ANP 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Bilateral Descent
Document Summary
Kinship groups are not static: they are interconnected to historical, economic, and political processes. An idiom that we use in our cultures to interpret shared experiences of mating, birth, and nurturance. Provides social continuity: binds people together through successive generations. Defines obligations such as social and economic responsibilities. Regulates marriage: legitimizes sex and marriage. Provides identity and defines who participates in rituals. Bilateral descent: related to both their mother and father"s side of the family, bilateral kindred, group of people all related to ego, ego"s relatives, ego and their cousins have different kindred. Viewed from the reference of ego: the person from whose pov we are tracing the relationship. Industrialized: large scale, more diversity between kin groups (race, ethnic, and national differences, specialization by occupation, interest task, and economics is main organizing principle, voluntary, non-overlapping membership, not all activities organized by kinship.
