ANT 2000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Nuclear Family, Social Stratification, Caste System In India
10 Dec 2013
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How do we determine family and how do we organize our household to meet our basic human needs. Kinship = a network of relatives within which individuals possess certain mutual rights and obligations (those obligations usually reflect the society you grew up in) One way to examine relatedness is through descent groups. Descent groups = any kin-group whose members share a direct line of descent from a real (historical) or fictional common ancestor. Meaningful obligations hold this structured social group together; membership is often strictly defined in order to prevent conflicting loyalties and obligations. Unilineal or unilateral descent = descent traced exclusively through either the male or female line of ancestry to establish group membership; automatically assigned from the moment of birth; either matrilineal or patrilineal (our society is unilineal anyway though!) Two major forms of unilineal descent groups = lineage and clans.
