- "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 are based on blood or marriage ties.
Definition of kinship: Kinship refers to the system of social relationships that organize and structure human societies. It encompasses biological, social, and cultural ties that bind people together.
Types of kinship: Different societies have different kinship systems. The most common ones include Eskimo, Hawaiian, Sudanese, Omaha, and Iroquois systems. Each system has its unique way of categorizing and organizing kinship.
Kinship terminology: Kinship terminology is the set of words used to describe relationships within a kinship system. It can be descriptive (e.g., father, mother, brother) or classificatory (e.g., cousin, aunt, uncle) depending on the culture.
Marriage: Marriage is a social institution that establishes a legal and moral union between two individuals. It often involves exchange of goods, services, or offspring and is closely linked to kinship systems.
Family: Family refers to a group of people related by blood, marriage, or adoption. It is the most basic unit of society and serves as a primary socializing and economic unit.
Lineage and descent: Lineage and descent refer to the biological or social ties that connect individuals to their ancestors. Lineage is the direct line of descent from a common ancestor, while descent is the broader network of kinship ties that connect individuals.
Descent groups: Descent groups are social units based on the principles of lineage and descent. They serve as the basis for inheritance, land rights, and political power in many societies.
Kinship roles and obligations: Kinship roles and obligations refer to the social expectations and responsibilities that come with different kinship positions. For example, a father may be expected to provide for his children or a daughter may be expected to care for her aging parents.
Kinship and social organization: Kinship is closely linked to social organization and plays a key role in shaping social hierarchies, power relations, and cultural norms.
Kinship and identity: Kinship is an important source of identity for many individuals and shapes their sense of self and belonging. It can also affect their social status and access to resources.
Eskimo: This is the kinship system used in North America and Western Europe. It is based on a nuclear family structure where there are only two groups of relatives: "blood-related" and "in-laws". People use different terms to address these relatives, such as mother, father, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, and cousin.
Hawaiian: The Hawaiian kinship system is based on eight different combinations of kinship terms, depending on the gender, generation, and distance of the relative. It has separate terms for mother, father, and their siblings, as well as separate terms for the parents' uncles and aunts.
Iroquois: This kind of kinship system is common in North America and is based on a set of kinship terms that reflect a standard nuclear family, plus some additional terms to account for cross-cousin marriage. The Iroquois system also includes a gender distinction between parallel and cross-cousins.
Sudanese: The Sudanese kinship system is used in Africa and is based on the idea of extended family or "clans." It uses separate terms for each category of relatives, such as father, mother, father's brother, father's sister, etc. This system creates a complex kinship structure with many intricacies, often subdivided into smaller groups.
Omaha: The Omaha kinship system, common in Asia and Africa, is based on a structure that emphasizes gender distinctions and generations. It has separate terms for different types of same-sex siblings, for one's father's brothers, and for one's father's sisters.
Crow: This system is very similar to Omaha, but the terms for gender distinctions are reversed. It is common among the Native American Crow people.
Dravidian: The Dravidian kinship system is used in India and emphasizes the role of the mother's brother as a significant figure. It includes nine different terms to denote various relatives.
Tibetan: The Tibetan kinship system gives great importance to the father's side of the family, and it is based on a structure that includes several generations. It uses separate terms for different types of relationships, such as father, mother, father's brother, father's sister, and father's mother.
- "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."