The publication of his book marked the beginning of kinship studies in anthropology.įigure 11.2 (left) Lewis Henry Morgan described the diversity of kinship structures and terms across cultures. In Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871), he defined three of the primary kinship systems that we still recognize today, identifying each with either descriptive kinship terms, such as “mother’s sister’s son,” or classificatory terms, which group diverse relationships under a single term, such as “cousin.” Although Morgan used different names, today we know these three systems as lineal kinship, bifurcate merging kinship, and generational kinship. Intrigued by the cultural diversity of the Haudenosaunee living in upstate New York, Morgan began to document differences in kinship terminology between cultural groups, based on historical accounts and surveys from missionaries working in other geographic locations. One of the earliest studies of kinship was completed by Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), an amateur American anthropologist, in the mid-nineteenth century. It provides deep insights into human relationships and alliances, including those who can and cannot marry, mechanisms that are used to create families, and even the ways social and economic resources are dispersed within a group. The study of kinship is central to anthropology. These individuals, whether or not they have a specific genetic relationship to us, are those we refer to using family terms of reference-my mother, my son, my aunt. Otherwise, across history and cultures, including within our own society today, family are those we live with, rely on, and love. This form of knowledge is detected through specialized DNA testing and typically has little meaning in our day-to-day lives except within legal and economic contexts where paternity or maternity may be in question. Biological relatedness is determined at the genetic level. One interesting and very familiar example of the sociocultural dimension of kinship is the practice of adoption, through which those who have no necessary genetic relationship to one another are considered both legally and culturally to be family. Biology relies on genetics, but kinship is determined by culture. It is culture-not biology-that defines for us whom our closest relatives are. The common assumptions that kinship is static and created by biological relationships reveal the strength of sociocultural constructs in our lives. Depending on the way kinship is determined, two individuals who would call each other cousins in one cultural group may not even consider themselves to be related in another group. Although kinship, like gender and age, is a universal concept in human societies (meaning that all societies have some means of defining kinship), the specific “rules” about who is related, and how closely, vary widely. Through kinship systems, humans create meaning by interpreting social and biological relationships. Kinship is also a sociocultural construction, one that creates a network of social and biological relationships between individuals. Such norms and behaviors create categories and rules according to social criteria (not biological truths) and thus vary across cultures. Social scientists commonly refer to social norms and behaviors-for example, as explored in Chapter 1, the ways that individuals are assigned to racial categories and what these categories mean about an individual’s place within that society-as sociocultural constructions.
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