Anthropology Kinship Analysis

Kinship is a unique and complex system of belonging and responsibility in Indigenous culture that incorporates not only the family but also relationships surrounding a totem. This represents personal and group connection to ancestral beings of the land.

There are a majority of people who don’t know what Kinship is or how long it has been around. Kinship families are everywhere. Infact, twenty seven states have laws that encourage the placement with a

Kinship is defined through your descent group/ people who you are related to. In the film, Dadi’s family is shown to be related through an affine kinship. The relationships that are discussed in the film are all based on marriage. Dada, Dadi, the sons and her daughters-in-law are part of the family through marriage. The family is patrilocal extended family.

Kinship is when a child is cared for by either close family friends or relatives. This is usually short-term; however it can become long term. Kinship is preferred for children who have been separated from parents because it sustains the Childs connections with their families.

Everyone has a family of some kind. It may be the parents and siblings they were born with, or it could be the gang of six biologically unrelated elite drivers with an affinity for robbing banks at high speeds from Fast and the Furious. Ultimately, family is what people make of it, and it can be the ‘traditional’ two parents, one brother, one sister, and a dog named Spot, or it could be a woman and the kid she was left with. The term ‘traditional family' refers to the socially expected behaviors of each given role (for example, a mother taking her kid to the doctor,) in the family. Members of a traditional family in this case are either maritally or biologically related. Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees has many characters who would consider themselves, or be considered, part of different families. The Bean Trees addresses and deals with the fact that nontraditional families can be just as strong as what society has defined as a ‘traditional’ family.

Kinship is the cornerstone for how people within a society relate to others and race lineages. Many societies trace their lineage through the father, which is called patrilineal, or through the mother which is called matrilineal. The Iroquois nation traced their kinship through the matrilineal decent lines. Kinship directly relates to how family groups think, act and live along side each other. The culture of the Iroquois can also be compared to how many American families relate to one another as well.

In the study of agronomy, it is the basic understanding that the root is the most important component of any plant. In the dictionary, the word root is defined as the part of the plant that latches to the ground for support, growth, and nutrition. Now any reader maybe wondering where my mind is wondering to, when I start a paper with such an obvious fact. However, in this case it is not just a fact, it is an analogy for something much deeper. In the African American culture, it is not uncommon to refer to someone as a “fictive kin”. Fictive kin is a term dubbed for someone who is either not related or indirectivity related to oneself. So, in other terms if the individual is not either a direct sibling, guardian, uncle, aunt, grandparent, or cousin, but they have left a positive impact on oneself they are considered fictive kin. This term was formed back in the slave trafficking days, when families where torn apart, and individuals were forced to form bonds with individuals who were not directly related to them. In today’s world, this word is still popular in this demographic, but has morphed in meaning and expanded into other living segments as well. Even though, I am not African American, I still share a similar experience of dubbing someone I love my fictive kin.

The kinship is a system that enables people to know precisely where they stand in relation to every person and a group. It is the heart of Aboriginal culture, and controls all facets of social behaviours. The Kinship system has been around for tens of thousands of years and is still used today. (Nations, clans, family groups, 2016). It is a system that determines how people interact with others and how people become related. Thus, controls who can get married and who supports who. Because there are over 500 Aboriginal nations across Australia the system is helpful because it simplifies the different clans and groups that share common kinship and language. (Nations, clans, family groups, 2016)

Additionally, the family of choice consists of people one feels as obligated to as if one was of blood relation. These self-constructed families are no less real or less meaningful than conventional families. In fact, they are known as one’s fictive kin. The bond of this type of family can be formed through several ways. Natalie writes, “for some people, voluntary kinship filled a void left by death or estrangement from biological family, while for others the relationships were supplemental or temporary.” It can be a friendship that turns into a family or a group that one relates to as a family. Either way, the fictive kin family is a blossoming family type. Increasingly, people refer to this as their second family. Some choose it to be their first family when they feel

Kinships are relationships within a family, whether they are biological or non-biological. I have different experiences with my races; the experiences can be good and bad for both. Race shapes a family and their relationships because it presents how everyone within the family can share something, it can also represent the diversity within America and how people can be treated based on one’s appearances. My father’s side of the family is Caucasian.

Lucinda Ramberg has reignite the kinship studies through Given to the Goddess which had declined and got less attention from anthropologists in the last two decades. Kinship as a subdiscipline became increasingly marginal to anthropology partly because its debate had been removed from the actual lived experiences of kinship (Carsten, 2013). They often failed to apprehend what made kinship such an important aspect of the experiences of those whose lives were being described. Furthermore, as Ramberg indicates in her book, “anthropological accounts of kinship have all centered their analyses of human relatedness on the conjugal pair” (12) and excluded other categories which do not follow this assumption.

The kinship system is based on the concept of "equivalence of same-sex siblings". Two siblings of the same sex are considered essentially the same and thus interchangeable. For example, if a man has

A family can be defined in many different ways and almost every person has their own view and definition of families. Some may define it as simply as the blood relatives they have grown up with, living in the same home for most of their life. Whereas others, including myself, have a much more in depth or personable definition. No matter the culture or living situation, my definition of a family is the people I know will be there for me whenever I need them to be. This includes not only my actual blood related siblings, parents, grandparents and cousins but also my best friends and even some of my parents’ close friends that I have known the majority of my life. Family should not be defined by blood. I have an aunt that was adopted which means she is not blood related, but I still fully consider her family, I believe this has an impact on my own definition of a family. Television today has changed the views and stereotypes on American Families. Stereotypes include the family having a mother and father living in the same home where the mother is a stay at home mom, while the father makes a living for the family. Also the family is usually Caucasian and considered wealthy, living in the suburbs. The shows such as Full House, Good Luck Charlie Keeping Up With The Kardashians have had a major impact on how societies view families in this day and age because of the way they follow these American Stereotypes.

Kinship is how cultures define relationships with people who they think of as family. All

As someone who did not grow up with a typical family, I claim most of my close friends as “family” members. Every year we get together for birthdays, vacations and celebrate some holidays together. Some of my close friends are even closer than my actual family. One friend that I grew up with since the 7th grade is practically a brother to me, and even though I have and love my own mom, to this day I call his mother “mom” as well. I do believe that family is based on bonds and emotional ties, not just by blood and marriage. Our textbook defines “fictive kin as close relations with people we consider ‘like family’ but who are not related to us by blood or marriage (p.352)”. This sociological concept helps me realize that my own situation of who and what I consider family is more common than I may have thought before.