Cultural Anthropology
Chapter 4: Patterns of Family Relating
- Tv shows, related to family, to “understand themselves”
- Kinship relates to social organization in small-scale and large-scale
societies
cultural system, not biological facts
- Different levels of social, cultural, and technological complexity
Ju/’hoanis = gatherers/hunters living in small mobile groups
Trobrian Islanders = horticulturists living in villages (up to 400
people); expert in the science of cultivating plants
Rural Chinese = large agricultural society (farming)
- Family structure and roles are important
- Ethnographic present: use of the present tense to describe a culture,
although the description may
refer to situations that existed in the past
North American Families
- Bilateral kinship: a system in which individuals trace their descent
through both parents
o make no distinction b/w mother’s and father’s siblings
(linguistically) and all their children are cousins
o as opposed to matrilineal kinship: a system of descent in which
persons are related through their kin through the mother only
o similarly, patrilineal kinship is a system of descent in which
persons are related through their kin through the father only
- Nuclear family: father, mother, and biological or adopted children
- Incest taboo: a rule that prohibits sexual relations among certain
categories of kin, such as brothers or sisters, parents and children, or in some cases, cousins
Ju/’hoansi Families
- Groups of 10-30 or 40 people (bilaterally related)
- Hunt and gather around a waterhole
- Usually brother/sister pair claim a waterhole
- Mobile, move based on hunting alliances
- Children spend time with mothers
- Key relationship is between husband and wife
o Brideservice: requirement that when a couple marries, the
groom must work for the bride’s
parents for some specified period of time (as long as
10 years)
- They have little privacy
- Usually men have sex by 15 & marry at 18-25 years old
- Marriage for men:
Adult worthy of taking part in public life
Gains a sex partner
Mate provides him food
- Men share meat (hunted) w/ whole camp
- Women do not have to share outside nuclear family
- Women marry @ 12-14 years old (before first period); arranged
marriages
- 30-40 names for newborns; same name as someone else?
Automatically related.
- Do not marry if two people have the same name, or if either of their
parent’s have the same name
- Can protest against marriage - ‘honeymoon’ = source of continuing conflict
o Ex: Nisa objected to sleep w/ Bo (newly weds), so relative
(Nukha) slept in b/w them; turns out Nukha was having sex w/
Bo………………
o Half of 1 marriages fail
- Sex, love and beauty are important…wealth, not so much
- Enjoy sex to develop normally and be happy
- Woman’s sexuality maximizes her independence
- Most conflicts are b/w husband and wife
Man’s unfaithfulness
Husband wanting to get a 2 ndwife
Polygamy: a form of marriage in which a person is permitted to
have more than 1 spouse
Polygyny: a form of marriage in which a man is permitted to
have more than 1 wife
o Rarely have polyandry (a form of marriage in which a woman is
permitted to have more than one husband)
Polygamy/polygyny adds variety and economic insurance
Trobriand Islander Families
- 80 villages (40-400 people) divided into hamlets
- Matrilineage: a lineage that is formed tracing descent in the female
line (dala)
Men related to each other through the female line
- Person dies, soul/spirit becomes young & lives on Tuma (an island);
baloma (spirit child) enters the womb of a woman of the same
matrilineage (through water, important factor)
- Conception only permitted by:
The woman herself The spirit or baloma of a deceased ancestor
The woman’s older brother
- Deny men’s role in conception
- Key relationship is b/w brother and sister
- Father of the family = outsider
- Father more interested in his sister’s kids
- Dala > nuclear family
- Extended family: a group based on blood relations or 3 or more
generations
- All women of the same matrilineage = ina
- All men of the same matrilineage = luta
- Participate in erotic games @ 7/8 years old, sex partners @ age 11-13
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