Social Organization

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Social Organization
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Marriage, Family, Kinship

• Marriage
• rules of sexual access
• form of exchange establishes alliances
• accords a child full birth-status rights common
  to normal members of his society or social
  stratum.
• family -- smallest, organized unit of kin and
  non-kin who interact daily, providing for the
  domestic needs of children and ensuring their
  survival
• descent group -- who one is related to beyond
  marriage
• Alliance -- relations between descent groups

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Forms of Marriage

• Monogamy marriage between two partners
• Polygamy plural marriage an individual has
  more than one spouse
• Polygyny one man many wives
• Polyandry one woman many husbands
• No marriage
• Serial monogamy preferred practice in the West?

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Other Forms of Marriage

• Same Sex Marriages
• A Nuer woman who is unable to have children is
  sometimes married as a "husband" to another woman
  who then is impregnated by a secret boyfriend. 
• The barren woman becomes the socially recognized
  father and thereby adds members to her father's
  patrilineal kin group

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Other Forms of marriage Ghost Marriage

• A Nuer man may marry a woman as a stand-in for
  his deceased brother
• the children that are born of this union will be
  considered descendents of the dead man -- the
  "ghost" is the socially recognized father
• allows the continuation of the family line and
  succession to an important social position
• A Nuer woman of wealth may marry a deceased man
  to keep her wealth and power
• there will be no living husband, though she may
  subsequently have children
• She is, in effect, a widow who takes care of her
  husband's wealth and children until they are
  mature

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Forms of Marriage

• Levirate sororate
• Levirate a widow marries dead husbands brother
• Sororate a widower marries dead wifes sister
• Keeps inheritance within the same group

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Levi-Strauss on Marriage as Exchange

• Levi-Strauss "It's not the man that marries the
  maid, but field marries field, vineyard marries
  vineyard, cattle marries cattle
• a set of rights the couple their families
  obtain over one another, including rights to the
  couple's children

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Marriage and wealth exchange

• Bridewealth
• payment to wife and/or wifes family
• pays for loss of daughter
• Dowry
• payment to husband and/or husband family
• correlated to low women gender status
• pays for adding women to descent group

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MARRIAGE EXCHANGES

• marriage means alliances
• people don't just take a spouse they assume
  obligations to a group of in-laws
• often more a relationship between groups than one
  between individuals-marriage involves

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are people buying their wives? Or how is a wife
like a T.V.?

• the price is negotiated rights are not given to
  the husband until the deal is done
• if the woman proves barren or troublesome the
  goods are often refunded
• women have voice in the transactions
• women also has rights of her own in the marriage
  relationship (commodities don't)
• the woman her kinfolk can also end the marriage
  if husband does not meet obligations

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buying selling of commodities is a one time
event

• bridewealth establishes an enduring bundle of
  reciprocal rights obligations between relatives
  of the couple that will last as long as the
  marriage lasts

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Levi-Strauss and women as objects of exchange

• marriage systems - a form of exchange - "that as
  soon as I am forbidden a woman, she thereby
  becomes available to another man, and somewhere
  else a man renounces a woman who thereby becomes
  available to me." (Levi-Strauss51)
• wife givers wife takers
• nevertheless, as exchange marriage implies
  reciprocity obligations assumed in creation
  maintenance of alliances

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Marriage and the Family

• Variation in forms of marriage related to
  variations in forms of family
• Nuclear family parents and children
• Extended family 3 or more generations
• Joint family or collateral household siblings,
  their spouses and children
• Forms of family change over time, over life cycle

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Forms of Family Subsistence

• Forager band group of nuclear families
• Industrial economy also nuclear family
• Neither foragers nor industrial societies tied to
  the land
• Emphasis on mobility, small-size,
  self-sufficiency
• Cultivators and Horticulturalists extended,
  joint, collateral households
• Extended family associated with sedentary
  cultivation, herding private property
• Keeps property in family
• Provides needed labor

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Family in Canada, Europe, US

• A unit bounded biologically legally
• Associated with property
• Economic self sufficiency
• Associated with emotional life
• Associated with a space inside a home
• Emerges in complex state-governed societies
• Keep neighbors out compared to others that add
  children neighbors as kin

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The Modern Euro-North American Family

• Family nurturance, biofunction, love
  affection, cooperation, enduring relationships,
  unconditional
• Market sale of labour, negotiate contractual
  relations of business, competitive, temporary,
  contingent relations, law legal sanctions
• family as last refuge against the state (domestic
  issues police)
• family and litigation today - family becoming
  contract

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Post-Marital Residence Patterns

• Patrilocal
• Matrilocal
• Bi-local
• Neolocal
• Avunculocal living with mothers brother or
  fathers sister
• Virilocal living with husbands relatives
  (patrilineal descent)
• Uxorilocal living with wifes relatives
  (matrilineal descent)

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Post-Marital Residence Patterns

• 70 of all societies patrilocal
• Matrifocal households women headed households
  with no permanently resident husband-father
• Patrifocal 3 men and a baby?
• Post-marital residence patterns change during
  life cycle of marriage, over time

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KINSHIP STUDIES
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SUFFIXES

• Lineal line of descent
• Local place of residence
• Lateral of or relating to the side
• Archy government

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KIN TYPES

• Consanguineals
• Affinals
• fictive kin
• Lineals
• Collaterals

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DESCENT TERMS

• Bilateral
• Unilineal
• Matrilineal
• Patrilineal
• Cognatic

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Endogamous Groups Marriage Partners
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Kinship Descent

• For some societies kinship descent lines are
  the main way people organize themselves
• Kinship societies
• The relationships established within the
  biological group and outside the biological
  group are coded in kin terms

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Kinship Patterns

• Relations of descent (endogamy)
• Consanguineal relationships (sanguine red)
• Relations of blood
• Relations of alliance (exogamy)
• Affinal relationships (affinity)
• Through marriage (in-laws)

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kinship and descent

• kinship as an idiom
• a way of expressing social relations and the
  exchanges, rights, and obligations implied
• selective
• each system emphasizes different relations
• kinship principles define social groups
• produces forms of social stratification
• locate people within those groups
• position people and groups in relation to one
  another both in space and time

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kin terms

• sometimes mark specific relationships, sometimes
  lump together several genealogical relations
• lineal relatives/consanguines - ancestor,
  descendent on direct line of descent to or from
  ego
• collateral kin - all other biological kin,
  siblings, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles
• affines - relatives by marriage

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Relationships are traced through a central
individual labelled EGO.
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kinship diagram
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UNILINEAL DESCENT (unilateral)

• descent group membership figured exclusively
  through female or male side
• matrilineal descent
• patrilineal descent

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Matrilineal and Patrilineal Kin

• Patrilineal , or agnatic, relatives are
  identified by tracing descent exclusively through
  males from a founding male ancestor.
• Matrilineal , or uterine, relatives are
  identified by tracing descent exclusively through
  females from a founding female ancestor.

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Patrilineage -- male ego
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Patrilineage female ego
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cross relatives

• kin on each side, who are neither patrilineal or
  matrilineal
• cross cousins are of particular importance,
  especially for some marriage systems
• Cross cousins can be identified as the children
  of opposite sexed siblings (of a brother and
  sister) and parallel cousins as the children of
  same sexed siblings (of two brothers or two
  sisters).

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Bilateral Descent

• Also called cognatic descent
• Canada, US, Europe
• ego sees his or her relatives on both sides as
  being of equal closeness relevance
• the degree of closeness is based on generational
  distance separating the individuals (our system)

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Strengths of Bilateral System

• Overlapping membership
• Widely extended, can form broad networks
• Flexible
• Useful for groups that do not live in same place
• Useful when valued resources are limited

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Extensions of kin groups

• lineage
• matrilineage
• patrilineage
• segmentary lineage
• clan
• phratry
• moiety
• kindred

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Structures of Descent

• lineages (patri matri) - common ancestor
• clan several lineages common ancestor, usually
  large groups that are associated with mythical
  ancestors
• phratry - unilineal descent group composed of a
  number of supposedly related clans
• moieties - means half, when an entire society is
  divided into 2 unilineal descent groups
• many societies have 2 or more types of descent
  groups in various combinations
• some have lineages clans, others may have clans
  phrateries but no lineages

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Lineage

• a corporate descent group whose members trace
  their genealogical links to a common ancestor
• corporate shares resources in common
• own property
• organize labour
• assign status
• regulate relations with other groups
• endures beyond individual members

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Clan (or sib)

• a non-corporate descent group whose members claim
  descent from a common ancestor without knowing
  the genealogical inks to that ancestor
• often produced through fission of lineage into
  newer, smaller lineage

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characteristics of the clan

• greater genealogical depth than lineage
• lacks residential unity (in contrast to lineage)
• a ceremonial unit that meets on special occasions
• handle important integrative functions
• may regulate marriage outside clan

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clans are often dependent on symbols as
integrative feature

• totem a symbol of a clans mythical origin that
  reinforces clan members common descent
• totem from Ojibwa ototeman he is a relative of
  mine

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Phratries and Moieties

• less common forms of descent groups
• phratry a unilineal descent group composed of at
  least two clans that supposedly share a common
  ancestry, whether they do or not
• if a society is broken into only two large groups
  (clan or phratry), each group is referred to as a
  MOIETY
• moieties, phratries, clans and lineages
• from most inclusive to the least inclusive
• all typically associated with exogamy

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Bilateral Kindred

• a person's bilateral set of relatives who may be
  called upon for some purpose
• no two persons belong exactly to the same kin
  group
• ego centered with kindred of close relatives
  spreading out on both your mother's and father's
  sides
• connected only because of you