Mirror for Humanity

Conrad Phillip Kottak

Fifth Edition

Chapter 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.

Overview

• Families and kinship

• Descent
• Marriage
– Marital rights and same-sex marriage
– Plural marriages
• Divorce

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage
• Nuclear and extended families
– Nuclear family – parents and their children
– Family of orientation – family in which one is born and
grows up
– Family of procreation – formed when one marries and has
children
– Nuclear family organization is widespread but not universal
– In some societies, other social units (e.g., extended
families, descent groups) assume functions of nuclear
family
• Zadrugas – large extended families among the Muslims of
western Bosnia
• Tarawads – matrilineal extended-family compounds among
the Nayars of southern India

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Industrialism and family organization

– Nuclear family is the only well defined kin
group for many North Americans
– Neolocality
• Most prevalent residence pattern among
middle-class North Americans
• Married couples are expected to establish a
new place of residence

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Industrialism and family organization

– Expanded family households (including
nonnuclear relatives) are more common among
lower-class North Americans
• Extended family household – three or more generations
• Collateral household – siblings and their spouses and
children
– Expanded family households are an adaptation
to poverty – enable relatives to pool resources

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Changes in North American kinship

– Other domestic arrangements outnumber the “traditional”
American household (nuclear family) more than three to
one
– Increases in:
• Number of women joining the workforce
• Age of first marriage
• Divorce rate
• Number of single-parent families
– Percentage of married adults has decreased
– Trend toward smaller families and living units detectable in
the United States, western Europe, and other industrial
nations

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• The Family among foragers

– Two basic social units in traditional foraging
societies: nuclear family and band
– Nuclear families are usually more stable than
bands
– Typically, the band exists only seasonally –
breaks up into nuclear families when resources
become scarce
– Both industrial and foraging societies – mobility
and an emphasis on small, economically self-
sufficient family units promote the nuclear family
as a basic kin group

© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.

CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Descent groups
– Descent group – a permanent social unit whose
members claim common ancestry
– Two types of unilineal descent:
• Patrilineal descent – people automatically have lifetime
membership in their father’s group
• Matrilineal descent – people automatically have lifetime
membership in their mother’s group
– Patrilineal descent is much more common than
matrilineal descent

© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.

CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Descent groups
– Descent groups may be lineages or clans
• Lineage – a descent group whose members can
demonstrate their common descent from an apical
ancestor (demonstrated descent)
• Clan – a descent group whose members claim common
descent from an apical ancestor but cannot
demonstrate it (stipulated descent)
– Totem – a nonhuman (animal or plant) apical ancestor of
a clan
– Local descent groups – branches of descent
groups that live in different villages

© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.

CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Lineages, clans, and residence rules

– Descent groups are permanent, enduring
units whose members have access to
lineage estates
– Patrilineal and matrilineal descent, and
associated post-marital residence rules,
ensure that about half the people born in
each generation will spend their lives on
the ancestral estate

© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.

CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Lineages, clans, and residence rules

– Two different unilocal rules of post-marital
residence:
• Patrilocality
– Married couples (and their children) live in the husband’s
community
– Associated with patrilineal descent
• Matrilocality
– Married couples (and their children) live in the wife’s
community
– Associated with matrilineal descent, so less common

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Marriage
– No single definition of marriage can account for
all of the cross-cultural diversity in marriages
– Exogamy
• Practice of seeking a spouse outside one's own group
• Forces people to create and maintain a wide social
network – nurtures, helps, and protects one's group
during times of need
– Incest
• Sexual relations with a close relative
• Incest taboo is a cultural universal
• What constitutes incest varies cross-culturally

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Marriage
– Endogamy
• Mating or marriage within a group to which
one belongs
• Most cultures are endogamous units, and
classes and ethnic groups within a society
may also be quasi-endogamous

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Marriage
– Caste system of India
• Extreme example of endogamy
• Castes – stratified groups in which lifelong membership
is ascribed at birth
• Occupational specialization often distinguishes castes
• Belief that intercaste sexual unions lead to ritual
impurity for the higher-caste partner – helps to maintain
endogamy and ensure the pure ancestry of high-caste
children
• Castes are endogamous, but many are internally
subdivided into exogamous lineages

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Marital rights
– According to Leach, marriage can (but does not always):
• Establish the legal father of a woman’s children and the legal
mother of a man’s
• Give either or both spouses a monopoly in the sexuality of the
other
• Give either or both spouses rights to the labor of the other
• Give either or both spouses rights over the other’s property
• Establish a joint fund of property for the benefit of the children
• Establish a socially significant “relationship of affinity”
between spouses and their relatives

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Marital rights and same-sex marriage

– No logical reasons why same-sex marriage could
not allocate all of the rights enumerated by Leach
– Because same-sex marriage is illegal throughout
most of the United States, same-sex couples are
denied many of the rights and benefits enjoyed
by different-sex couples
– Same-sex marriages have been recognized in
various historical and cultural settings
• Native American berdaches
• Woman-woman marriages among the Igbo and Lovedu
in Africa

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Marriage Across cultures

– In nonindustrial societies, marriage often is more a
relationship between groups than one between individuals
– Bridewealth
• Customary gift before, at, or after the marriage from the
husband and his kin to the wife and her kin
• Compensates the bride’s group for the loss of her
companionship and labor
• Also known as progeny price – makes the children born to the
woman full members of her husband’s descent group
• Common in patrilineal groups
• Insurance against divorce: as the value of bridewealth
increases, marriages become more stable

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Marriage Across cultures

– Dowry
• A marital exchange in which the wife’s group
provides substantial gifts to the husband’s
family
• Correlates with low female status
• Much less common than bridewealth

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Marriage Across cultures

– Durable alliances
• Sororate marriage – a widower marries one of
his deceased wife’s sisters (or another woman
from her group if a sister is not availabe)
• Levirate marriage – a widow marries one of
her deceased husband’s brothers
• Sororate and levirate highlight the importance
of marriage as an alliance between groups

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Divorce
– Ease of divorce varies cross-culturally
• Marriages that are political alliances between groups
are harder to break up than are marriages that are more
individual affairs
• Bridewealth discourages divorce
• Replacement marriages (levirate and sororate) help to
preserve group alliances
• Divorce is more common in matrilineal and matrilocal
societies (e.g., the Hopi)
• Divorce is harder in patrilocal societies – women are
reluctant to leave their children, who are members of
their fathers’ lineages

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Divorce
– Foraging societies:
• Factors favoring divorce:
– No descent groups, so the political alliance functions of
marriage are less important
– Foragers tend to have few material possessions – makes
the process of dissolving a joint fund of property easier
• Factors opposing divorce:
– Durable ties between spouses because the family is an
important year-round unit with a gender-based division of
labor
– Few alternative spouses because of sparse populations

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Divorce
– Contemporary Western societies:
• Divorce may occur when sex, romance, and/or
companionship fade
• Factors opposing divorce: economic ties,
obligations to children, concern about public
opinion, inertia

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Plural marriages
– Polygamy – marriage to more than one spouse at
a time
– Polygyny – a man has more than one wife
• Even in cultures that encourage polygyny, monogamy
tends to be the norm due to roughly equal sex ratios
• Promoted by the custom of men marrying later than
women (more widows than widowers)
• Various reasons for polygyny:
– Inheritance of a widow from a brother
– May increase prestige or household productivity
– An infertile wife remains married to her husband after her
descent group provides a substitute wife

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Plural marriages
– Polyandry – a woman has more than one
husband
• Very rare – almost exclusively in South Asia
(Tibet, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka)
• Cultural adaptation to mobility associated with
customary male travel for trade, commerce,
and military operations
• Ensures there will be at least one man at
home to accomplish male activities

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CHAPTER 8
Families, Kinship, and Marriage

• Plural marriages
– Polyandry
• Fraternal polyandry – effective strategy when
resources are scarce
– Expanded polyandrous households allow brothers
to pool resources
– Restricts the number of wives and heirs, so land
can be transmitted with minimal fragmentation

© 2007 McGraw-Hil Higher Education. All right reserved.