Kingsborough Community College
Importance of Kinship in cultural anthropology
Student: Amulang Mantsynov
Professor: Igor Pashkovskiy
Kinship has traditionally been one of the key topics in social and cultural anthropology. There are two primary reasons for this. First, although not all communities are constituted on the basis of kinship, all humans have a kinship as individuals and are related to other individuals through it. Second, for the sorts of “tribal,” classless, economically unspecialized societies that anthropologists have mostly — though no longer exclusively — studied, kinship has appeared to be the main or even sole form of social organization. These observations led various theoretical approaches, especially the schools of functionalism and structuralism within social anthropology, to focusing on how social groups are formed. They got interested in studying of how individuals are related to one another through kinship, and what kinds of mutual rights and duties they have as a result. (R. Parkin. Kinship)
Parkin (2012) also points out that unlike the functionalists and structuralists, cultural anthropologists, elected to focus more greatly on the symbolic rather than socio-practical aspects of kinship. They are interested in the meanings attached to being a particular sort of relative. They also study how symbols of and perspectives on an individual, the body, and gender tell kinship ideas and practices. In broad terms, a study of kingship from the symbolic standpoint has prevailed in America since the beginning of the twentieth century and periodically has been reinvented and by the 1970s become more influential in world anthropology, especially in its poststructuralist phase. The field of study of a kinship can be divided into three major categories: descent (that is, relations between generations); affinity (marriage); and siblingship. However, the siblingship hasn't been studied as widely as the first two categories. (R. Parkin. Kinship).
By the definition provided in the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, kinship is "a relation between two or more persons that is based on common ancestry (descent) or marriage (affinity)." In his work
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.
In society today, the discipline of anthropology has made a tremendous shift from the practices it employed years ago. Anthropologists of today have a very different focus from their predecessors, who would focus on relating problems of distant peoples to the Western world. In more modern times, their goal has become much more local, in focusing on human problems and issues within the societies they live.
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.
While Barker focuses on clans in Papua New Guinea and Hedican on Scottish clans they both come to the same result, clans are hard to gain consistent information on and much of their histories are muddled, complicated, and contradictory specifically with the whom is related to who debacle and the ‘true’ back story/ symbols accompanying each clan. Both Authors also explore the kinship terms of Papua and how it differs from the Westerner way of labelling family members (cousin being the broadest Westerner term) compared to the flexible descent groups and hazy distinction that separates immediate and extended family in the villages of Papua New
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.
It was these systems of kinship which determined who, and for which, members of the clan were responsible. In a society in which excess and wealth were not valued, in fact discouraged, this was a method of survival and insuran ce. These kin relationships were the foundation for all forms of reciprocity within the clan. For example, when a larger animal was caught in the hunt, it was pre-determined, depending on who captured the animal, who would receive which parts of the animal (Edwards 2005, p. 49). Sharing and reciprocity was not a friendly gesture within Aboriginal communities, it was an obligation which was to be taken seriously. It was a method for Aboriginal people to survive in a sometimes harsh and unforgiving land, which took the lives of many settlers.
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.
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)
Aboriginal relationships are governed by a complex and intricate system of rules, known as “the classificatory system of kinship, and is essential to physical, psychological and emotional survival in traditional Aboriginal society” (Fryer-Smith, 2008, p. 47). It organizes social and economic relationships, all of which are of “vital importance” in Aboriginal societies (Edwards, 1998, p. 85).
Kinship is usually much more of a cohesive social force in non-Western societies. Kin group members internalize a corporate identity - the family is viewed as an extension of the self. Often large, pyramid-shaped kin groups - usually descendants of one man (or, rarely, woman) and their dependents - serve to organize political, military, economic, and religious activities.
In traditional Aboriginal society inter-personal relationships are governed by a Complex system of rules, known as the classificatory system of kinship. The kinship system
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
Put simply, the basis of the kinship system meant that aboriginals regarded their entire group as
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
Kinship is how cultures define relationships with people who they think of as family. All