- "Kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies."
The system of social relationships that governs family and kinship ties, often including rules of descent, inheritance, and marriage.
Terminology: Understanding the terminology used in kinship studies. The various kinship terms, such as mother, father, siblings, etc.
Genealogy: The study of family lineages and identifying familial relationships between individuals.
Marriage: The societal concept of marriage, as well as cross-cultural differences in marriage practices.
Kinship Systems: The different systems of kinship adopted by various societies around the world, and the underlying principles that guide these systems.
Descent Groups: A social grouping of individuals who are believed to be related through blood or marriage.
Clan and Lineage: The different forms of social organization based on descent, including clans and lineages.
The Nuclear Family: The natural family unit consisting of parents and children.
Extended Family: A family beyond the nuclear family, made up of relatives such as aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins.
Birth Order: The social relevance of birth order in kinship systems.
Kinship Terminology Systems: This refers to the different ways in which people refer to their relatives, and how kinship terminology varies in different cultures.
Rules of Descent: This refers to the social and cultural rules that determine who belongs to a particular kinship group.
Kinship Rituals: Particular practices or ceremonies associated with kinship.
Adoption: The process of legally acquiring and raising a child who is not biologically yours.
Kinship and Power: The influence of kinship on the distribution of power within a society.
Kinship and Migration: The role of kinship in migration patterns and the formation of new families and social networks.
Cross-cultural Comparison: Comparison of kinship systems across cultures, and identifying the similarities and differences.
The Anthropology of Kinship: As a multidisciplinary field, scholars in anthropology and related fields explore various aspects of kinship from different perspectives including social, biological, psychological and cultural.
Consanguinity: This refers to kinship systems based on blood relationships, such as those between parents and their biological children.
Affinity: This refers to kinship systems based on marriage, such as those between spouses and their respective families.
Lineage: This refers to kinship systems that emphasize descent through a single ancestral line, such as father-only or mother-only lineages.
Clan: This refers to kinship systems that emphasize descent through multiple ancestral lines, which can represent a group of related families or communities.
Phratry: This refers to kinship systems that involve two or more clans who are related through a common ancestor or tradition.
Composite: This refers to kinship systems that combine elements of both affinity and consanguinity, often as a way of reducing the risk of inbreeding.
Bilateral: This refers to kinship systems that recognize and incorporate both maternal and paternal relationships into a family structure.
Unilineal: This refers to kinship systems that emphasize descent through either the maternal or paternal line, but not both.
Ambilineal: This refers to kinship systems that allow for flexibility in choosing which parental lines to claim kinship with, depending on social and cultural factors.
Collateral: This refers to kinship systems that emphasize relationships among siblings and cousins, rather than just between parents and their offspring.
- "Human society is unique, he argues, in that we are 'working with the same raw material as exists in the animal world, but [we] can conceptualize and categorize it to serve social ends.'"
- "These social ends include the socialization of children and the formation of basic economic, political and religious groups."
- "Kinship can refer both to the patterns of social relationships themselves, or it can refer to the study of the patterns of social relationships in one or more human cultures."
- "Descent, descent group, lineage, affinity/affine, consanguinity/cognate and fictive kinship."
- "Broadly, kinship patterns may be considered to include people related by both descent – i.e. social relations during development – and by marriage."
- "Human kinship relations through marriage are commonly called 'affinity' in contrast to the relationships that arise in one's group of origin, which may be called one's descent group."
- "In some cultures, kinship relationships may be considered to extend out to people an individual has economic or political relationships with, or other forms of social connections."
- "Within a culture, some descent groups may be considered to lead back to gods or animal ancestors (totems)."
- "Kinship terminologies refer to a principle by which individuals or groups of individuals are organized into social groups, roles, categories, and genealogy."
- "Family relations can be represented concretely (mother, brother, grandfather) or abstractly by degrees of relationship (kinship distance)."
- "Degrees of relationship are not identical to heirship or legal succession."
- "Many codes of ethics consider the bond of kinship as creating obligations between the related persons stronger than those between strangers, as in Confucian filial piety."
- "In a more general sense, kinship may refer to a similarity or affinity between entities on the basis of some or all of their characteristics that are under focus."
- "This may be due to a shared ontological origin, a shared historical or cultural connection, or some other perceived shared features that connect the two entities."
- "It can be used in a more diffuse sense as in, for example, the news headline 'Madonna feels kinship with vilified Wallis Simpson', to imply a felt similarity or empathy between two or more entities."
- "In biology, 'kinship' typically refers to the degree of genetic relatedness or the coefficient of relationship between individual members of a species."
- "It may also be used in this specific sense when applied to human relationships, in which case its meaning is closer to consanguinity or genealogy."
- "In biology, "kinship" typically refers to the degree of genetic relatedness or the coefficient of relationship between individual members of a species (e.g. as in kin selection theory)."
- "It may also be used in this specific sense when applied to human relationships, in which case its meaning is closer to consanguinity or genealogy."