ANTH 1150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Equals Sign, Emic And Etic, Nuclear Family
12 Dec 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
February 9, 2016
Kinship and Decent
Kinship: relationships people have with one another through 2 primary means of connection
1) Blood: biology, parenting
2) Marriage: in-law kin
kinship is also knowledge that insiders within a family have about 2 things
knowledge about who you are related to
knowledge needed in order to know how to interact and behave with/around your relatives
(you will have a different relationship with your father than with your aunt)
Kinship charts/diagrams
chart out graphically who is related to who
they imply a few things about behaviour between relatives
contain emic knowledge
etic frameworks
kinship charts are not genealogies
genealogies: ancestor oriented (how a family is related back to a common ancestor)
kinship charts: are ego oriented (relationship coming form one person, not necessarily an
ancestor)
Kinship System Charts
Eskimo System
triangles are males
circles are females
square are unspecified and the centre of the chart (the ego)
same horizontal line = same generation
lower generation is on the bottom, older is on the top
equals sign symbolizes marriage
household = parents and children (sometimes grandparents) sometimes called the ‘nuclear’
family
Iroquois System
Maisin/Ojibwa
mothers sister is considered a mother and the relationship is so (her children are siblings)
mother brother is just uncle (children are cousins)
fathers sister is aunt (children are cousins)
fathers brother is father (there children are your siblings)
mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters live in the same place
the aunts and uncles live in a different place
cousins are preferred marriage partners
Emic row: brothers, sisters, cousins are what the insider needs to know
Etic: the siblings are parallel cousins, the cousins are cross cousins
the sex of the connecting relatives are the same for parallel and opposite for crossed
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
