Kinship and descent

and functions of families and kinship. "The family is a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation, and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults."(Murdock 1949) Kinship systems are “culturally defined human relationships of interdependence underlying social organizations.” (Gonzalez, Kinship Systems) Two of the most…

unique way of life here. Aborigines were the members of the traditional aboriginal race of Australia. These people were hunters and gathers. Kinship represented their social structuring. Tribes formed along the male lineage were called the Patriarchal descent and consisted of 2 or more families, while the female led lineage was considered the Matriarchal descent. After the british captured Australia, the aboriginal way of life took a downturn. However, Aborigines still do exist today. In fact,…

leader and warrior his dad was. Gail Ashton (writer of the Medieval English Romance in Context) said, “These stories only focus on family, kinship, marriage, lineage, and property, all social and political structures.” And it’s true in medieval texts; let’s take a closer look at two of the most used themes in medieval texts. First lineage; lineage is a lineal descent from an ancestor; ancestry or pedigree. The importance of lineage in medieval stories are: 1st all men identify themselves through…

and Torres islander people of Australia originally or by descent. The Aboriginal Torres Islander are the first indigenous settlers living in Australia for more than 40000 years. The Aboriginal People normally have dark brown skin, and big brown eyes. The Aboriginal Torres Islander communities…

similarities and differences within and among societies. When studying the main features of peasant and tribal societies, one notices their differences and similarities, in this case, focusing mainly on the economy and exchange of surplus, including their kinship and how their social relationships differ. The tribal society is one where the mode of production is for common use for the society while a peasant society’s mode of production is more isolated and surplus is transferred to a group of…

marry the person. They had the freedom to choose who they wanted to be with. Euro-American marriage practices are changing by leading away from descent groups and large kin groups of any kind. According to (Stone, 2014, p. 221), anthropologists have several ideas of why this is happening. For example, Robin Fox suggested that the wider ties of European kinship were broken down with the rise of the modern state and so, the state works through bureaucracy and binding contracts, not through ties…

David M. Schneider best presents the idea of American Kinship and how we view those in relation to us. He recognizes that all around the world there are different languages and naming categories, yet as a human race we understand those various definitions and are able to relate our own classifications to them. Schneider uses the word “relative,” (others may use, folks, people, family) to define a relationship though blood or marriage. On my kinship chart I placed my relatives, those related to…

Within different cultures across the world, poetry, song, stories and films that people use to express themselves can always help us understand the social and cultural context. In Lila Abu-Lughod’s book Veiled Sentiments, the author studies the poetry of the tribes of Bedouin in northern Egypt known as the Awlad Ali from October 1978 to May 1980. The author recognizes two contradictory discourses: “an ideology of honor in ordinary conversation and everyday behavior” on the one hand and “oral…

Iroquois The “People of the Longhouse”, also known as the Iroquois people, are actually a group of tribes that is made of up of six tribes in total. Those tribes that make up this league are The Mohawk, The Seneca, The Onondaga, The Cayuga, The Oneida, and lastly The Tuscarora (they played a less important role than the others as they did not join in the league until the 1700s. These tribes were all run basically the same, but each had their individual parts to play in the league (Treuer 32).…

A Collective Alienation Rumors have a profound effect on human interaction, and can cause stressful isolation of certain groups. The powerful effects of rumors in post-trauma societies is revealed in the articles, Narratives of Uncertainty: The Affective Force of Child-Trafficking Rumors in Postdisaster Aceh, Indonesia by Annemarie Samuels and Gendered War and Rumors of Saddam Hussein in Uganda by Sverker Finnström. Although mere stories or potentially false statements, rumors reveal the…