Lecture: Kinship and Descent
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 9
Opening
Picture a birthday party for a girl turning 9. There are 14 guests from 3 generations around one cake. Her stepsister lights the candles, and her half-brother hands out plates. Her grandmother's new husband takes the photos. A neighbor everyone calls "Auntie" brought the cake. Now ask yourself one question. Who in that room is family?
That question sits under this whole lecture. You'll meet it in many places. A nursing or social-work student will one day ask the people in their care who counts as family. A pre-law student may read a case about who inherits a farm. And anyone on a team that calls itself a family has felt the pull of that word.
Here's where we are. 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, collecting a community's kin ties person by person. Weeks 5 to 7 asked how people make a living, exchange, and govern, and Week 7 said a tribe links villages through kin groups. Week 8 reviewed it all. So a question has been waiting. What exactly is a kin group, and how does a person get into one?
Here's the plan. I'll start with what kinship is. Then I'll give you the tools for drawing it and the short code for naming each relative. We'll trace descent, meet two documented cases, and sort out what people call their cousins. We'll widen the circle to chosen family. And we'll finish at the course's illustrative farmers' market, drawing its family-run stall. Next, in Week 10, Marriage, Family, and Households, the course asks what happens when two families join.
1. Kinship as cultural
Think about the word "cousin". You might use it for your aunt's child, for a family friend you grew up with, or for a distant relative you've met once. The word stretches, because people decide where family begins and ends.
Anthropologists start right there. Kinship is the ties a society recognizes as family, built from birth, marriage, and other bonds. Every society decides which ties count, what they're called, and what rights and duties they carry, so kinship is cultural as well as biological.
Two kinds of tie show up 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.
Let's sort the birthday guests. The half-brother shares a parent with the girl, so he's consanguineal kin. The stepsister is her stepfather's daughter, and that tie runs through a marriage, so she's affinal kin. The grandmother's new husband joined through his marriage, so he's affinal kin too. And "Auntie" shares no birth and no marriage with anyone there. By the two definitions she's neither. Yet the girl would be hurt if she were left off the guest list.
Pause and try this. Your mother's sister's husband comes to every holiday dinner. Is he consanguineal or affinal kin?
Follow the tie back to see what joins him to you.
Here's the answer. Affinal. He's connected to you through his marriage to your mother's sister, not through birth.
Here's the wrong turn to avoid. Students often think kinship is only biology, so "real" family means shared blood. But every society decides which ties count, and people joined by marriage or by choice carry family duties too.
2. Drawing kin: diagrams and kin-type notation
Try describing your cousins out loud and you'll 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. It 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. It's centred on a marked ego, and it's always described in words as well. Ego is the person a kinship diagram or a set of kin terms is centred on, and every relative is named by their tie to this person.
The code is called kin-type notation. It's a shorthand 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. You combine the letters and read them outward from ego, so MB is mother's brother. Z stands for sister because S was already taken by son.
Now meet the course's kinship set, made up for this course. It's a three-generation diagram centred on ego. In the top generation sit ego's 4 grandparents: father's father, father's mother, mother's father, and mother's mother. In the middle generation sit ego's father, his brother, and his sister, each married, and ego's mother, her brother, and her sister, each married. That's 10 positions. In ego's own generation sit ego, a brother, a sister, and 4 cousins. That's 7 positions. So 4 plus 10 plus 7 makes 21 positions in all.
Pause and try this. Read the string FZD out loud, one step at a time, starting from ego.
Put a finger on ego, then move one letter at a time.
Here's the answer. Father's sister's daughter. You go from ego to ego's father, then to his sister, then to her daughter.
The wrong turn here is reading from the far end, so FZD turns into "daughter's sister's father". The string always starts at ego and moves outward.
3. Descent, lineages, and clans
Think about a family business passed down for generations. In some families it goes to sons. In others it goes to whoever suits it, from either side. Who gets it depends on a rule, often one nobody says out loud.
Descent is a rule that places a person in a group through a parent, deciding which relatives belong to the same group across generations. Under patrilineal descent, membership passes through men: sons and daughters belong to their father's group, and only sons pass it on. Under matrilineal descent, membership passes through women: daughters and sons belong to their mother's group, and only daughters pass it on. And bilateral kinship traces relatives equally through both parents, which forms no descent groups.
Descent groups come 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 claims a common ancestor, often legendary, without every step being known.
Let's try it on the kinship set. If the society were patrilineal, ego's patrilineage would be father's father, father, father's brother, father's sister, ego, the brother, the sister, and the father's brother's son. That's 8 people. If it were matrilineal, ego's matrilineage would be the mirror image on the mother's side, also 8 people. Ego and the two siblings sit in both lists, so 8 plus 8, minus those 3, gives 13 people in either list. That leaves 8 of the 21 positions in neither.
Pause and try this. Ego's father's sister is in ego's patrilineage. Is her daughter, FZD, in it too?
Ask who passes membership on under a patrilineal rule.
Here's the answer. No. The father's sister belongs, but only sons pass membership on, so her daughter belongs to her own father's patrilineage.
That cures a common wrong turn. Patrilineal descent doesn't shut daughters out. They belong for life; they don't pass it on. And lineage and clan aren't synonyms. Ask whether every step back to the ancestor is known.
4. Two documented matrilineal cases
Picture a 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.
Two documented cases show matrilineal descent at work. The Haudenosaunee, given once here with the older outsiders' label "Iroquois", 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's 1922 book, 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 the code, a man's heir was his ZS, and a young man's inheritance came from his MB, his mother's brother.
Now hold those two questions apart. How did membership pass? Through women. Who received the role being passed? A man, the sister's son, taking over from his mother's brother.
Pause and try this. A friend says, "Trobriand Islanders were matrilineal, so women ran everything." What's the mix-up?
Separate how membership passes from who holds authority.
Here's the answer. It reads matrilineal as matriarchal. Matrilineal describes how membership passes, through women; it doesn't say who rules.
In many matrilineal societies, authority over a descent group's affairs has been held by men of the group, like a mother's brother. And real societies vary. Haudenosaunee clan mothers held recognized roles, including in choosing chiefs. The descent rule alone doesn't tell you who holds authority.
5. Naming the cousins
Think about the word you use for your father's sister's daughter. In English she's your "cousin", and so is your mother's sister's son. English gives you one word for all of them. Many languages don't.
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, like a father's brother's son. Cross cousins are the children of a parent's opposite-sex sibling, like a father's sister's daughter.
Anthropologists compare terminology with three types, and I'll give each older label once as a historical name for a type, not for any present-day people. Under lineal terminology, older label "Eskimo", ego uses separate words for siblings and for cousins. Under generational terminology, older label "Hawaiian", ego calls everyone in their own generation brother or sister. Under bifurcate merging terminology, older label "Iroquois", ego calls parallel cousins brother or sister and calls cross cousins by a different term. Morgan's Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family was a pioneering comparison of kin terms like these.
Back to the kinship set. Ego's generation holds a brother, a sister, and 4 cousins. The father's brother's son and the mother's sister's son are parallel cousins. The father's sister's daughter and the mother's brother's daughter are cross cousins. That's 2 of each, so parallel cousins are 50 percent of the cousins. Under lineal terminology, ego calls 2 people brother or sister. Under generational, 6 people. Under bifurcate merging, 4 people.
Pause and try this. Under bifurcate merging terminology, what does ego call MBD, the mother's brother's daughter?
Check whether the linking parents are the same sex or not.
Here's the answer. A separate cross-cousin term. Ego's mother and her brother are opposite sexes, so MBD is a cross cousin, not a sister.
The wrong turn is thinking a cousin term means the same everywhere. One person's cousin is another's sister.
6. Chosen and fictive kin
Picture a naming ceremony for a baby. A family friend stands beside the parents and promises to guide the child through life. She's the baby's godparent, and from that day the family treats her as one of their own.
Anthropologists have words for ties like hers. 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.
Picture two more. A youth soccer coach the players call "Coach Dad" drives players home and checks on their grades. He's fictive kin. A college club whose members call each other "family" show up for one another's hard days. They're chosen kin. None of these ties rests on birth or marriage, yet each one carries real duties.
Pause and try this. A program volunteer the children call "Grandpa" shares no birth or marriage with any of them. What kind of kin tie is that?
Ask whether the tie rests on birth, marriage, or neither.
Here's the answer. Fictive kin. He's treated as a relative without ties of birth or marriage, and the tie carries duties people act on.
So don't judge a kin tie by paperwork. Judge it by what people expect of each other.
7. The family-run stall
Now walk back into the course's illustrative farmers' market of 24 stalls, mid-morning. Field-note entry 6, at 8:50 in the morning, records an older woman directing a man and a teenager who restock the bins, while a younger woman runs the card reader. Entry 10, at 9:25, records the older woman saying the farm "came from my husband's side".
The rule from Week 3 still holds: record roles, never names. So let's draw the stall with roles. In the first generation sit the founding grower and her late husband, whose family's farm the stall sells from. In the second sit their son, who drives the truck and restocks, and his wife, who works the card reader, and their daughter, who keeps the books, and her husband, who doesn't work at the stall. In the third sit the son's daughter, a teenager who restocks and weighs produce, and the daughter's son, a college student who handles online orders.
Count them. Two, plus 4, plus 2 makes 8 roles across 3 generations, with 3 married couples, each drawn with an equals sign.
Pause and try this. Which two people at the stall are affinal kin to the founding grower?
Look for the people who joined the family by marriage.
Here's the answer. The son's wife and the daughter's husband. They're her in-laws, joined to her family by marriage, not by birth.
Here's the reading in plain words. The kinship set shows that one rule of descent changes who counts as ego's group. The stall shows that a working family can be drawn by role alone. And one remark that the farm "came from my husband's side" is a clue about how land passed, not proof of a descent rule. One visit is a thin record. Where the couples live after they marry is next week's question.
Closing
Let me pull it together. Kinship is cultural: every society decides which ties count, by birth, by marriage, or by choice. A kinship diagram draws those ties, and kin-type notation names them, read outward from ego. Patrilineal and matrilineal descent keep both sons and daughters, and only one sex passes membership on. A lineage knows every step to its ancestor; a clan doesn't. Matrilineal descent isn't 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. And the market's family stall can be drawn with roles, never names.
Next in this module, read Chapter 9 if you haven't yet, then open the slide deck and the Readings & Resources page, work through the lecture tutorial and the practice set, and take the quiz. Next week, Week 10, Marriage, Family, and Households, asks how marriage joins these descent groups and where couples live after they marry.
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