Week 9 · Chapter

Chapter 9 — Kinship and Descent

Cultural Anthropology Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~30–40 minutes · Objective 6 (analyze kinship, descent, marriage, and households: read and draw kinship diagrams in kin-type notation, distinguish patrilineal, matrilineal, and bilateral descent and descent from residence, apply kinship terminology systems, and explain marriage exchanges and household forms), Objective 2 (describe and practice ethnographic methods: participant observation, two-column field notes that keep observation apart from interpretation, interviews, the genealogical method, emic and etic perspectives, thick description, and reflexivity, following the discipline's ethics of doing no harm and obtaining informed consent) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, and the quiz all build on it.

In plain language

Every family has to answer a question that sounds simple: who counts as one of us? Anthropologists call the answer kinship (the ties a society recognizes as family). This week you will learn to draw those ties on paper and name each relative in a short code. You will see how a descent rule (a rule that places a person in a group through a parent) changes who belongs to your group. You will also see how the words people use for cousins differ from one language to another, and why a godparent or a teammate can count as family too.

Why you already care about this

Picture a birthday party for a girl turning 9 (an illustrative scene). There are 14 guests from 3 generations around one cake. Her stepsister helps light the 9 candles, and her half-brother hands out plates. Her grandmother's new husband takes the photos, and a neighbor everyone calls "Auntie" brought the cake.

Now ask who in that room is family. Some guests share a parent with the birthday girl. Some joined the family through a marriage. "Auntie" shares no parent and no marriage with anyone there, yet the girl would be hurt if she left her off the guest list. Every family settles these questions, and different societies settle them in different ways.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

tell kin related by birth from kin related by marriage, and explain why kinship is cultural;
read and write a kinship diagram and kin-type strings such as MB and FZD, and describe a diagram in words;
find who belongs to a patrilineage and a matrilineage, and tell a lineage from a clan;
explain why matrilineal descent is not rule by women, using two documented cases;
sort cousins into parallel and cross cousins and say who a person calls "brother" or "sister" under three terminology types;
draw a working family as a diagram from field notes, with roles and never names.

Carry this sentence with you: family is drawn by culture, not by blood alone.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 gave you holism and comparison, and Week 2 defined culture as learned and shared. Week 3 taught field notes and the genealogical method, and Weeks 5 to 7 asked how people make a living, exchange, and govern. Week 8 reviewed all of it and added lenses from the discipline's history.
This week: kinship as cultural; consanguineal and affinal kin; kinship diagrams and kin-type notation; patrilineal, matrilineal, and bilateral descent; lineage and clan; kinship terminology and cousins; and chosen and fictive kin.
How they connect: Week 7 said a tribe links villages through kin groups; this week shows what a kin group is and how a person gets into one.
Where we're going next: Week 10, Marriage, Family, and Households, uses this week's descent groups to read marriage payments and where couples live after they marry.

Week 3 named the genealogical method from Rivers (1910), "The Genealogical Method of Anthropological Inquiry", The Sociological Review: collecting a community's kin ties person by person. This week you learn to draw what that method collects. Week 5 met the market's family-run stall, and Week 6 noticed that close kin often give without keeping count. The running fieldwork site is still the same illustrative, unnamed weekly neighborhood farmers' market of 24 stalls, and this week you draw its family-run stall.

1. Ask who counts: kinship as cultural

Think about the word "cousin". You might use it for the child of your aunt, for a family friend you grew up with, or for a distant relative you have met only once. The word stretches because people decide where family begins and ends.

You can start where anthropologists start. Kinship is the ties a society recognizes as family, built from birth, marriage, and other bonds; every society decides which ties count, what they are called, and what rights and duties they carry, so kinship is cultural as well as biological.

You will find two kinds of tie in every family tree.

Consanguineal kin are relatives connected by birth, such as a parent, a sibling, a grandparent, or a cousin.
Affinal kin are relatives connected by marriage, such as a spouse, a parent-in-law, or an aunt's husband.

Worked example — sorting the birthday guests (illustrative). Ask of each guest: is the tie to the birthday girl by birth, by marriage, or by neither?

Her half-brother. He shares one parent with her, so the tie is by birth. He is consanguineal kin.
Her stepsister. She is the daughter of the girl's stepfather from an earlier marriage. The tie runs through a marriage, so she is affinal kin.
Her grandmother's new husband. He joined through his marriage to her grandmother, so he is affinal kin.
"Auntie", the neighbor. She shares no birth and no marriage with the family. By the two definitions she is neither, yet the family treats her as kin.

In words: 2 of the 4 guests above are affinal, 1 is consanguineal, and 1 fits neither definition but still counts, which is why kinship is more than biology.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Name one person you call by a family word, such as aunt, uncle, or cousin, who is not related to you by birth or marriage. What makes that person family to you?
(b) Think of a relative related to you by marriage. Does your family treat that person the same way as a relative by birth? Give one example.

Misconception check. Students often think kinship is only biology, so "real" family means shared blood. That is tempting, because family trees look like charts of who was born to whom. But every society decides which ties count and what they mean, and people by marriage and by choice carry family duties too. The cure: before you call a tie "not real", ask what the people involved expect of each other.

2. Draw the ties: diagrams and kin-type notation

Try to describe your cousins out loud and you will soon get tangled: "my dad's sister's kid, not the one from my mom's side". Anthropologists solve that problem with a drawing and a short code.

A kinship diagram is a drawing of family ties that uses a triangle for a man, a circle for a woman, an equals sign for marriage, a vertical line for descent, and a horizontal line joining siblings, centred on a marked ego and always described in words as well. Ego is the person a kinship diagram or a set of kin terms is centred on; every relative is named by their tie to this person.

Kin-type notation is a shorthand for relatives that writes F for father, M for mother, B for brother, Z for sister, S for son, D for daughter, H for husband, and W for wife, combined and read outward from ego, so MB is mother's brother. Z stands for sister because S is already taken by son.

The eight kin-type letters and what each one stands for
Letter	Reads as	Letter	Reads as
F	father	S	son
M	mother	D	daughter
B	brother	H	husband
Z	sister	W	wife

You read a string from ego outward, one letter at a time, and you say each step out loud. FZD is "father's sister's daughter": start at ego, go to ego's father, then to his sister, then to her daughter.

Worked example — the kinship set in words. The course's kinship set (Dataset B, illustrative, constructed for this course) is a three-generation diagram centred on ego. Read it generation by generation.

The grandparents' generation. Ego's four grandparents: FF (father's father), FM (father's mother), MF (mother's father), and MM (mother's mother). That is 4 positions.
The parents' generation. Ego's father (F), his brother (FB) and sister (FZ), each married (FBW, father's brother's wife, and FZH, father's sister's husband). Ego's mother (M), her brother (MB) and sister (MZ), each married (MBW, mother's brother's wife, and MZH, mother's sister's husband). That is 10 positions.
Ego's generation. Ego, ego's brother (B) and sister (Z), and four cousins: FBS (father's brother's son), FZD (father's sister's daughter), MBD (mother's brother's daughter), and MZS (mother's sister's son). That is 7 positions.
The total. 4 grandparents + 10 in the parents' generation + 7 in ego's generation = 21 positions.

In words: the set holds 21 positions across three generations, and every one of them has a short string that says exactly how it connects to ego.

If you drew it, the grandparents would sit in two married pairs at the top, each pair joined by an equals sign. A vertical line would drop from each pair to a horizontal line joining their children. Ego would be a shaded shape in the bottom row. The words above carry everything the drawing shows, and that is the rule: no diagram exists only as a picture.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Write the kin-type string for one real relative of yours, such as your mother's brother's son, and then read it back in words.
(b) Why might an anthropologist describe a diagram in words as well as drawing it? Name one reader who needs the words.

Misconception check. Students often read a kin-type string from the far end, so FZD becomes "daughter's sister's father". That is tempting, because English puts the main word last. But the string always starts at ego and moves outward, one letter per step. The cure: put your finger on ego, then follow the letters left to right.

3. Trace descent: lineages, clans, and two rules

Think about a family business passed down for generations. In some families the business goes to sons. In others it goes to whoever is best suited, from either side. Who gets it depends on a rule the family follows, often without saying it.

Descent is a rule that places a person in a group through a parent, deciding which relatives belong to the same group across generations. A descent group is a group of people who count themselves as members through a shared rule of descent, such as a lineage or a clan. The course teaches three patterns.

Patrilineal descent is descent traced through men: sons and daughters belong to their father's group, and only sons pass membership on to their children.
Matrilineal descent is descent traced through women: daughters and sons belong to their mother's group, and only daughters pass membership on; it describes how membership passes, not who rules.
Bilateral kinship is tracing relatives equally through both parents, which forms no descent groups.

You will meet descent groups in two sizes of memory.

A lineage is a descent group whose members can trace each step back to a known common ancestor.
A clan is a descent group that claims a common ancestor, often legendary, without every step back to that ancestor being known.

Picture two illustrative groups. At a family reunion, everyone can name each parent back to one great-great-grandmother; that group works like a lineage. A second group shares a story about a founder long ago, but no one can name every step back to that founder; that group works like a clan.

Worked example — ego's two lineages in the kinship set. Use Dataset B and ask: if the society were patrilineal, who is in ego's group? Then ask the same for matrilineal.

Ego's patrilineage. Follow the men's line: FF, F, FB, FZ, ego, B, Z, and FBS. That is 8 people. FZ belongs, because she is her father's daughter, but she does not pass membership on. So FZD belongs to her father's (FZH's) patrilineage.
Ego's matrilineage. Follow the women's line: MM, M, MB, MZ, ego, B, Z, and MZS. That is 8 people. MB belongs but does not pass membership on, so MBD belongs to her mother's (MBW's) matrilineage.
Who is in both lists. Ego, B, and Z appear in both, which is 3 people.
Who is in either list. 8 + 8 − 3 = 13 people. Subtracting 3 stops ego, B, and Z from being counted twice.
Who is in neither. 21 − 13 = 8 positions: FM, MF, FBW, FZH, MBW, MZH, FZD, and MBD.

In words: the same 21 positions split into different groups under each rule, and the 8 people in neither list are the people who married into the family plus the two cross cousins, whose membership runs through a parent who married in.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of something your family passes down, such as a surname, a recipe, or a heirloom. Does it follow one parent's side, both sides, or neither?
(b) In the worked example, FZ belongs to ego's patrilineage but her daughter does not. Explain in your own words why the line stops with her.

Misconception check. Students often think patrilineal descent shuts daughters out of the lineage. That is tempting, because only sons pass membership on. But daughters belong to their father's group for life; they do not pass that membership to their children. A second wrong turn uses lineage and clan as synonyms. The cure: ask whether every step back to the ancestor is known. If it is, you have a lineage; if not, a clan.

4. Compare documented cases: descent through women is not rule by women

Picture an illustrative family where the house passes from mother to daughter, yet an uncle runs the family meetings. Who holds the house and who runs the meeting are two separate questions. Anthropologists keep them separate too.

You can see matrilineal descent at work in two documented cases. The Haudenosaunee (the older outsiders' label, "Iroquois", is given once here) are a documented matrilineal case. In the documented record, clan membership passed through women, and clan mothers held recognized roles, including in choosing chiefs. The Haudenosaunee are living nations who speak for themselves, and every community's ways change over time.

The second case comes from fieldwork. Malinowski (1922), Argonauts of the Western Pacific, came from his fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands. In the 1910s, Trobriand Islanders traced descent matrilineally, and a man's heir was his sister's son. In kin-type terms, a man's heir was his ZS, and a young man's inheritance came from his MB.

Worked example — reading the heir rule. Ask the two questions in order.

How does membership pass? Through women. A man's sister's son belongs to the man's own group, because that boy's mother is the man's sister.
Who receives the role? A man. The heir is a sister's son, who takes over from his mother's brother.

In words: membership passed through women, while men of the group, such as a mother's brother, held the role being passed on, so descent and authority answer different questions.

Matrilineal means descent is traced through women; it does not mean that women rule. In many matrilineal societies, authority over a descent group's affairs has been held by men of the group, such as a mother's brother. Here is a caveat: real matrilineal societies arrange authority in many ways, and Haudenosaunee clan mothers held recognized roles, including in choosing chiefs. What matters is that the descent rule alone does not tell you who holds authority.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) In your own words, why does it matter that the Trobriand account is written in the past tense with its fieldwork decade?
(b) Think of a group you know where membership comes one way and leadership another, such as a club founded by one family but run by elected officers. Describe it.

Misconception check. Students often read matrilineal as matriarchal, as if tracing descent through women means women rule. That is tempting, because the two words share a root and sound alike. But matrilineal describes how membership passes, and matriarchal would describe who holds ruling power. The cure: ask "how does membership pass?" and "who holds authority?" as two separate questions every time.

5. Name the cousins: kinship terminology

Think about the word you use for your father's sister's daughter. In English she is your "cousin", and so is your mother's sister's son. English gives you one word for all of them, but many languages do not.

Kinship terminology is the set of words a language uses for relatives, which decides who is grouped under one term and who gets a separate one. Cousins come in two kinds.

Parallel cousins are the children of a parent's same-sex sibling, such as a father's brother's son or a mother's sister's son.
Cross cousins are the children of a parent's opposite-sex sibling, such as a father's sister's daughter or a mother's brother's daughter.

Anthropologists compare terminology with three types, named by what they do. Each older label is given once here as a historical name for a type.

Lineal terminology is a kinship terminology type in which ego uses separate words for siblings and for cousins; its older label, "Eskimo", names the type, not any present-day people's practice.
Generational terminology is a kinship terminology type in which ego calls everyone in their own generation brother or sister; its older label, "Hawaiian", names the type, not any present-day people's practice.
Bifurcate merging terminology is a kinship terminology type in which ego calls parallel cousins brother or sister and calls cross cousins by a different term; its older label, "Iroquois", names the type, not any present-day people's practice.

The comparison has a long history. Morgan's comparative study of kin terms, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, was a pioneering comparison of kinship terms. Its volume and its publisher's archive give two different years around 1870, so the course says its date in words and keys neither.

Worked example — who ego calls "brother" or "sister". Use the six relatives in ego's generation from Dataset B: B, Z, FBS, FZD, MBD, and MZS.

Sort the cousins. FBS and MZS are parallel cousins, because each is the child of a parent's same-sex sibling. FZD and MBD are cross cousins. That gives 2 + 2 = 4 cousins, and parallel cousins are 2 ÷ 4 × 100 = 50 percent of them.
Lineal terminology. Only B and Z are "brother" or "sister", 2 people. All four cousins are "cousin".
Generational terminology. B, Z, FBS, FZD, MBD, and MZS are all "brother" or "sister", 6 people.
Bifurcate merging terminology. B, Z, FBS, and MZS are "brother" or "sister", 4 people. FZD and MBD are called by a separate cross-cousin term.
The differences. Generational minus bifurcate merging is 6 − 4 = 2, the two cross cousins. Bifurcate merging minus lineal is 4 − 2 = 2, the two parallel cousins.

Who ego calls brother or sister in the kinship set (Dataset B, illustrative), under each terminology type
Relative	Lineal	Generational	Bifurcate merging
B and Z	brother or sister	brother or sister	brother or sister
FBS and MZS (parallel cousins)	cousin	brother or sister	brother or sister
FZD and MBD (cross cousins)	cousin	brother or sister	a separate cross-cousin term

In words: the same six relatives get 2, 6, or 4 "brother" or "sister" labels depending on the type, so the line between sibling and cousin is drawn by language, not by birth.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Which of the three types matches the words your family uses for cousins? Give one example of a word you use.
(b) Why might a society group parallel cousins with siblings but not cross cousins? Offer one possible reason and say what you would need to observe to check it.

Misconception check. Students often think a cousin term means the same thing in every society, so "cousin" is a natural category. That is tempting, because your own language's words feel like the way things are. But terminology types sort the same relatives differently, and one person's cousin is another's sister. The cure: ask which relatives a language groups together before you translate a kin term.

6. Widen the circle: chosen and fictive kin

Picture an illustrative naming ceremony for a baby. A family friend stands beside the parents and promises to guide the child through life. She is the baby's godparent, and from that day the family treats her as one of their own.

You already know ties like hers, and anthropologists have words for them.

Fictive kin are people treated as relatives without ties of birth or marriage, such as godparents or a coach the players call family.
Chosen kin are people who choose to be family to one another and take on the duties of family without ties of birth or marriage.

Worked example — three ties in three settings (illustrative). Ask of each one: is there birth or marriage, and what duties come with the tie?

The godparent at the naming. No birth and no marriage link her to the baby. She takes on a lifelong duty to guide the child. That is fictive kin.
A youth soccer coach the players call "Coach Dad". No birth and no marriage. He drives players home and checks on their grades. That is fictive kin.
A college club whose members call each other "family". No birth or marriage links them. They choose each other and show up for one another's hard days. That is chosen kin.

In words: none of the three ties rests on birth or marriage, yet each carries real duties, which is one more sign that kinship is cultural.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Describe one fictive or chosen kin tie in your own life. What duties come with it?
(b) Why might a team or club use the word "family" for its members? What does the word ask members to do?

Misconception check. Students often treat fictive kin as "not real" kin, a polite word with no weight. That is tempting, because there is no birth certificate or marriage record behind it. But godparents, chosen family, and a coach called "Coach Dad" carry expectations people act on. The cure: judge a kin tie by what people expect of each other, not by paperwork.

7. Draw the family stall: roles, not names

Walk back into the running fieldwork site (Dataset A, illustrative, constructed for this course, not a real place) mid-morning. Field-note entry 6, 8:50 a.m., family-run stall, records an older woman directing a man and a teenager who restock the bins, while a younger woman runs the card reader. Entry 10, 9:25 a.m., records the older woman saying the farm "came from my husband's side" and that her son's family lives on it now.

The course's rule from Week 3 still holds: record roles, never names. So you draw the stall as a diagram with roles, and you leave every name out.

Worked example — the family-run stall as a diagram. Read it generation by generation, then count.

First generation. The founding grower, a woman in her seventies, and her late husband, whose family's farm the stall sells from. Draw a circle and a triangle joined by an equals sign.
Second generation. Their son, who drives the truck and restocks, and his wife, who works the card reader. Their daughter, who keeps the books, and her husband, who does not work at the stall. Draw two married pairs, with the son and the daughter joined by a horizontal sibling line under their parents.
Third generation. The son's daughter, a teenager who restocks and weighs produce, and the daughter's son, a college student who handles online orders. Draw a vertical line down from each couple to their child.
The counts. 2 + 4 + 2 = 8 roles across 3 generations, with 3 married couples, each drawn with an equals sign.
Kin by marriage. The son's wife and the daughter's husband are 2 in-laws, affinal kin to the founding grower.

Here is the reading in plain words: the kinship set shows that one rule of descent changes who counts as ego's group, and the family-run stall shows that a working family can be drawn by role alone, while one remark that the farm "came from my husband's side" is a clue about how land passed, not proof of a descent rule.

A limitation of this reading: one visit and one remark are a thin record. A fieldworker would need the family's own account, gathered with consent, before saying how they think of their kin. Where the couples live after marriage is next week's question.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Who at the stall could you see in the field notes, and who would you know about only from the older woman's words? What does that tell you about drawing a diagram from a visit?
(b) Why does the course insist on roles instead of names when you draw a real family you observed? Name one harm a name could cause.

Misconception check. Students often treat one remark as proof of a whole system, so "the farm came from my husband's side" becomes "this family is patrilineal". That is tempting, because the remark fits the patrilineal pattern. But one farm passed down one side is a fact about one piece of land, not a rule the family follows for membership. The cure: write the remark in the observed column, and keep "patrilineal" as a possible interpretation until more evidence arrives.

Key terms

Kinship — The ties a society recognizes as family, built from birth, marriage, and other bonds; every society decides which ties count, what they are called, and what rights and duties they carry, so kinship is cultural as well as biological. (first used: 1. Ask who counts: kinship as cultural)
Consanguineal kin — Relatives connected by birth, such as a parent, a sibling, a grandparent, or a cousin. (first used: 1. Ask who counts: kinship as cultural)
Affinal kin — Relatives connected by marriage, such as a spouse, a parent-in-law, or an aunt's husband. (first used: 1. Ask who counts: kinship as cultural)
Kinship diagram — A drawing of family ties that uses a triangle for a man, a circle for a woman, an equals sign for marriage, a vertical line for descent, and a horizontal line joining siblings, centred on a marked ego and always described in words as well. (first used: 2. Draw the ties: diagrams and kin-type notation)
Ego — The person a kinship diagram or a set of kin terms is centred on; every relative is named by their tie to this person. (first used: 2. Draw the ties: diagrams and kin-type notation)
Kin-type notation — A shorthand for relatives that writes F for father, M for mother, B for brother, Z for sister, S for son, D for daughter, H for husband, and W for wife, combined and read outward from ego, so MB is mother's brother. (first used: 2. Draw the ties: diagrams and kin-type notation)
Descent — A rule that places a person in a group through a parent, deciding which relatives belong to the same group across generations. (first used: 3. Trace descent: lineages, clans, and two rules)
Descent group — A group of people who count themselves as members through a shared rule of descent, such as a lineage or a clan. (first used: 3. Trace descent: lineages, clans, and two rules)
Patrilineal descent — Descent traced through men: sons and daughters belong to their father's group, and only sons pass membership on to their children. (first used: 3. Trace descent: lineages, clans, and two rules)
Matrilineal descent — Descent traced through women: daughters and sons belong to their mother's group, and only daughters pass membership on; it describes how membership passes, not who rules. (first used: 3. Trace descent: lineages, clans, and two rules)
Bilateral kinship — Tracing relatives equally through both parents, which forms no descent groups. (first used: 3. Trace descent: lineages, clans, and two rules)
Lineage — A descent group whose members can trace each step back to a known common ancestor. (first used: 3. Trace descent: lineages, clans, and two rules)
Clan — A descent group that claims a common ancestor, often legendary, without every step back to that ancestor being known. (first used: 3. Trace descent: lineages, clans, and two rules)
Kinship terminology — The set of words a language uses for relatives, which decides who is grouped under one term and who gets a separate one. (first used: 5. Name the cousins: kinship terminology)
Parallel cousins — The children of a parent's same-sex sibling, such as a father's brother's son or a mother's sister's son. (first used: 5. Name the cousins: kinship terminology)
Cross cousins — The children of a parent's opposite-sex sibling, such as a father's sister's daughter or a mother's brother's daughter. (first used: 5. Name the cousins: kinship terminology)
Lineal terminology — A kinship terminology type in which ego uses separate words for siblings and for cousins; its older label, "Eskimo", names the type, not any present-day people's practice. (first used: 5. Name the cousins: kinship terminology)
Generational terminology — A kinship terminology type in which ego calls everyone in their own generation brother or sister; its older label, "Hawaiian", names the type, not any present-day people's practice. (first used: 5. Name the cousins: kinship terminology)
Bifurcate merging terminology — A kinship terminology type in which ego calls parallel cousins brother or sister and calls cross cousins by a different term; its older label, "Iroquois", names the type, not any present-day people's practice. (first used: 5. Name the cousins: kinship terminology)
Fictive kin — People treated as relatives without ties of birth or marriage, such as godparents or a coach the players call family. (first used: 6. Widen the circle: chosen and fictive kin)
Chosen kin — People who choose to be family to one another and take on the duties of family without ties of birth or marriage. (first used: 6. Widen the circle: chosen and fictive kin)

Summary

Kinship is cultural: each society decides which ties count.
Consanguineal kin are related by birth; affinal kin, by marriage.
Read a kin-type string from ego outward: FZD is father's sister's daughter.
Patrilineal and matrilineal groups keep both sons and daughters; only one sex passes membership on.
A lineage knows every step to its ancestor; a clan does not.
Matrilineal descent is not rule by women.
Lineal, generational, and bifurcate merging terminology give ego 2, 6, or 4 "brothers" and "sisters" in the kinship set.
Chosen and fictive kin carry real duties without birth or marriage.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

Read the strings MZD and FZS in words. Say whether each is a parallel or a cross cousin, and what ego would call each one under bifurcate merging terminology.
In an illustrative family, a grandmother has one son and one daughter. The son has 3 children and the daughter has 2. If the family were matrilineal, which grandchildren would belong to the grandmother's group, and what share of her grandchildren is that?
A classmate says, "The Trobriand Islanders were matrilineal, so women ran everything." Using this week's concepts, explain what is wrong with that claim.
An after-school program has a volunteer whom every child calls "Grandpa". He shares no birth or marriage with any of them. Name the kind of kin tie, and say what would make it more than a nickname.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

MZD is mother's sister's daughter: start at ego, go to the mother, then her sister, then that sister's daughter. The mother and her sister are the same sex, so MZD is a parallel cousin, and bifurcate merging terminology calls her "sister". FZS is father's sister's son. The father and his sister are opposite sexes, so FZS is a cross cousin, called by a separate cross-cousin term.
Under matrilineal descent, only daughters pass membership on. So the daughter's 2 children belong to the grandmother's group, and the son's 3 children belong to their own mother's group. The grandmother has 3 + 2 = 5 grandchildren, and 2 ÷ 5 × 100 = 40 percent of them belong to her group.
The claim reads matrilineal as matriarchal. In the 1910s, Trobriand Islanders traced descent matrilineally, and a man's heir was his sister's son. Membership passed through women, but the role being passed went from a man to his sister's son. Descent says how membership passes; it does not say who rules.
He is fictive kin: treated as a relative without ties of birth or marriage. The tie is more than a nickname when it carries duties people act on, such as the children asking him for help and the program expecting him to show up for them.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week, marriage, family, and households show how a residence rule and marriage payments work with this week's descent groups.

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