form of organization based
perceived sexual differences and concepts of family/relatedness are present in every
human society.
- Nature .v.s. Nature: to what extent are kinship/gender divisions based on biology or
constructed culturally?
- All cultures have their own unique rules to guide gender, kinship relations, family
structure, residence patters and marriage.
What is Kinship
- refers to relatedness, usually either by descent or by marriage (affinity).
- way that social groups categorize on the basis of perceived relatedness.
- do not necessarily assume any biological relationship between individuals, rather
just close social associations.
- E.G. Malinowski Trobriand conceptions of fatherhood
- E.G. Fictive Kin
Understanding Kinship: The Kinship Diagram
- Kinship diagrams: the main tool for charting kinship relations.
-various symbols used to produce a kinship diagram
- Relationships in kinship diagrams are traced through a central individual labeled EGO.
Kin Types v.s. Kin Terms
- Kin types refer to the basic uncategorized relationships that anthropologist use to
describe the actual contents of kinship categories such as a mother, father, mother's
brother, mother's sister.
They are supposedly culture free, etic components.
Primary components and letter symbols
Mother [M], Father [F], Sister [Z], Brother [B], Daughter [D], Son [S], Husband [H],
Wife [W]
Examples of Compound Strings
Mother's sister [MZ], Mother's sister's daughter [MZD], Sister's son [ZS], Fathers
brother [FB], Fathers sisters daughter [FZD], Fathers sisters son [FZS]
Kin terms
- Kin terms constitute a culture's kinship vocabulary, a catalog of the names that are
assigned to relatives, e.g., father, mother, uncle, grandson.
- Different societies use different labels to designate their kin.
- Beyond mere labeling, kin terms group relatives into completely different categories
and reflect how kin relations are conceptualized in a society
Classifying Kinship Systems

- Kin terms are fundamentally arbitrary categories,

- Theoretically different cultures could group their relatives into an widely infinite
number of classifications and categories.
- Not the case. Relatively small number of systems. How many?
Anthropologists have observed that almost every culture has constructed a system of
terms that conforms to one of six widely occurring basic patterns.
6 Systems of Kinship
1. Sudanese
2. Hawaiian
3. Eskimo
4. Iroquois
5. Omaha
6. Crow
Sudanese Kin Terms
The Sudanese system is completely descriptive and assigned a unique kin term to each
distinct relative. E.G. Latin, Turkish, Old English
Hawaiian Kin Terms
The Hawaiian system is the least descriptive and merges many different relatives into a
small number of categories. Ego distinguishes between relatives only on the basis of sex
and generation.
Eskimo Kin terms
The Eskimo system is bilateral and emphasizes differences in kinship distance. Nuclear
family members are assigned unique labels that are not extended to other relatives,
whereas more distant relatives are grouped together on the basis of degree. E.G. English
Marriage
- Social institution that provides certain rights and creates social bonds.
- Legal father and legal mother to children
- Monopoly of sexual access
- Rights to the labor of the other
- Rights over the others property
- Establish a joint fund of property for children
- Establish a socially significant relationship of affinity between spouses and relatives
- Outside industrial societies, marriage often is more a relationship between groups than
one between individuals
- Romantic love may exist, but is often subordinated to priorities of larger family/descent
group
- No single definition of marriage accounts for cross-cultural diversity in marriages
- Some societies recognize various kinds of same-sex marriages, symbolic and social
relationships
Marriage as Social Alliance

- Several specific cultural practices highlight the importance of marriage as an alliance

between groups
- Sororate: widower marries one of his deceased wifes sisters (or another woman from
her group if a sister is not available)
- Levirate: widow marries one of her deceased husbands brothers
- Cross-Cousin Marriage: Extensive, stable, and permanent transgenerational ties
among allies can be established when EGO marries opposite sex cousin of fathers sister
or mothers brother.
Marriage as Exchange
- Bridewealth: customary gift before, at, or after the marriage from the husband and his
kin to the wife and her kin
Also called progeny price: makes children
full members of her husbands descent group
Common in patrilineal groups
- Dowry: marital exchange in which wifes group provides substantial gifts to husbands
family
- Correlates with relatively low female status
- Much less common than bridewealth
Same-Sex Marriage
Same-Sex Marriage among the Nuer of Sudan
Woman may marry a woman if father has no sons
Daughter will stand as a son and take a wife
Daughter becomes socially recognized husband of another woman.
Marriage is symbolic and social rather than sexual.
Serves social function of extending the patrilineage (the fathers line).
Who to marry? Exogamy, Endogamy
- Exogamy: practice of seeking spouse outside one's own group
- Forces people to create and maintain a wide social network
- Endogamy: mating or marriage within group to which one belongs
- Most cultures are endogamous units
- Classes and ethnic groups within society may be quasi-endogamous
- Most cultures have rules of both Exogamy and Endogamy
E.G. People must marry outside their immediate family (exogamy) to avoid incest, but
within their own cultural or ethnic group (endogamy) to maintain cultural purity.
Exogamy: the Incest Taboo
- Incest: sexual relations with a close relative
- Incest taboo within the nuclear family is a cultural universal
- Societies vary in the range and definition of relatives who are considered prohibited sex
and marriage partners.
Plural Marriage
Polygyny: a man having more than one wife

Even when polygyny encouraged, most people tend to be monogamous

Reasons for polygyny:
Men marrying later than women
Inheritance of widow from a brother
Increase prestige or household productivity
Infertile wife
- Ployandry: a woman has more than one husband
Franternal Polyandry: woman married to group of brothers
Very rare, almost exclusively in South Asia (Tibet, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka)
Effective strategy when resources are scarce
Expanded polyandrous households allow brothers to pool resources
Restricts number of wives and heirs, so land transmitted with minimal fragmentation
Gender and The Family
Sex v.s. Gender
Human sex-gender roles and sexuality influenced by biological predispositions (nature)
and environment (nurture)
Sexual dimorphism: differences in male and female biology besides breasts and genitalia
(facial hair, shoulder width, hips, height strength, endurance, longevity etc)
Sex differences are biological
Gender refers to cultural construction of male and female characteristics and behavioral
norms
Gender, Norms, and Power
Gender roles: tasks and activities that a culture assigns to the sexes
Gender stereotypes: oversimplified, strongly held ideas about characteristics of males and
females
Gender stratification: unequal distribution of rewards between men and women,
reflecting their different positions in a social hierarchy
Gender norms/stereotypes can reinforce gender stratification/inequality
Gender Cross Culturally
Margaret Mead (1901-1978)
Her reports about the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian
traditional cultures amply informed the 1960s sexual revolution in North America.
Coming of Age in Samoa
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
Margaret Mead: Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
Comparative study revealed a wide range of contrasting gender roles
Women, Culture and Power
Position and power of women in a culture tends to correlate to descent, household
structure, and mode of production.
- In patrilineal, patrilocal societies women tend to have less power than men
Male relatives live together and transfer wealth to male sons

- In matrilineal, matrilocal societies, women tend to have relatively high status

Male relatives separated into their wives households, and family resources transferred
through female line.
- Womens status tends to be higher in cultures where they play a large role in economic
production where there is less inequality in the division of labour.
Patriarchy v.s. Matriarchy
- Do matriarchies exist?
- Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously
matriarchal.
- Reluctance to accept the existence of matriarchies might be based on a specific,
culturally biased notion of how to define 'matriarchy':
- In a patriarchy 'men rule over women', a matriarchy has frequently been conceptualized
as 'women ruling over men',
According to some anthropologists, matriarchies exist, but not as mirror images of
patriarchies maybe more egalitarian?
Recurrent Gender Patterns
Female labor predominates in domestic activities and child care
Women tend to be main caregivers of child care in most societies, but men often play role
Differences in male and female reproductive strategies
Women work to ensure survival of their children by establishing close bond with each
baby and having a reliable mate
Beyond the male/Female Dichotomy
- Gender socially constructed, and societies may recognize more than two genders
- transgender, intersex, third gender, and transexual
- E.G.s Eunuch, Hijras (India), sworn virgins (Balkans), Berdache/Two Spirit (North
America), Fakaleitis (Tonga), mahu (Hawaii)
- Certain social requirements require individuals to switch or change genders.
Transgender
- Individuals may or may not contrast biologically with ordinary males and females.
- Also includes people whos gender identity has no apparent biological roots social-cultural determination not biology
- Sense of self contradicts assigned biology at birth and/or its associated gender norms.
- Fear and ignorance fuels discrimination
Family: group of people considered to be related in some way (birth, marriage,
adoption)
- Modern industrial communities family structures weakened by dominance of market
economy.
- Nuclear family household is still the fundamental institution responsible for rearing
children and organizing consumption.
- In nonindustrial contexts, kinship units have a much wider array of functions.
- Often serve as basic units of production, political representation, religious bodies for the
worship of spiritual beings, who are considered members of the kin-group

Family Types
- Nuclear family: parents and children may or may not be residentially based
- Extended family: includes three or more generations (grandparents, parents, children)
- Collateral family: includes
siblings and their spouses and children
Modern Family
Nuclear family only well-defined kin group for many North Americans
Nuclear Families decreased from 40% (1970) to 21% (2009).
Divorce rate increase from 23% (1950) to 49% (2007)
Percentage of single parent families and non-family households (women or men living
alone) is increasing. see chart 7.1 in text
Overall family and household size is decreasing in both Canada and the U.S. (Table 7.3 ).
Single parent Households