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Kinship of Family Essay

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Kinship refers to the link that exists among people who are related to each other either by marriage or blood. This link is important because it defines somebody’s history. Kinship is used in most communities to dictate how properties are distributed among one’s descendants. The volume of properties received is dependent on the beneficiary’s number in the family order.

Among communities that speak the same vernacular language, the language is used as the unifying factor because it is used to distinguish that community from other communities. Residing in a common geographical location was responsible for fostering strong bonds due to frequent interaction.

There are two ways through which kinship can be acquired and they include marriage and through blood. The strength of these links does not rely on their source. A link based on marriage can disintegrate after the marriage has collapsed. In contrary affiliation by blood is thought to have the strongest foundation and is said to end when death walks in.

In my typical family setup the affiliation that exists among family members is used to hold it together. For instance, if my father was to divorce my mother, my link with the two of them would remain intact unless I take sides. This is because the link between me and both of them is based on blood while theirs is based on love.

In the above mentioned scenario it is certain that links that are based on blood are stronger and cannot be compared to links based on the marriage because the partners in marriage are united by their strong feelings towards each other and when these feelings fade away the link between them is then broken.

In our culture, the first born male is accorded the same respect as his father and is responsible for the continuation of family name. Female children are not able to participate in family name continuation because traditions dictate that when a woman is married she becomes more attached to her new family.

The male first born is usually consulted before a decision is made because if the father of the family does not exist the first born male assumes his role. Mothers tend to favor the child who is more financially stable than the rest. Studies in the recent past have proved that this favor is natural among females.

In ancient days our community supported marriage strongly because they knew the family was the basic unit that determined the survival of a community. In today’s world these cultures have been eliminated by modernization. Descendants of a given family name were avoided by many because it was perceived that by marrying such people will bring bad blood into a family name.

Children who are not financially stable enjoy limited authority in decision making process in their families because they are only allowed to implement decisions that have been made by those considered to be more intelligent. Money commands power in our family regardless of whether the wealthy child is the last born in the family.

Experience cannot be bought over the counter and thus one would expect the first born of the family whether male or female to be given the first priority in giving counsel to his siblings. Favoring one child over the other fosters jealousy in the family against the child who is seen as the apple of parent’s eye.

Property inheritance should be done with evenness because all the children enjoy the same rights in their family. In most families within our community, property inheritance has led to many wrangles that are extended to their offsprings. Children who are more successful than their siblings tend to take advantage of their siblings.

Parents also are also known to dislike children who are named after the parents of their partner. This is most likely to happen if the bond between the in-laws and their brother’s wife is soar. It is worth noting that the character traits exhibited by one’s children reflect those of his/her parents. Favoritism makes those who are more preferred than others feel like they are superior to their siblings, and hence decisions in that family must safe guard their interests.

Sometimes parent ignite family wrangles by allocating more property to one child. Parents should distribute their property equally among their children unless their children recommend so. This evenness will promote unity in a family. Thus children in our society are encouraged to exercise respect to each other.

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• Introduction

The evolution of family forms

• Personhood, cohesion, and the “matrilineal puzzle”
• Critiques of descent theory
• Reciprocity, incest, and the transition from “nature” to “culture”
• Elementary structures
• Critiques of alliance theory
• Kinship terminology
• Historical materialism and instrumentality
• Households, residence rules, and house societies
• Culturalist accounts
• Feminist and gendered approaches to kinship
• Challenging the conceptual basis of kinship
• Reproductive technologies, social innovation, and the future of kinship studies

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• National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - The foundation of kinship: Households
• University of Nebraska Pressbooks - An Introduction to Anthropology: the Biological and Cultural Evolution of Humans - Social Structures: Kinship and Marriage
• Social Science LibreTexts - Forming Family through Kinship
• Table Of Contents

kinship , system of social organization based on real or putative family ties. The modern study of kinship can be traced back to mid-19th-century interests in comparative legal institutions and philology . In the late 19th century, however, the cross-cultural comparison of kinship institutions became the particular province of anthropology .

If the study of kinship was defined largely by anthropologists, it is equally true that anthropology as an academic discipline was itself defined by kinship. Until the last decades of the 20th century, for example, kinship was regarded as the core of British social anthropology, and no thorough ethnographic study could overlook the central importance of kinship in the functioning of so-called stateless, nonindustrial, or traditional societies.

Kinship is a universal human phenomenon that takes highly variable cultural forms. It has been explored and analyzed by many scholars, however, in ways quite removed from any popular understanding of what “being kin” might mean. As the theoretical core of the newly emerging discipline of anthropology, kinship was also the subject that made the reputations of the leading figures in the field, including scholars such as Bronisław Malinowski , A.R. Radcliffe-Brown , A.L. Kroeber , George Peter Murdock , Meyer Fortes , Edward Evans-Pritchard , and Claude Lévi-Strauss .

These and other anthropologists held that the importance of kinship in “primitive” societies largely resided in its role as an organizational framework for production and group decision making . They typically described these realms of traditional culture (generally glossed as economics and politics, respectively) as being embedded in kinship and dominated by men. Studies of industrialized societies, by contrast, reflected sociological theories that tended to assume kinship constituted a private, domestic domain rather than a central feature of social life. For those whose work featured such cultures , kinship was of minor interest because it was constituted by close family relations and was considered to be the female domain par excellence. During the mid-20th century, studies of kinship became increasingly abstract and removed from the practice of actual lived relations and the powerful emotions that they engendered. Indeed, anthropological and sociological studies of the era were typified by highly technical, or even mathematical, models of how societies worked.

The rise of feminist and Marxist scholarship in the 1960s and ’70s was among several developments that challenged the basis of earlier kinship scholarship. The American Marxist-feminist anthropologist Eleanor Leacock and others brought to the fore the extent to which supposedly holistic practices of ethnography were actually concerned with men only, often to the point of excluding most or all information on the lives of women. The relative foregrounding of men in anthropological studies became less acceptable, and women’s experiences became a legitimate topic of scholarship. Meanwhile, materialist studies of so-called traditional and industrial societies were increasingly able to show the political and economic inflections of the “private,” “domestic” domain of the family.

Feminist anthropologists gradually shifted from documenting the world of women to analyzing the symbolization of gender itself. These studies of the late 1970s and ’80s challenged the intellectual edifice on which the study of kinship had been built and gave rise to a lively debate over the mutual definition of kinship and gender . This debate was part of a much wider questioning of the central tenets of anthropological method and theory, including the division of the field into discrete domains such as politics, economics, kinship, religion, and theory. These developments seemed likely to result in the displacement of kinship studies. However, the advent of new reproductive technologies (including in vitro fertilization ), family forms (such as same-sex marriage ), and approaches blending the separate domains of anthropology instigated the revitalization of kinship studies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The earliest attempts at the comparative study of kinship institutions were undertaken by 19th-century theorists of cultural evolution . The most prominent of these scholars combined legal studies with ethnology and included Henry Maine , Johannes Bachofen , John Ferguson McLennan , and Lewis Henry Morgan . They attempted to trace the historical evolution of family forms from the most “primitive” to the most “modern” and “civilized.”

According to Maine’s theory, the earliest form of kin organization was a state of “patriarchal despotism” in which society consisted of an aggregation of families, each under the rule of the father. The evolution of society was characterized by Maine as a movement from “status” to “contract” forms of relationship—in other words, a change from relations ordered by ascribed positions in a familial system to one in which relations were based on contractual obligations freely entered into by individuals.

In contrast, Bachofen, McLennan, and Morgan posited that the earliest societies were ruled by women and that the forms of kinship used by these societies were rather less regulated than Maine had suggested. Between what Morgan labeled a state of “primitive promiscuity”—in which sex and marriage were quite unregulated—and the patriarchal monogamous family form of “civilization” (the evolutionary stage in which he placed 19th-century European and Euro-American society) came a sequence of intermediate stages. These varied depending on the theorist but typically included variations such as group marriage , exogamy (outmarriage), matriarchy , and polygamy .

Theories of cultural evolution were conservative in the sense that they demonstrated that the mid-19th century bourgeois family was the most “civilized” of kinship institutions. They were also speculative in that there was no direct evidence for the various early stages posited by Bachofen, McLennan, or Morgan; group marriage, matriarchy, primitive promiscuity, and so forth were merely colourful projections of the 19th-century imagination.

The evidence that these early theorists did use was partly derived from the comparison of the legal institutions and kin terms found in different societies. Collections and analyses of linguistic data by philologists, among others, demonstrated that while some cultures differentiated “ lineal kin ” (those in a direct parent-child relationship) from “ collateral kin ” (such as cousins, aunts, and uncles), others did not. In some cultures, for example, father and father’s brother, or mother and mother’s sister, were denoted by the same term. In such systems the terms for cousins would be the same as those for siblings—in other words, father’s brother’s son, father’s son, and brother are classed together, as are mother’s sister’s daughter, mother’s daughter, and sister.

Morgan called kinship terminology that differentiated lineal kin from others “descriptive,” while systems that grouped lineal and collateral kin became known as “classificatory.” He posited that classificatory terminology reflected a system in which a group of brothers shared their sisters in marriage and that it was a cultural survival from an earlier time in which either father and father’s brother had been indistinguishable or the distinction held no social significance.

To Morgan this implied a system of marriage in which the identity of a specific father was unknowable while the identity of the mother was known but socially unimportant. The facts of pregnancy and birth appeared to differentiate motherhood from fatherhood in a crucial way. Motherhood was always recognizable—although not necessarily significant—whereas fatherhood required regulation to be identifiable. From this premise Morgan posited a hypothetical stage of “group marriage,” and it was but a small leap to suggest an even earlier era of “primitive promiscuity” during which sex and marriage were totally unregulated (in fact, modern anthropology has demonstrated that no human society exists nor has existed in which sex and marital relations are not regulated in some way).

These early attempts to systematize the study of human kinship institutions produced models that have since been discredited but that left an enduring mark on modern anthropology in at least two ways. First, kin terminology long continued to be an important aspect of kinship studies. Indeed, the questions these early studies raised about the relationship between language and culture—e.g., Are kin terms a direct reflection of marriage practices?—have occupied a central place in anthropology. Second, such studies made apparent an important distinction between motherhood and fatherhood, acknowledging the former condition as inherently recognizable and the latter as less obvious. This distinction marked out another crucial area of study for kinship—the cross-cultural study of beliefs about procreation. Both these topics are considered in further detail below.

For modern anthropology the most influential of the evolutionary theorists was Lewis Henry Morgan. While other 19th-century anthropologists generally based their work on library research, Morgan carried out fieldwork among the Iroquois and other Native American peoples. In Ancient Society (1877) he attempted to link the evolution of kinship institutions to technological changes and the evolution of property forms. He suggested a schema in which the earlier stages of kinship organization were linked to low levels of technology and to hunting, gathering, or fishing as modes of subsistence. In these early stages of human evolution , there was an absence of ownership of property. Later the development of pastoralism and settled agriculture—and, more importantly, the greater investments of time and energy that these activities engendered—fostered a vested interest in owning the products of labour, such as herds or cultivated land. A man would wish to pass on such products to his offspring, and it thus became more important to know who those offspring were. As a result, men attempted to exert greater control over women, thereby causing humanity to move sequentially through the stages of primitive promiscuity, group marriage, matriarchy, patriarchy , and polygamy, ultimately “achieving” monogamy .

Morgan’s theories thus suggested a mechanism for the evolution of the family: technological developments and the concomitant changes in the ownership of property drove the development of new kinship institutions. His pioneering work on kinship terminology, as well as his grand evolutionary scheme, has retained a niche in the modern study of kinship. Indeed, although anthropology has for the most part long abandoned any evolutionary ambitions, echoes of Morgan’s historical stages continue to crop up in some surprising places. This is partly through the historical coincidence that Morgan’s theories were taken up by German expatriates Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their work on precapitalist societies.

Marx and Engels were engaged in an ambitious project to analyze capitalist society and to demonstrate that the social institutions of capitalism were neither historically inevitable nor desirable. Morgan’s work was of major interest to them for two reasons. The first was historical: his evolutionary scheme linking kinship institutions to technology and the ownership of property suggested how the particular social relations of capitalism might have developed from earlier social and economic systems. The second was comparative: Morgan had provided ethnographic evidence that the private ownership and control of property, which was dominant under capitalism, was not the only possible form that property relations could take. Indeed, ownership by a group such as a clan or a lineage was by no means unusual in precapitalist societies that were organized through kinship.

Engels’s The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884) was in fact largely based on Morgan’s Ancient Society . It traced the evolution of family forms, linking them, as Morgan had done, to changes in technology and arrangements for the ownership of property. Despite their similarities, however, the two works were set apart by a crucial difference—Morgan’s work was intended as a scholarly product, or an end in itself, while Engels’s was revolutionary in tone and spirit. Rather than regard mid-19th-century European society and family life as the apotheosis of civilization, Engels was highly critical of these institutions. He had some particularly acerbic observations to make about the position of women in the patriarchal European bourgeois family—which, he argued, compared unfavourably to that of prostitutes . Marx and Engels were particularly influential on the kinship studies of Soviet and Chinese anthropologists, which retained a heavily evolutionist flavour long after such theories had been abandoned elsewhere. Engels’s Origins of the Family was also taken up much later by feminists and inspired a number of studies of the position of women in so-called simple societies.

Kinship in Sociology: Definition in the Study of Sociology

The Basic Underpinning of All Human Relationships

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Kinship is the most universal and basic of all human relationships and is based on ties of blood, marriage, or adoption.

There are two basic kinds of kinship ties in sociology:

• Those based on blood that trace descent
• Those based on marriage, adoption, or other connections

Some sociologists and anthropologists have argued that kinship goes beyond familial ties, and even involves social bonds.

Defininition of Kinship in Sociology

Kinship is a "system of social organization based on real or putative family ties," according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. But in sociology , kinship involves more than family ties, according to the Sociology Group :

"Kinship is one of the most important organizing components of society. ... This social institution ties individuals and groups together and establishes a relationship among them."

Kinship can involve a relationship between two people unrelated by lineage or marriage, according to David Murray Schneider, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago who was well known in academic circles for his studies of kinship.

In an article titled "What Is Kinship All About?" published posthumously in 2004 in " Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader ," Schneider said kinship refers to:

"the degree of sharing likelihood among individuals from different communities. For instance, if two people have many similarities between them then both of them do have a bond of kinship."

At its most basic, kinship refers to "the bond (of) marriage and reproduction," says the Sociology Group. But kinship can also involve any number of groups or individuals based on their social relationships.

Types of Kinship in Sociology

Sociologists and anthropologists debate what types of kinship exist. Most social scientists agree that kinship in sociology is based on two broad areas: birth and marriage; others say a third category of kinship involves social ties. These three types of kinship are:

• Consanguineal : This kinship is based on blood—or birth: the relationship between parents and children as well as siblings, says the Sociology Group. This is the most basic and universal type of kinship. Also known as a primary kinship, it involves people who are directly related.
• Affinal : This kinship is based on marriage. The relationship between husband and wife is also considered a basic form of kinship in sociology.
• Social : Schneider argued that not all kinship derives from blood (consanguineal) or marriage (affinal). There are social kinships where individuals not connected by birth or marriage have a kinship bond, he said. By this definition, two people who live in different communities may share a bond of kinship through a religious affiliation or a social group, such as the Kiwanis or Rotary service club, or within a rural or tribal society marked by close ties among its members. A major difference between consanguineal or affinal and social kinship is that the latter involves "the ability to terminate absolutely the relationship" without any legal recourse, Schneider stated in his 1984 book, " A Critique of the Study of Kinship ."

Importance of Kinship in Sociology

Kinship is important to a person's and a community's well-being. Because different societies define kinship differently, they also set the rules governing kinship, which are sometimes legally defined and sometimes implied. At its most basic levels, according to the Sociology Group, kinship in sociology refers to:

Descent : the socially existing recognized biological relationships between people in the society. Every society considers that all offspring and children descend from their parents and that biological relationships exist between parents and children. Descent is used to trace an individual’s ancestry.

Lineage : the line from which descent is traced. This is also called ancestry.

Based on descent and lineage, kinship determines family-line relationships—and even sets rules on who can marry and with whom, says Puja Mondal in " Kinship: Brief Essay on Kinship ." Mondal adds that kinship sets guidelines for interactions between people and defines the proper, acceptable relationship between father and daughter, brother and sister, or husband and wife, for example.

But since kinship also covers social connections, it has a wider role in society, says the Sociology Group, noting that kinship:

• Maintains unity, harmony, and cooperation in relationships
• Sets guidelines for communication and interactions among people
• Defines the rights and obligations of the family and marriage as well as the system of political power in rural areas or tribal societies, including among members who are not related by blood or marriage
• Helps people better understand their relationships with each other
• Helps people better relate to each other in society

Kinship, then, involves the social fabric that ties families—and even societies—together. According to the anthropologist George Peter Murdock:

“Kinship is a structured system of relationships in which kins are bound to one another by complex inter­locking ties.”

The breadth of those "interlocking ties" depends on how you define kin and kinship.

If kinship involves only blood and marriage ties, then kinship defines how family relationships form and how family members interact with one another. But if, as Schneider argued, kinship involves any number of social ties, then kinship—and its rules and norms—regulates how people from specific groups or even entire communities relate to each other in every aspect of their lives.

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Anthropology and Kinship: Past, Present, and Future

Traditionally one of the key topics in Anthropology, the study of kinship encompasses how individuals are related to one another through biological, legal, and symbolic means (Peletz, 1995). Across all societies, kinship is marked by a set of relationship terms that define the universe of kin and that may be extended metaphorically to non-kin, and even to various aspects of the world of nature (Nuttall, 2000; Souza, 2006). Appreciating how kinship has been studied across the anthropological discipline and the direction it is taking today is crucial to understand whether postmodern cultures of consumerism, alongside technological advancements, are impacting the ways in which people connect and form meaningful relationships with each other across a range of mediums.

The study of kinship is widely regarded to have its origins in the mid-19th century United States with anthropologist L.H. Morgan (Schneider, 2003). Exploring the kinship classifications of Native American communities, Morgan conceptualized kinship with explicit reference to a genealogical grid defined in biological terms, arguing relationships to be founded upon a “community of blood” (Morgan, 1871; in Sousa, 2003). Morgan embarked on several ethnographic trips around America and Asia, gathering information on kinship terminology to culminate in his publication of Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871). Within this, Morgan would argue for kinship systems across the New and Old Worlds to be differentiated as ‘descriptive’ versus ‘classificatory’ systems; however, being a proponent of Social Evolutionism theory, Morgan used these findings to support imaginations of non-Western ‘primitive’ civilisations as contrasted against ‘advanced’ Western societies, later penning Ancient Society in 1877 to propel this view of the linear evolution of social institutions (Sousa, 2003).

Although Morgan’s social evolutionist views would not face critique until almost a century later, his research into consanguinity ignited an interest across British anthropology in the study of kinship, as imperatives for understanding the mechanisms for maintaining political order in stateless societies grew alongside the colonial enterprise. Influenced by Morgan’s initial comparative models, the formulation of descent theory was propelled by Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard in the early-to-mid twentieth century. This theory posited that biological descent was the basis for group stability in non-Western societies, informing how rights, duties, status, and property were transmitted within these decentralised communities from one generation to the next. Building on the sociological orientation of Durkheim (1892, 1898) who viewed kinship as ‘nothing if not social’ (Sousa, 2003), Evans-Pritchard (1940) and Radcliffe-Brown (1950) pushed for a structuralist-functionalist approach in their studies of African kinship systems, highlighting kinship organisation as informed by the social relationships between parents and children and resulting in arrangements that enabled persons to cooperate with one another in an orderly social life. Despite this social focus however, the assumption of a biological crux within kinship was something that would engender serious criticism in decades to come (Schneider, 1984).

While British social anthropologists in the mid-twentieth century were focused on social rules and the ways in which members of different societies acted within given frameworks, French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss (1949) turned to systems of affinity within kinship to explore the transition from notions of the animal world of nature to the human one of culture through the medium of reciprocity and exchange. Influenced by Marcel Mauss’ (1925) work on gift giving in ‘primitive’ societies, Levi-Strauss held that the act of giving away and receiving fertile women in the reproduction of one’s group constituted categories of communities of the Self against the Other, ultimately setting up a distinction between those who give wives (“wife givers”) and those who receive them (“wife takers”) to form the first kinship categories as an act of incest prohibition.

Terming this as the alliance theor, Lévi-Strauss’s theories placed him in opposition to anthropologists who saw kinship as based on descent rather than marriage. Yet a biological core remained implicit within Levi-Strauss’ theorisation as he saw the exchange of women as critical to the procreation and biological reproduction of societies (Schneider, 1965). Moreover, the perspective that women’s role was simply that of being exchanged would come under fire alongside the emergence of feminist and Marxist anthropology in the 1980s.

Before this, however, by the 1960s and 1970s the salience that was being placed on kinship itself within anthropology began to be challenged. Questioning its theoretical validity, American anthropologist Schneider (1968) and British anthropologist Needham (1971) unpacked how attempts to construct kinship through theories of descent and alliance in a universal manner had not only subsumed the heterogeneity of relationships into concepts and typologies, but that such concepts were rooted in ethnocentric notions of biological procreation that miss non-Western understandings of kinship.

Conducting a home analysis in the United States, Schneider (1972) undertook a culturalist approach, examining kinship as a cultural system based in shared symbols, norms, and values. Revealing how American views rested on the symbolic notions of blood and shared genes as equating to social relationships, Schneider highlighted how kin ties of “diffuse, enduring solidarity” were ultimately a genealogical conception entertained only in the anthropologists’ subculture (Sousa, 2003). Comparing his ethnographic research to his analysis of the Micronesian Yapse, who did not link sexual procreation with kin ties, Schneider (1984) maintained that the anthropological study of kinship was based on biological assumptions of sexual procreation that were not valid cross-culturally, and that instead kinship was culturally specific, unfixed, and fluid, changing between societies.

Similarly, Needham criticised how anthropologists had succumbed to a craving for universality across kinship studies, bypassing the particular complexities of social life. Looking to the institution of marriage, Needham argued that none of the rights that are part of this concept of matrimony exist in all empirical instances, that it is instead an idea of a “contractual union of sexual statuses” (Needham 1971). Both Schneider and Needham challenged existing theories of alliance and descent as well as the biological focus at the crux of the field, citing the lack of analytical consistency in the comparison of social relations across cultures as invalidating kinship as an analytical category (Sousa, 2003). As such, anthropology’s ‘love affair’ with kinship began to cool, with Needham (1971) declaration of “the death of kinship” seemingly condemning the subfield.

With this damning critique, studies of kinship across anthropology suffered a twenty-year decline, kept alive only by the interest of feminist anthropologists in the intersection between kinship, gender and personhood. The work of Nature, Culture, and Gender by Carol MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern (1980) further enforced the position that past theories of kinship were particularities of Western thought, as the authors examined the dichotomy between nature and culture and how this became mapped onto Cartesian constructions of women and men as a universal phenomenon for the purpose of female subordination. The later publication of Jane Collier and Sylvia Yanagisako's edited collection Gender and Kinship: Essays Towards a Unified Analysis (1987) reinforced the importance of gender relations and asymmetries in understanding kinship systems cross-culturally, contending how women’s positions within patrilineal societies had long been usurped by attention on the male ego and thus how the work of social reproduction in domestic, private spaces had not been given due consideration.

Nevertheless, the death knell for kinship within anthropology did not ring true, as with the 1990s came the revitalisation of the subfield into a paradigm of new kinship studies (Read, 2007). The work of feminist anthropologists surrounding gender and personhood, queer studies into gay and lesbian kinship, and the rise of new reproductive technologies (NRTs) alongside perceived changes in the institution of the family in Western societies suggested new practices and experiences of Western kinship emerging outside of the biological and domestic spheres that had been core assumptions of old kinship studies (Strathern, 1992).

Ethnographic research into the kinship practices amongst gay and lesbian communities was crucial in critiquing the Schneiderian analysis of kinship in the United States as rooted in understandings of blood and biology, forcing a rethinking of what constitutes kinship in Western societies. Studies in the United States by Kath Weston (1991, 1995) and Ellen Lewin (1993) revealed how informants conceptualised biological kinship as temporary, as such kin had been known to sever ties upon learning of a relative’s homosexuality. On the other hand, the friendships of informants were described in terms of certainty and permanence, presented as replacing the kin ties that had been lost across biological family members. The distinction between biogenetic and social worlds was therefore disrupted through the analysis of non-heterosexual kinship practices, highlighted the performative qualities of kinship (re)production (Butler, 2002), and the puncturing of the conjugal and nuclear family allowed for recognition towards new and complex, recombinant families and partnerships (Edwards, 2014).

Furthermore, the influence from cultural and feminists theorists to consider gender and personhood within conceptualisations of kinship led to the expansion of old understandings fixed in biological procreation towards a new paradigm that situates kinship as established through daily interactions (Read, 2007). Built on by Janet Carsten with her publication of Cultures of Relatedness (2000), kinship was presented as embedded in the everyday experience of ‘becoming’. In her eighteen-month ethnographic study exploring food, residence, and friendship within a Malay family in Pulau Langkawi, Carsten experienced how kin relations were built and reproduced through commensality (the act of sharing food) and living with one another. Such acts of caring and sharing supported the construction of kin relations regardless of biogenetics, highlighting kinship as a process that is embodied and practiced rather than essentialised within our biological being (Butler, 2002).

Marilyn Strathern was also a key figure within the study of kinship at this time: her research into Melanesian society led to her formulating the concept of the dividual person, a contrast to the Western concept that imagines persons in a “permanently subjective state” (1988, 338) towards instead a singular body that manifests itself as partible and permeable representing a social microcosm of multiple relationships (Strathern, 1988; in Linkenbach and Muslow, 2019). Maintaining that to act, the singular dividual must be individuated shedding “half the dual form” (1988, 275), such as Strathern saw a person within society as moving from one state to the other. While Strathern’s work was praised as a milestone, critiques have formed through concerns of essentialism and cultural relativism, with Melanesian and Western personhood appearing as incommensurable and the dividual as the ‘other’ of individuality (Gell, 1999; LiPuma, 1998). Nevertheless, in/dividuality is an important concept in the study of kinship as it explores how persons can be constituted through their relations, becoming inherently relational beings.

In the last three decades, Anthropology has taken a turn towards New Kinship studies, propelled by the rise of genetic science and Artificial Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) (Laibman, 2013). Challenging how English kinship used to be grounded in natural facts, Strathern (1992) proposed an anthropological shift towards a post-natural world where artificial reproduction combined with neoliberal ideals of choice were transforming established understandings of kin relations from primordial to technological, social, and political. The 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act was key in generating such interest, as constructing the legal frameworks governing infertility treatment, medical services ancillary to infertility treatment such as embryo storage, and all human embryological research performed in the UK (La Tourelle, 2014) quickly led to discussions surrounding how surrogacy (Thompson, 2001), gamete-freezing (Carsten, 2004), abortions and designer babies (Gilding, 2002) enabled by new reproductive sciences were reshaping practices and experiences of relatedness and parenthood.

Across studies involving ARTs, a flexible choreography between the biological and the social has emerged where kinship could be forged just as much through care, desire, and attention as it could through biology and genetics (Edwards, 2014). Poignant examples include research across fertility clinics within discussions of those providing the egg and sperm, those who gestate, and those who raise the child. Charis Thompson’s (2001) study of Californian infertility clinics explored the ‘de-kinning’ of Vanessa, a gestational surrogate, who after being paid an agreed-upon $12,000, became unlinked from the kin network after giving birth to the baby who she was carrying for another couple. Labelling Vanessa’s experience as part of the process of ‘strategic naturalising’, Thompson highlights how certain biological facts become recognised only through social activation, suggesting the biological as inherently deeply social. Kinship thus becomes reinforced as “an artefact of the organisation of knowledges from different sources, with different ways of verifying connections between persons” (Strathern 2005: 46; cited in Edwards, 2014: 57), ultimately reflecting postmodern tenets of subjective ontologies and epistemologies (Haraway, 1989) where overarching metanarratives regarding how kin relations form are rejected.

ARTs and new kinship studies have highlighted the centrality of choice and circumstance in how relatedness is conceptualised, emphasising how today a family may consist of any grouping regardless of biogenetic ties. Regarding the development and commercialisation of genomic testing for personal health and ancestry information however, research into the medicalisation of kinship through the biological nuclear family (Finkler et al ., 2003) alongside bio-essentialist narratives of relatedness through constructions of ethnicity and race (Panofsky and Donovan, 2019) are complicating the extent to which past ideas of consanguinity and shared genes have been laid to rest. Notions of finding one’s true identity through their biological connections are increasingly being employed as a marketing strategy by DTC companies, impacting who is considered kin, and through what means.

Bibliographical References

Butler, J. (2002). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge.

Carsten, J. (2000). Cultures of relatedness: New approaches to the study of kinship. Cambridge University Press.

Carsten, J. (2004). After kinship: New departures in anthropology. Cambridge University Press.

Collier, J.F. and Yanagisako, S.J. (1987). Gender and kinship: Essays toward a unified analysis. Stanford University Press.

Durkheim, E. 1982 [1895] The rules of the sociological method. Review of Kohler. L’Annee Sociologique , 1, 306-319.

Edwards, J. (2014). Undoing kinship. Relatedness in assisted reproduction. 44-60.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1940). The Nuer: a description of the modes of livelihood and political institutions of a Nilotic People . Oxford University Press.

Finkler, K., Skrzynia, C. and Evans, J.P. (2003). The new genetics and its consequences for family, kinship, medicine and medical genetics. Social science & medicine , 57(3), 403-412.

Franklin, S. (2001). Biologization Revisited: Kinship Theory in the Context of the New Biologies. In S. Franklin and S. McKinnon (Eds.), Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies , 302–325. Duke University Press.

Gilding, M. (2002). Families of the new millennium: designer babies, cyber sex and virtual communities. Family Matters , 62, 4-10.

Laibman, D. (2013). Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present. Chapter Seven: Assisted Reproduction.

LaTourelle, J. (2014). Human fertilisation and embryology act (1990) . Embryo project encyclopedia.

Levi-Strauss, C. (1949). The Elementary Structures of Kinship . Eyre and Spottiswoode.

Lewin, E. (1993). Lesbian mothers: Accounts of gender in American culture . Cornell University Press.

Linkenbach, A. and Mulsow, M. (2019). Introduction: The dividual self. In Religious individualisation, 323-344. De Gruyter.

LiPuma, Edward. (1998). Modernity and Forms of Personhood in Melanesia. En M. Lambek and A. Strathern (Eds.), Bodies and Persons: Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Melanesia, 53–79. Cambridge University Press.

MacCormack, C. and Strathern, M. (Eds.). (1980). Nature, culture and gender . Cambridge University Press.

Mauss, M. (1967). The Gift (I. Cunnison, Trans.). New York: Norton.

Morgan, H.L. (1871) Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human family. Smithsonian Institution.

Nuttall, M. (2000). Choosing kin. Dividends of kinship: Meanings and uses of social relatedness , 33-60.

Panofsky, A. and Donovan, J. (2019). Genetic ancestry testing among white nationalists: From identity repair to citizen science. Social studies of science , 49(5), 653-681.

Peletz, M.G. (1995). Kinship studies in late twentieth-century anthropology. Annual review of anthropology , 343-372.

Radfcliffe-Brown, A.R. (1950). Introduction. In R. Radcliffe-Brown and D. Forde (Eds.), African Systems of Kinship and Marriage . Oxford University Press.

Read, D.W. (2007). Kinship theory: A paradigm shift. Ethnology , 329-364.

Schneider, D. M. (1968). Kinship and Biology. In H.J. Coale (Ed.), Aspects of the Analysis of Family Structure . Princeton University Press.

Schneider, D. M. (n.d.) American kinship: a cultural account . University of Chicago Press

Schneider, D.M. (2003). What is kinship all about?. In R. Parkin and L. Stone (Eds.), Kinship and Family: an anthropological reader. Blackwell Publishers.

Schneider, D.M. (1984). A critique of the study of Kinship . University of Michigan Press.

Strathern, M. (1988). The gender of the Gift. University of California Press.

Strathern, M. (1992). Reproducing the future: essays on anthropology, kinship and the new reproductive technologies . Manchester University Press.

Strathern, M. (2005). Kinship, Law and the Unexpected: Relatives Are Always a Surprise. Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, C. (2001). Strategic naturalizing: kinship in an infertility clinic. In Relative values. Reconfiguring kinship studies, 175-202.

Weston, K. (1991). Families we choose: Lesbians, gays, kinship . Columbia University Press.

Weston, K. (1995). Forever is a long time: Romancing the real in gay kinship ideologies. Naturalizing power: Essays in feminist cultural analysis , 87-110.

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Anthropology

What this handout is about.

This handout briefly situates anthropology as a discipline of study within the social sciences. It provides an introduction to the kinds of writing that you might encounter in your anthropology courses, describes some of the expectations that your instructors may have, and suggests some ways to approach your assignments. It also includes links to information on citation practices in anthropology and resources for writing anthropological research papers.

What is anthropology, and what do anthropologists study?

Anthropology is the study of human groups and cultures, both past and present. Anthropology shares this focus on the study of human groups with other social science disciplines like political science, sociology, and economics. What makes anthropology unique is its commitment to examining claims about human ‘nature’ using a four-field approach. The four major subfields within anthropology are linguistic anthropology, socio-cultural anthropology (sometimes called ethnology), archaeology, and physical anthropology. Each of these subfields takes a different approach to the study of humans; together, they provide a holistic view. So, for example, physical anthropologists are interested in humans as an evolving biological species. Linguistic anthropologists are concerned with the physical and historical development of human language, as well as contemporary issues related to culture and language. Archaeologists examine human cultures of the past through systematic examinations of artifactual evidence. And cultural anthropologists study contemporary human groups or cultures.

What kinds of writing assignments might I encounter in my anthropology courses?

The types of writing that you do in your anthropology course will depend on your instructor’s learning and writing goals for the class, as well as which subfield of anthropology you are studying. Each writing exercise is intended to help you to develop particular skills. Most introductory and intermediate level anthropology writing assignments ask for a critical assessment of a group of readings, course lectures, or concepts. Here are three common types of anthropology writing assignments:

Critical essays

This is the type of assignment most often given in anthropology courses (and many other college courses). Your anthropology courses will often require you to evaluate how successfully or persuasively a particular anthropological theory addresses, explains, or illuminates a particular ethnographic or archaeological example. When your instructor tells you to “argue,” “evaluate,” or “assess,” they are probably asking for some sort of critical essay. (For more help with deciphering your assignments, see our handout on understanding assignments .)

Writing a “critical” essay does not mean focusing only on the most negative aspects of a particular reading or theory. Instead, a critical essay should evaluate or assess both the weaknesses and the merits of a given set of readings, theories, methods, or arguments.

Sample assignment:

Assess the cultural evolutionary ideas of late 19th century anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan in terms of recent anthropological writings on globalization (select one recent author to compare with Morgan). What kinds of anthropological concerns or questions did Morgan have? What kinds of anthropological concerns underlie the current anthropological work on globalization that you have selected? And what assumptions, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies inform these questions or projects?

Ethnographic projects

Another common type of research and writing activity in anthropology is the ethnographic assignment. Your anthropology instructor might expect you to engage in a semester-long ethnographic project or something shorter and less involved (for example, a two-week mini-ethnography).

So what is an ethnography? “Ethnography” means, literally, a portrait (graph) of a group of people (ethnos). An ethnography is a social, political, and/or historical portrait of a particular group of people or a particular situation or practice, at a particular period in time, and within a particular context or space. Ethnographies have traditionally been based on an anthropologist’s long-term, firsthand research (called fieldwork) in the place and among the people or activities they are studying. If your instructor asks you to do an ethnographic project, that project will likely require some fieldwork.

Because they are so important to anthropological writing and because they may be an unfamiliar form for many writers, ethnographies will be described in more detail later in this handout.

Spend two hours riding the Chapel Hill Transit bus. Take detailed notes on your observations, documenting the setting of your fieldwork, the time of day or night during which you observed and anything that you feel will help paint a picture of your experience. For example, how many people were on the bus? Which route was it? What time? How did the bus smell? What kinds of things did you see while you were riding? What did people do while riding? Where were people going? Did people talk? What did they say? What were people doing? Did anything happen that seemed unusual, ordinary, or interesting to you? Why? Write down any thoughts, self-reflections, and reactions you have during your two hours of fieldwork. At the end of your observation period, type up your fieldnotes, including your personal thoughts (labeling them as such to separate them from your more descriptive notes). Then write a reflective response about your experience that answers this question: how is riding a bus about more than transportation?

Analyses using fossil and material evidence

In some assignments, you might be asked to evaluate the claims different researchers have made about the emergence and effects of particular human phenomena, such as the advantages of bipedalism, the origins of agriculture, or the appearance of human language. To complete these assignments, you must understand and evaluate the claims being made by the authors of the sources you are reading, as well as the fossil or material evidence used to support those claims. Fossil evidence might include things like carbon dated bone remains; material evidence might include things like stone tools or pottery shards. You will usually learn about these kinds of evidence by reviewing scholarly studies, course readings, and photographs, rather than by studying fossils and artifacts directly.

The emergence of bipedalism (the ability to walk on two feet) is considered one of the most important adaptive shifts in the evolution of the human species, but its origins in space and time are debated. Using course materials and outside readings, examine three authors’ hypotheses for the origins of bipedalism. Compare the supporting points (such as fossil evidence and experimental data) that each author uses to support their claims. Based on your examination of the claims and the supporting data being used, construct an argument for why you think bipedal locomotion emerged where and when it did.

How should I approach anthropology papers?

Writing an essay in anthropology is very similar to writing an argumentative essay in other disciplines. In most cases, the only difference is in the kind of evidence you use to support your argument. In an English essay, you might use textual evidence from novels or literary theory to support your claims; in an anthropology essay, you will most often be using textual evidence from ethnographies, artifactual evidence, or other support from anthropological theories to make your arguments.

Here are some tips for approaching your anthropology writing assignments:

• Make sure that you understand what the prompt or question is asking you to do. It is a good idea to consult with your instructor or teaching assistant if the prompt is unclear to you. See our handout on arguments and handout on college writing for help understanding what many college instructors look for in a typical paper.
• Review the materials that you will be writing with and about. One way to start is to set aside the readings or lecture notes that are not relevant to the argument you will make in your paper. This will help you focus on the most important arguments, issues, and behavioral and/or material data that you will be critically assessing. Once you have reviewed your evidence and course materials, you might decide to have a brainstorming session. Our handouts on reading in preparation for writing and brainstorming might be useful for you at this point.
• Develop a working thesis and begin to organize your evidence (class lectures, texts, research materials) to support it. Our handouts on constructing thesis statements and paragraph development will help you generate a thesis and develop your ideas and arguments into clearly defined paragraphs.

What is an ethnography? What is ethnographic evidence?

Many introductory anthropology courses involve reading and evaluating a particular kind of text called an ethnography. To understand and assess ethnographies, you will need to know what counts as ethnographic data or evidence.

You’ll recall from earlier in this handout that an ethnography is a portrait—a description of a particular human situation, practice, or group as it exists (or existed) in a particular time, at a particular place, etc. So what kinds of things might be used as evidence or data in an ethnography (or in your discussion of an ethnography someone else has written)? Here are a few of the most common:

• Things said by informants (people who are being studied or interviewed). When you are trying to illustrate someone’s point of view, it is very helpful to appeal to their own words. In addition to using verbatim excerpts taken from interviews, you can also paraphrase an informant’s response to a particular question.
• Observations and descriptions of events, human activities, behaviors, or situations.
• Relevant historical background information.
• Statistical data.

Remember that “evidence” is not something that exists on its own. A fact or observation becomes evidence when it is clearly connected to an argument in order to support that argument. It is your job to help your reader understand the connection you are making: you must clearly explain why statements x, y, and z are evidence for a particular claim and why they are important to your overall claim or position.

Citation practices in anthropology

In anthropology, as in other fields of study, it is very important that you cite the sources that you use to form and articulate your ideas. (Please refer to our handout on plagiarism for information on how to avoid plagiarizing). Anthropologists follow the Chicago Manual of Style when they document their sources. The basic rules for anthropological citation practices can be found in the AAA (American Anthropological Association) Style Guide. Note that anthropologists generally use in-text citations, rather than footnotes. This means that when you are using someone else’s ideas (whether it’s a word-for-word quote or something you have restated in your own words), you should include the author’s last name and the date the source text was published in parentheses at the end of the sentence, like this: (Author 1983).

If your anthropology or archaeology instructor asks you to follow the style requirements of a particular academic journal, the journal’s website should contain the information you will need to format your citations. Examples of such journals include The American Journal of Physical Anthropology and American Antiquity . If the style requirements for a particular journal are not explicitly stated, many instructors will be satisfied if you consistently use the citation style of your choice.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Scupin, Raymond, and Christopher DeCorse. 2016. Anthropology: A Global Perspective , 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Solis, Jacqueline. 2020. “A to Z Databases: Anthropology.” Subject Research Guides, University of North Carolina. Last updated November 2, 2020. https://guides.lib.unc.edu/az.php?s=1107 .

University of Chicago Press. 2017. The Chicago Manual of Style , 17th ed. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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11.3 Reckoning Kinship across Cultures

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe the importance of kinship in social structure.
• Distinguish between different kinship systems.
• Illustrate three forms of kinship.

By defining relationships between individuals, cultural understandings of kinship create kinship systems or structures within society. This is the institutional aspect of kinship, and it is bigger than the family itself. In smaller societies with lower populations, kinship plays a major role in all social institutions. In larger societies with higher populations, kinship places the local and familiar in opposition to a wider, more amorphous society, where relationships have less and less significance. In effect, kinship frames the way the individual and family are viewed in relation to the larger society and embodies social values.

Types of Kinship Systems

In his early research, Lewis Henry Morgan distinguished three basic forms of kinship structure commonly found across cultures. Today, we refer to these kinship forms as lineal, bifurcate merging, and generational kinship. Each one defines family and relatives a bit differently and so highlights different roles, rights, and responsibilities for these individuals. This means that depending on the kinship structure used by a society, EGO will refer to a different set of individuals as kindred and will have a different relationship with those individuals.

Lineal kinship: Lineal kinship (initially referred to as Eskimo kinship ) is a form of kinship reckoning (a way of mapping EGO to other individuals) that highlights the nuclear family. While kindred in a lineal system is traced through both EGO’s mother and father (a practice called bilateral descent), the kinship terminology clearly shows that the rights and responsibilities of the nuclear family far exceed those of other kindred. In effect, lineal kinship, associated frequently with North American and European societies, suggests a very small and nominal family with little power and influence across other social institutions.

On the lineal diagram ( Figure 11.8 ), note the following: each of the members of the nuclear family have specific kinship terms, but bilateral kin (through both EGO’s mother and father) and collateral kin (EGO’s siblings and their offspring) are lumped together with similar terms. These relationships are not highlighted by individualized terms because there are minimal rights and responsibilities between EGO and kin outside of the nuclear family of orientation and procreation.

Bifurcate merging kinship: Bifurcate merging kinship (initially referred to as Iroquois kinship ) highlights a larger family of orientation for EGO by merging EGO’s parents’ same-sex siblings and their offspring into the immediate family (creating parallel cousins) and bifurcating, or cutting off, EGO’s parents’ opposite-sex siblings and their offspring (creating cross cousins). Figure 11.9 depicts bifurcate merging kinship with unilineal descent (either patrilineal or matrilineal). This means that once descent is introduced into the diagram, EGO’s relationships, with associated rights and responsibilities, will shift toward either the mother’s or father’s side. This form of kinship reckoning, quite common to tribal societies, is found extensively, and it creates a distinction between the family of orientation, which is merged together from various lines, and other relatives, who are bifurcated, or cut away.

On the bifurcate merging diagram ( Figure 11.9 ), note that the members of the family of orientation share kinship terms that indicate a close intimacy with EGO. As an example, while EGO knows who his biological mother is (the woman who gave birth to him), his relationship with his biological mother has the same rights and responsibilities as his relationship with his mother’s sister(s), etc. Notice also that the category of individuals lumped together as “cousins” under the lineal diagram are here distinguished depending on EGO’s relationship with their parent. EGO’s mother’s sisters are called “mother” and his father’s brothers are called “father,” which means that any of their offspring would be EGO’s brothers or sisters. Notice, though, that the mothers and fathers highlighted outside of EGO’s biological parents are married to non-kin members; EGO does not refer to his mother’s sister’s husband as father—he is referred to as “mother’s husband.” Mother’s brothers and father’s sisters produce offspring who are bifurcated and lumped as “cousin.” Anthropologists distinguish between parallel cousins (EGO’s brothers and sisters through his parents’ same-sex siblings) and cross cousins (EGO’s cousins through his parents’ opposite-sex siblings). In many tribal societies, EGO would choose his (or her) marriage partner from among his (or her) cross cousins, thereby merging their children back into a primary kinship line. In this way, the family unit (the kindred) maintains a stable and significant presence across generations.

Generational kinship: Generational kinship (initially referred to as Hawaiian kinship ) presents a very different case. Widespread in Polynesia, especially during the times of chiefdom societies, generational kinship provides a distinction in kinship terms only along gender and generational lines. Generational kinship has the least complicated kinship terminology of all kinship systems, but the impact of creating a family of orientation this large and powerful is immediately apparent. In reading this chart, it is obvious that the intimate family was as large as could be configured and it would have significant sociopolitical impact within the society.

Kinship structure is highly diverse, and there are many different ways to think about it. Descent is the way that families trace their kinship connections and social obligations to each other between generations of ancestors and generations to come. It is a primary factor in the delineation of kinship structures. Through descent, the individual highlights certain particular relationships with kindred and drops or leaves off other possible relationships. Descent ultimately determines such things as inheritance, alliance, and marriage rules. There are two common ways that a cultural group can trace descent across generations:

Unilineal descent: Unilineal descent traces an individual’s kinship through a single gendered line, either male or female, as a collective social rule for all families within a society. The patrilineal or matrilineal relatives that connect to and from EGO form EGO’s lineage . This lineage is believed to be a continuous line of descent from an original ancestor. Lineages believed to be close in relationship are gathered into clans , a tribal social division denoting a group of lineages that have a presumed and symbolic kinship, and eventually into moieties (the social division of a tribe into two halves).

In matrilineal (or uterine) descent , the descent of both males and females is traced solely through female ancestors. Males hold the matrilineal descent of their mothers, and females pass on the descent through their children.

Cognatic descent: Cognatic descent is a kinship structure that follows descent through both men and women, although it may vary by family.

• In ambilineal descent , an individual’s kinship is traced through a single gendered line, with each family choosing either the mother’s or the father’s descent line; in societies practicing this type of cognatic descent, some families will trace descent through the mother and others through the father. Usually families will choose their descent type at marriage based on the different opportunities presented by either the mother’s or father’s family, and they will use this for each of their children. While societies practicing ambilineal descent might initially look like those of unilineal descent, they are different. Within these societies, families are diverse and do not follow a single type of descent reckoning.

In bilateral descent (also referred to as bilineal descent), an individual’s kinship is traced through both mother’s and father’s lines. This is the most common form of descent practiced in the United States today.

Why does descent matter? It structures the way the family will be formed (who counts most in decision-making). It determines the choices individuals have in forming their own families. And it directs how material and symbolic resources (such as power and influence) will be dispersed across a group of people. As the example in the next section shows, descent affects the whole structure of society.

A Matrilineal Society in the United States

The Navajo are among the most populous of the Indigenous peoples in the United States, exceeding 325,000 members. Roughly half live in the Navajo Nation. Covering some 27,000 square miles, the Navajo Nation is an autonomous jurisdiction that crosses New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Traditionally a matrilineal society, the Navajo trace descent and inheritance through their mothers and grandmothers. Such a descent pattern would normally lead to the establishment of matrilocal households, with daughters bringing their husbands to live with or near their matrilineal kin following marriage.

In his study of the contemporary Shonto Navajo, however, William Yewdale Adams (1983), an anthropologist who spent part of his childhood living on the Navajo reservation, found that this wasn’t always the case. While matrilocal residence remained the ideal for Navajo families, it was not followed any more frequently than patrilocal residence (living with or near the groom’s father). Neolocal residence (a separate, independent household) was also practiced across the Navajo Nation. While the ideal Navajo family type endured as part of their identity, the actual everyday practices of families depended on their particular circumstances and might change over the course of their lives. When job opportunities and economic choices necessitated that families live in different areas, they adapted. When families became large and less manageable as a socioeconomic unit, they might splinter into smaller units, some into nuclear families living alone. However, during major life events, such as marriage and childbirth, it is the matrilineal family that will most support the couple by providing resources and any needed labor and help. Matrilineal descent also elevates the role of women in society, not by excluding men, but by recognizing the vital roles that women play in the establishment of both family and society.

Traditionally, the Navajo constructed houses (called hogans) of timber or stone frames covered with earth (Haile 1942). There are multiple types of hogans, including a male hogan, which is conically shaped and used for more private rituals, and a female hogan , which is circular and large enough to accommodate the whole family. Although today most Navajo live in Western-style homes with electricity and running water, many families still construct one or more hogans for ritual and ceremony. For families that continue traditional Navajo ceremonies, the most common hogan form today is the female hogan. As Adams aptly argues, the Navajo are very much like other societies in regard to kinship—while it defines an ideal within Navajo society, its primary function is to provide “possibilities and boundaries” around which individuals will construct kinship (1983, 412). It adapts to the changing environment and the needs of family.

Profiles in Anthropology

Louise lamphere 1940-.

Personal History : Louise Lamphere is a professor emerita of the University of New Mexico, where she held the honorary post of Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. Her scholarly career in anthropology began with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University and a PhD in anthropology from Harvard University.

Area of Anthropology : Lamphere’s research in cultural anthropology extends over many areas of the discipline, including gender and feminist anthropology, kinship, social inequality, and medical practices and reform in the United States and across cultures. She has worked extensively with indigenous peoples, including the Navajo, and in urban contexts. She seeks to understand the intersections between sociocultural institutions and individuals. A recent focus is social and economic changes emerging from the deindustrialization of nation-states. Her work has had wide-ranging impact on generations of anthropology students and scholars.

Accomplishments in the Field : Lamphere’s research contributions are extensive (and continue). She served as the president of the American Anthropological Association from 1999 to 2001, leading the organization toward public support of policies focused on current themes such as poverty and welfare reform in the United States (see this letter from Lamphere ). She has received numerous awards and commendations for her research and service. In 2013 she was awarded the Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association. This award, which is presented annually, recognizes extraordinary achievements that have served the anthropological profession and the greater community by applying anthropological knowledge to improve lives. In 2017 Lamphere was awarded the Bronislaw Malinowski Award by the Society for Applied Anthropology in recognition of her use of social science to solve the problems of human communities today.

Lamphere’s research interests have been important in addressing current needs of human societies, including gender inequalities, socioeconomic challenges, and issues of migration and adaptation. She has also worked to address inequalities and discrimination in her own life. In 1968 she was hired as an assistant professor at Brown University, where she was the only woman on the anthropology faculty. She was denied tenure in 1974, with the university claiming that her scholarship was “weak.” Together with other two other female faculty, Lamphere put forth a case accusing the university of widespread sexual discrimination. In September 1977, then Brown University president Howard Swearer entered into a historic consent decree to ensure that women were more fully represented at the institution and agreed to an affirmative action monitoring committee. This was a landmark settlement for female anthropologists everywhere. For more on the case, see “ Louise Lamphere v. Brown University .” On May 24, 2015, Brown University awarded Dr. Louise Lamphere an honorary doctorate for her courage in standing up for equity and fairness for all.

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• Book title: Introduction to Anthropology
• Publication date: Feb 23, 2022
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2019-2020 People

2019-2020 wuhf seminar, 2019-2020 mellon seminar, 2019-2020 supporters & cosponsors, 2019–2020 public events.

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In partnership with Penn's American Sign Language Program and the Deaf Hearing Communication Centre, the Wolf Humanities Center will provide ASL interpretation at many of the live events in our Forum on Kinship, and in their online counterparts.

2019 — 2020

Forum on Kinship

Topic Director: Ramya Sreenivasan Associate Professor of South Asian Studies

Kinship. Family. Lineage. Genealogy. These words organize some of our most significant relationships, at times functioning as roadblocks to modes of being that do not sit easily with these concepts.  Organizing our affections, loyalties, and allegiances, they help to create boundaries between us and the world. We travel alongside, toward, or away from our kin — whether they be biological, adopted, intellectual, religious, or spiritual kin. Kinship thus describes an emotional as much as, or perhaps even more than, a social community. 

Metaphors of kinship have long been used around the world to imagine bonds and obligations between individuals and communities, including bonds of ethnic or national solidarity, often given shape by the invocation of a single lineage, originating in a single ancestor. In its most common usage in English today, kinship refers to biological relationships organized in concentric circles of proximity. According to this logic, one’s parents are closer than one’s grandparents, grandparents closer than cousins, and so on. Concentric circles of proximity are also assumed to mirror circles of intimacy. 

And yet intimacy has often disobeyed the dictates of proximity by blood. In fact, human culture has often been at its most powerful when exploring the disjunctions between proximity by kin or lineage, and intimacy. Contests for supremacy between kin have been described in early epics across the world, whether in Homer’s Iliad or in the Mahabharata in South Asia. The tribulations of conjugal relationships — whether marriage or long-term cohabitation — have formed the stuff of powerful fiction, poetry, and film in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 

Anthropologists, historians, and scholars of religious traditions have all long been aware of other models for the organization of intimacy and proximity, and at times have hotly rejected kinship as a meaningless term. These scholars have also been aware of how such models differ from one place to another, as well as evolve over time. In many societies around the world, as in much of premodern Eurasia and Africa, kinship almost presupposed politically fraught relationships, whereas affection and intimacy were often considered to be the hallmark of relationships between enslaved people and masters. While kin could be rivals for resources, the loyalty of enslaved people was legally mandated. In such contexts, slaves could also rise to positions of great power, unlike in the plantation-based slavery of the early modern Atlantic world. And, such slaves could be and were often manumitted.

Monastic traditions around the world have long been organized around intense relationships of discipleship to a single teacher, and to a lineage of teachers. Whether among Sufis or Catholic monastic orders or among Buddhist monks, or among Nath renunciants in South Asia, the relationship with fellow disciples often explicitly supplants relationships presupposed by biological kinship. Intellectual lineages are more intangible, but often as intensely experienced. Artistic influence presents a powerful mode of organizing debts, affiliations (acknowledged or otherwise), and solidarities. The invocation of political solidarities imagined as an alternate mode of kinship is a powerful mobilizing tool in political resistance movements across the world. Some of these movements, however, also reject modes of solidarity founded on either the model of the family or presumptuous ally-ship, demanding the invention of new terms to describe modes of collectivity that resist kinship models. 

In contemporary English usage, kinship as intimacy implicitly contrasts with politics, defined as the pursuit of individual and community interests. And yet, histories of regulating kinship have always involved defining and modifying the entitlements and privileges of members within a kin group. Some of the most intense political battles in the twentieth-century, post-colonial world were fought precisely over such regulation of the socio-economic and legal regimes of kinship. 

Developments in medicine now mean that new biologically-based modes of kinship can be engineered— through surrogacy, for example. Meanwhile, increasingly regulated regimes of adoption offer specific constraints on the claiming or forgetting of kin. The foster care system illustrates that the temporality of kinship need not be fixed—while some relationship structures stretch into infinity, others are, by definition, provisional; fostering also serves as a useful catalyst for discussion of the economics of intimacy and care.

At a moment when, in many societies around the world, a more capacious imagining of community is being deliberately erased or forgotten, to be replaced by parochialisms and hatreds, the Wolf Humanities Center topic for 2019–20 calls for a reappraisal of the myriad possibilities for remembering, challenging, and reimagining kinship.

  Ramya Sreenivasan, Topic Director Karen Redrobe , Director, Wolf Humanities Center

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4 Kinship and Family

Sheena Nahm McKinlay

In the docuseries Babies (2020), the first episode “Love” features several interviews with families and scientists who discuss how bonds are forged between caregivers and children. One of the families includes Josh and Isaac and their son Eric who was born via surrogacy. Isaac shares how “AJ gave us the ultimate gift of being able to form a family. Now she’s part of our family.” Isaac goes on to describe how unique this gift was given the fact that commercial (i.e., paid) surrogacy is illegal where AJ resides. The process involved submitting a case and waiting for a surrogate to choose the family. AJ explains, “In Canada, it is illegal to get paid for surrogacy. But I think that, because of how intimate surrogacy is, money cannot be the reason to do this. And I wanted to help. I mean, I can’t do much, but this is something that I can do.” In this brief snapshot of how family is made through relationships and policies, love is described not only as the love between parent and child but also between the adults that helped to make the conditions of parenthood possible. This is just one example of how we see modern day policies and practices shaping kinship.

Across the history of the discipline, anthropologists have recorded a vast array of kinship types and related practices. For example, Anindita Majumdar writes about kinship and surrogacy in in her book, Transnational Commercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India (2017) . In her interview on the accompanying podcast to this textbook, Majumdar describes how commercial surrogacy can be a way for women to stay empowered in the process of negotiating their role in kinship, declaring their own agency in the process of choosing to become a surrogate, and discovering the limitations of potential policy changes that move away from commercial surrogacy to altruistic surrogacy.

Surrogacy is just one of many ways in which the nuances of kinship can be explored in contemporary anthropology. Surrogacy itself is not a new phenomenon; however, in more recent decades, the convergence of new policies, transnational flows, and assisted reproductive technologies bring to the forefront examples that build upon classic models of kinship and destabilize oversimplified theories of kinship. Additionally, parent-child relationships are just one means of understanding how ‘kin’ is defined and constructed within broader social contexts.

The relationships that matter to our social lives and individual identities are a rich topic for exploration. Families of origin might refer to the families into which we are born, adopted, or raised. Meanwhile, chosen families refer to the kin we find and make as young adults to complement and/or compensate for any challenges or limitations we may have experienced with families of origin. This chapter provides an overview of the history of kinship studies in anthropology, including its original definitions and some of the ways in which those models have been critiqued and revised over time. We then turn to more recent studies to better understand how anthropological perspectives illuminate our understanding of kinship.

Defining and Describing Kinship

Marshall Sahlins once described kinship as the “mutuality of being” and added, “kinsmen are persons who belong to one another, who are members of one another, who are co-present in each other, whose lives are joined and interdependent” (Sahlins 2011, 11). This definition may seem straightforward at first glance, but in actuality, it opens us up to imagine an infinite number of ways that someone might become kin. Among other critiques of Sahlins’ theory and methods (Gillison 2013), one critique has been that this definition of the mutuality of being is “too vague to be meaningful” (Kronenfeld 2012, 678). Still, many anthropologists continue to ask what it means to have mutual relationships with other human beings.

In this chapter, we will examine the concepts and practices that come with kinship or kin relations. We will review how understandings of kinship have evolved within the discipline as well as define some basic models and ways of illustrating those models using diagrams. We will then explore beliefs and practices that come with kinship , ranging from adoption and marriage to traditions and taboos. Along the way, we will review a variety of examples that have pushed anthropologists to think about how kinship is continuously in flux depending on ever-changing local and global contexts.

Kinship is a specific way of describing the relationships between people, initially conceptualized to include blood kin as well as kin relations created through marriage or similar bonds. To begin understanding how family relationships are defined, we can begin with some common terms. Family can include ties that are consanguineal ( blood) as well as affinal (partnerships sometimes referred to as marriage ties). Over time, anthropologists have acknowledged the limitations of these terms and definitions in describing meaningful relationships such as friend communities, other kin communities, and the dynamics of developing and maintaining ties in a world where people are on the move and not always residing in close proximity to each other for their entire lives. Popular culture as well as scholarship have drawn attention to this broader notion of kinship. Books like Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close and television shows like Pose highlight the meaningful relationships that create bonds between kinfolk who “live each other’s lives and die each other’s deaths.” In understanding kinship in fuller terms, we can better understand the diverse, vital supports needed for human wellbeing and social connectedness.

Relationships matter for a variety of reasons, including their representation as a “system of meaning and power that cultures create to determine who is related to whom and to define their mutual expectations, rights, and responsibilities” (Guest 2016, 236). How relationships are configured and understood among individuals has implications in daily activities as well as in milestone responsibilities. This can include everything from expectations about who has primary and secondary childrearing responsibilities to who attends rites of passage such as communion, bar mitzvah, or weddings. We begin by reviewing some basic concepts around kinship including a variety of systems or models and how they might be drawn using diagrams. And perhaps more importantly, we dive into the meaning behind the relationships depicted in those diagrams as we look at the social expectations and acknowledgement that comes with different ways of belonging to a group. While models and diagrams can help us understand some of the basic components of kinship systems, it is important to remember that “most of our talk about families is clouded by unexplored notions of what families ‘really’ are like” (Collier, Rosaldo, and Yanagisako 1997).

Kin relations and a sense of belonging to a group are built on collective understanding. For example, a person might reflect, “”Who do I see as my mother and is that the same or different from who others see as my mother?” Such understandings go beyond naturalized, inherent notions that one is born simply knowing who to call what and who will provide a great sense of belonging and connectedness.

• How the Nuclear Family Broke Down (The Atlantic)
• Janet Carsten on the Kinship of Anthropology
• Babies in limbo: Surrogacy in the time of COVID
• My Six Wives And 29 Children
• All My Relations podcast: Episodes “ Beyond Blood Quantum ” and “ Love in the Time of Blood Quantum ” focus on issues of kinship

Recall our earlier discussions of Bronislaw Malinowski in earlier chapters. Malinowski also explored notions of family and kin relations during his time on the Trobriand Islands. Malinowski’s argument was that “family” was a universal human institution. His work was then challenged by other theorists who took the opposite stance.

Much of what we know about kinship in the history of American anthropology comes from the 19 th century. Lewis Henry Morgan drew his insights from conducting research among the Haudenosaunee (whom he refers to as the Iroquois in his writings). Morgan noticed that relationships between individuals looked different from those he had grown up with and defined as family. He then recorded these observations in League of the Iroquois (1851). Decades later, Morgan who was a lawyer by trade recounted the words that Haudenosaunee used to describe family members and explained how they relate to right and responsibilities, both legally and socially. Morgan went on to record kinship systems among Indigenous groups in other parts of the world.

While we will spend some time reviewing some classic definitions and models of kinship systems from around the world as they were described initially by anthropologists, readers should keep in mind that definitions of family and how people are related to one another are neither simple nor static. As societies, nation-states, and biocultural flows are always in transition, so too are ideologies and practices around family ties. In examining the evolution of kinship charts, it is also possible to revisit the history of anthropology, noting what was recorded and what was not. This allows us to look at archived knowledge while also noticing and critiquing its limitations as artifacts produced and curated within systems of power rather than as neutral facts that simply exist for learners to memorize.

Before we dive into kinship diagrams, a way of depicting different models of understanding family ties, let us take a few moments to describe some basic terms and definitions. Adding to consanguineal and affinal, we introduce two other terms: matrilineal and patrilineal. Matrilineal means that descent follows the mother’s line whereas patrilineal descent follows the father’s line.

In “Don’t Even Talk to Me if You’re Kinya’áanii [Towering House]”: Adopted Clans, Kinship and “Blood” in Navajo Country,” Kristina Jacobsen and Shirley Ann Bowman examine ideologies around k’é or the Diné kinship system which connects people through “an elaborate matrilineal descent network of systems of obligation and reciprocity, otherwise known as the clan system (dóone’é). As elsewhere, kinship in Diné contexts is culturally specific, cultivated through daily use, and not a given, natural fact” (2019, 43).

Jacobsen and Bowman attend to the ways in which clan systems have incorporated non-Navajos into Navajo Nation and how varying practices have been impacted by settler colonialism. They also reflect on the nuances of historical and contemporary kinship and how they are related to the politics of citizenship (44). There are over 80 active clans, organized into nine groups: this organization influences taboos around marriage and dating. “If a Diné person has four Navajo grandparents, then they will have four Diné clans—maternal, paternal, mother’s father, and father’s father, and typically presented in this order. The first or maternal clan is considered to be the most important in being identified (and identifying oneself) as Diné…Sharing kinship means that everywhere one travels where there are other Navajos, one gains not only a relative but also a sense of belonging” (47). In understanding kinship systems where there may be some common organizing beliefs and practices, it should be noted that variation exists as do multiple understandings and practices that resist homogenizing assumptions about the entirety of any group. For example, Diné is sometimes considered preferable to “Navajo” which is not a word that exists within the language. In 1993, Navajo Nation President Peterson Zah was quoted in the Los Angeles Timesas stating, “We were called Diné by the Great Spirit…By changing our name, we are simply exercising self-determination and tribal sovereignty” (Sahagun 1993). Despite this advocacy, Legislation No. 0395-16 did not receive enough support from the Navajo Nation Council to change the group’s name from Navajo Nation to Diné Nation. This is one example among many that shows how perspectives and preferences can vary within a group of people who share aspects of identity.

Members of a society may choose to adopt different beliefs such that they no longer follow or know about their clans over time. Additionally, as Jacobsen and Bowman emphasize, there is much more fluidity when adoptive practices exist than are depicted in rigid kinship charts. They write, “Outside groups merged with Diné society, retained their own clans, merged clans, left for long periods of time, and returned, and adoption was not an overnight process. So the boundaries of Diné society, while cohesive and coherent, were also porous” (50).

In matrilineal systems, a man who marries typically becomes a member of his wife’s clan and goes to live with his wife’s (his new) clan. This is an illustration of being both matrilineal and matrilocal. Where people live depending on family ties is defined as patrilocal (living with the father’s side of the family) or matrilocal (living with the mother’s side of the family). Though locality has historically followed lineal systems, residential conventions have morphed over time to be less rigidly followed.

Patrilineage or matrilineage does not mean that relatives are limited to that line but rather, that linkages across generations (e.g., through surnames) might follow one line over another as will certain responsibilities such as caring for elders or inheriting land. Depending on the context (e.g., locality and how far family villages or residences are from one another), one might grow up with deeper relationships with one’s lineal descent and hardly any with the other side. It is also possible that one might be equally familiar with both lines of descent in terms of daily or weekly interactions. In a patrilineal context, children may bear the name of the father’s line as well as distinguish names for describing relatives on the father’s side and the mother’s side. Aunts, uncles, and in-laws will denote whether they are relatives via the father or the mother. There are also descriptors that indicate age and birth order. For example, someone might call an older brother and younger brother by two different names that denote birth order rather than using a singular term like “brother.”

It is important to note that matrilineal or patrilineal is about descent and not necessarily about gendered power. For example, one can live in a patriarchal society where landownership and leadership (e.g., kings) are male but determined through the mother’s line. That is to say, one can find themselves in a patriarchal and matrilineal society. Both matrilineal and patrilineal descent are examples of unilineal (one line or one side) descent. By contrast, when kinship follows both sides of the family, it is defined as bilateral descent.

Kinship charts or genograms can account for spousal death as well as divorce using a slashed line on symbols, for example over the shape symbolizing the individual who passed or over the double bars between previously married individuals. Even while examining the diverse range of ways kinship can be depicted in the history of anthropology, we can also see limitations in how charts are written including practices such as divorce or adoption. The assumptions that are both evident in what is visible and invisible can help to stimulate further examination of what sociocultural norms are present and how people may be treated if they live outside of those norms.

To get acquainted with reading these diagrams, we begin with “ego” who is the lens or starting point from which a chart will define and depict relations. In early kinship diagrams, triangles were typically used to indicate males and circles for females. Two parallel bars or lines denotes marriage, single vertical lines birth or parent/child relationships and single horizontal lines marked sibling relationships. While these kinship systems are named by societies that are examples of each, there are other societies that follow similar conventions. Additionally, images include labels used in the original charts but are accompanied with critiques and relevant updates to names. (Note: images for kinship system diagrams have been made available under the Creative Commons, where authors have waived rights so that the work might be available in the public domain. These depictions of different systems are associated with particular groups but as with most examples, are not meant to assume homogeneity across diverse and nuanced practices of any group of people.) In contemporary kinship charts, we see a range of symbols on kinship charts including triangles for males, circles for females, and squares for gender nonbinary individuals.

In the Haudenosaunee (previously referred to as Iroquois in historical documents) kinship systems, your parents’ same-sex siblings would also be considered your father or mother. Originally, the Iroquois Confederacy was a term used to describe six related tribes (initially five tribes: the Kanienkehaka or Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca) who called themselves the Haudenosaunee or “the people of the longhouse.” Iroquois appears to have been generated from French adaptations of a variety of indigenous words. In this type of kinship system, your father’s brother would also be considered your “father” and your mother’s sister would also be considered your “mother.” Meanwhile, your parent’s opposite-sex siblings (e.g., your father’s sister and mother’s brother) would not be considered similar to your father or mother; they would, instead, be considered to be more like “aunts” and “uncles.”

In general, in kinship diagrams, cross-cousins are considered to be the children of your parents’ opposite sex siblings (e.g., father’s sister’s children and mother’s brother’s children) while parallel cousins are the children of your parents’ same sex siblings (e.g., father’s brother’s children and mother’s sister’s children). In this type of kinship system, cross-cousins would be called “cousins” while parallel cousins would be considered “brothers” and “sisters.”

In the Hawaiian kinship system, all members of the same generation are considered similar. This system is now sometimes referred to as a generational system. In this generational system, in addition to ego’s mother and father, all siblings of both parents who are female are “mother” and all siblings of both parents who are male are “father.” Cousins are not called cousins at all but rather, brothers for males and sisters for females.  The terms Kanaka Maoli and Kanaka ‘Ōiwi are the original terms that were later popularized into the term Native Hawaiian. Kanaka maoli is the “appropriate indigenous term for Native Hawaiian by advocates of Native Hawaiian sovereignty and independence” and the term ‘Ōiwi refers to the literal translation “of the ancestral bone” according to Davianna Pōmaika‘i McGregor and Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie (2014).

The Haudenosaunee kinship system was originally labeled as the Iroquois system to describe a kinship system that distinguishes between same or cross-sex siblings of parents. In this chart, ego’s father’s brother is considered father and his children are considered brothers and sisters. Meanwhile, ego’s father’s sister is an aunt, and her children are considered cousins. Following this same naming convention, ego’s mother’s sister is considered mother and her children are brothers and sisters whereas ego’s mother’s brother is an uncle, and his children are cousins.

While some generational systems utilize fewer categories of distinguishing relations and their names, the kinship system historically referred to as the Sudanese system differs in that words for relations range based on distance from ego as well as gender and relationship. In this system, nearly every relationship has a different name.

In what was referred to as the Crow system, distinguishing differences exist depending on the same or cross-sex sibling relationship. For example, ego’s father’s brother is father, and his children are therefore brother and sister; ego’s mother’s sister is mother, and her children are brother and sister to ego. However, ego’s father’s sister is an aunt equivalent, and her children are cousins. Ego’s mother’s brother is mother’s brother or uncle equivalent, and his children are cousins.

Like the Haudenosaunee and Crow, the kinship system initially described as the Omaha system also distinguishes between same and cross sex sibling lines.

While each of these charts may be antiquated, they are summarized here as part of the record of disciplinary history. Limitations exist because of methods used at the time as well as in reflecting knowledge today. People and populations are constantly changing and as a result relationships and structures of relation also evolve. No person or people are stuck in time, nor can the be captured for all time in a static diagram. However outdated they may be today, they are presented here as an illustration of a method (how to quickly diagram how someone describes themselves in relation to others) and a visual depiction of anthropologists presenting multiple ways in which family and belonging might look beyond a singular worldview.

Kinship in Social Context

Practices sometimes play out in the affirmative—things you are expected to do or might have the responsibility of doing, such as making decisions about childrearing, naming, or providing for in economic terms. But practices can also play out in the negative—things you should avoid doing. These beliefs and behaviors are sometimes encompassed by recognizing taboos. One illustration of the importance of understanding who is related and in what ways is in Juǀʼhoansi kinship (referred to as the !Kung in some ethnographies). Anthropologists described the Juǀʼhoansi as having very strict rules regarding incest and marriage taboos such that it was important to note who was a first cousin or second cousin on either side of the family to avoid marriage taboos.

Kinship was described in three different ways: 1) bilateral ; 2) names (people who have the same name as a kin relation will also be treated as family); and 3) wi (where an older person may “wi” a younger person, somewhat similar to the concept of adoption). Marrying someone further away from their family as defined by internal/external to one’s band not only avoids taboos but also increases knowledge of resources.

Another way to think about “marrying further away” is exogamy, the practice of marrying outside of one’s group. Conversely, another culture may practice endogamy which would be the practice of marrying inside the group. While exogamy and endogamy refer to marriage practices external and internal to groups, poly- and mono- refer to the number of partners. In classic kinship terms, monogamy indicates the practice of having one partner at a time. Differentiations can be made between lifetime monogamy and monogamy in a given moment of time or season of life (e.g., serial monogamy ). Polygamy indicates the practice of having more than one partner at a time. This can indicate multiple variations from one husband with many wives ( polygyny ), one wife with many husbands ( polyandry ), or multiple wives and husbands. In today’s terms, more common or nuanced terms such as polyamory or ethical non-monogamy might be used to describe non-exclusive relationships without necessarily aligning with the context of marriage or long-term partnerships.

Families and cultures might practice arranged marriage for a wide variety of reasons, ranging from economic or financial reasons to social ties and religious norms that indicate where families have similar things in common. The degree of formality in the arrangement also varies. Two people might meet as the result of an arrangement through a mutual friend, family member or relative or through someone who is a matchmaker.

Whether through arrangement or not, additional practices may help to forge ties between two families. A dowry refers to a bride’s family giving gifts to either the bride or the groom’s family at the time of marriage. Bride service is different from a dowry in that the first few months of marriage include living with the bride’s family and the groom (now husband) provides for his wife’s family for a period of time.

As with all cultures and societies, adaptations and shifts occur over time sometimes as a result of internal dynamics and at other times, a result of external pressures that can range from environment and climate to government policies and global flows. Kinship and ownership practices related to kinship structures have long been an area of study in anthropology, with many case studies focusing on the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania or the Nuer of Sudan. More recent anthropological contributions have shown, though, that it is important to be aware of how groups have changed their systems to meet the evolving needs of their group. Additionally, changes may come about because of popular and academic narratives that then impact how local and international interventions are constructed with regard to land allocation. In Once Intrepid Warriors: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Cultural Politics of Maasai Development , Dorothy Hodgson (2001) emphasizes the impact of transnational factors ranging from colonialism to international development interventions. The limitations and failures of various development interventions, argues Hodgson, can often be rooted in inaccurate and static understandings of Maasai culture as pastoralist and patriarchal when, in fact, the Maasai have changed a great deal over the course of the last 80 years. Hodgson opens her text with a critique of letters published in the New York Times during the late 1980s, reflecting on images floating in popular discourse linking Maasai ethnic identity to either a romanticized “once free and beautiful” narrative or to a highly gendered narrative of pastoralism being inherently a male activity and means of organizing society. Images and narratives of the Maasai have limited perspectives circulating in the world in such a way that nongovernmental organizations as well as other administrative agencies have developed interventions based on outdated information that are inaccurate or inadequate in informing how present-day issues are addressed.

Other research such as the work of Winnie Wairimu and Paul Hebinck (2017) emphasize that the Maasai should not viewed as passive receivers of land tenure policies passed by the Kenyan state. Instead, they are agents in devising a varied number or responses to how land is divided among groups and to individual families. One of the actions that emerged in response to land subdivision is the cultivation of crops by women while men chose to aggregate smaller pieces of land to continue pastoral lifestyles. Among the Maasai, both traditional practices such as pastoralism might continue while also creating space for other practices such as horticulture (both of which we will delve into in more detail in an upcoming chapter on economics but named here for the ways in which they intersect with practices that weave together kinship, gender, and economic strategies).

Kinship also continues to morph and challenge notions of fixed definitions of family. For example, Caroline Archambault’s ethnographic work with families that have gone through the process of adoption shows how parents and children create ties. In particular, she stresses the perspective that children are active participants in how kinship is made and unmade (2010). Archambault writes, “In the Kenyan primary school syllabus the biological, nuclear and monogamous family model is by far the most popular textbook representation of family life. For most Maasai children, such a family model does not correspond to their lived reality. Throughout the school, dozens of children will make their way back to non-natal homes” (230). Moving across families as adopted children/“children given” or fostered children/ “children borrowed” supports the idea that family itself is a dynamic form of organizing relationships and that children do not belong to single set of parents in contrast to more rigid nuclear models. Dynamic practices also underscore the idea that adoption is not limited to a singular event but part of a process wherein acceptance and attachment are created and recreated over a span of years.

In one example, survey results from residents of a community organized by units called an enkang or a patrilocal residential unit reported that 28.4% of wives were living with at least one non-natal child (232). In this context, children often   circulate within and across homesteads for a variety of reasons including the convenience of being closer to schools as well as through adoption or fostering. This is rooted in the belief that children are gifts “not made and ‘owned,’ but given into human care” (Lienhardt 1961, 22 as cited in Archambault 2010, 232). Archambault traces how this belief and practice of communal support for children is changing and leaning toward the increased nuclearization of families because of factors like land privatization policies introduced in the 1990s. These policies allocated parcels of land to individual male family heads (rather than via communal group allocations), influencing the emphasis on nuclear units. Additionally, exposure to Euro-American ideals of nuclear families and biological parenthood (which itself are not representative of European and American societies but often circulate through institutional discourse) also impacted the increased emphasis on nuclear units.

A classic example of kinship and social context comes from the work of E.E. Evans-Pritchard who wrote The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (1940) and Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer (1951). At the time, Evans-Pritchard’s contributions helped challenge the notion that parent-child relations as well as marriage followed definitions that assigned a single person to a single role (e.g., a romantic partner also being a legally and socially recognized partner). In his ethnography, Evans-Pritchard described how various roles might play out in Nuer society, including differentiated definitions such as the following:

• The genitor as the biological father
• The pater as the socially recognized father
• The legal marital partner as the person responsible for caring for a woman and her children
• Ghost marriages, described as a situation wherein a man dies without marrying so that one of his male relatives steps in to fulfill the duties of the ghost. This might be a brother or cousin of the deceased. The male relative or pro-husband then has a child with the widow and helps to raise the children. In this context, a woman states that her husband is the ghost (deceased person) and the children take the name of the ghost who is recognized as their father. Thus, the relative might be a genitor and legal marital partner but not the pater. The ghost of the deceased is considered to be the pater. The pro-husband and relative might have another wife with whom their children and kinship relations are socially recognized as pater among other roles such as genitor.
• A leviratic marriage is when a widow goes to live with a kinsman or close relative of her deceased husband. The kinsman becomes her pro-husband. If the widow is still young, the pro-husband will reproduce with her, but the children are considered to be the children of the dead husband. Because the widow establishes a relationship with her deceased husband who exchanged bridewealth, any of her children would always be his children and he would be the socially recognized father or pater. The biological father or genitor in this context is less important because the social relationship had already been recognized through the exchange of bridewealth.

In these examples, various marriage practices and beliefs around parent-child relationships ensured that lineages continued even in the event of death.

Decades later, Evans-Pritchard’s work was both upheld as classic contributions to kinship theory and deeply critiqued for its limitations. Aidan Southall (1986) writes about the “real paradox of Evans-Pritchard’s Nath [i.e., Nuer] analysis was that he stimulated some of the most productive work in social anthropology by formulating a brilliant theory that applied well to many other societies but not to the one in which it was conceived” (Southall 1986, 17 as cited in McKinnon 2000, 36). One way this played out was in his noting of differences that occurred depending on class status but its exclusion in his theoretical framework of societal structure (which was depicted as egalitarian). In this way, Evans-Pritchard serves as an example of many figures in the history of anthropology who simultaneously observed different ways of being outside of Western contexts and raised awareness of diverse configurations of social belonging while also falling into their own limited perspectives and constructs such as the separation (i.e., non-integration) between domestic and political domains (Collier and Yanagisako 1987).

As we look at different kinship systems and how gender roles play out in different societies, we quickly see that there are no universally standardized norms about who counts as family and how being related to each other influences beliefs and practices. Recall Malinowski’s focus on the Trobriand Islands in his ethnographic research. Malinowski described Trobrianders as a matrilineal society, tracing descent through mother’s side. However, most of Malinowski’s work focused on men. During the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, anthropologist Annette Weiner conducted research specifically on women’s roles in the Trobriand Islands. Weiner noted how women had a tremendous amount of political and social influence and were not limited to domestic roles such as childrearing. One practice that illustrated women’s power in political and socioeconomic spheres was the sagali. Sagali occurred about one year after a person dies. It was an important period of feasting and gift exchange, led and organized by women. In preparation for this event, goods were made by women and exchanged by women. Goods included banana leaf bundles and grass skirts. Both items required many hours of work and were indicators of social prestige. The person who gave away the most goods (rather than the person who accumulated the most) was therefore seen as more socially powerful. While men were involved, it was women who had the power to establish social status and power during sagali.

Weiner’s work shined a light on the labor provided by women in Trobriand society. The intersections of gendered roles, specifically labor, and the social contexts of kinship can be seen in societies around the world.  Women’s work has been recorded in both public and private spheres.   Micaela di Leonardo provides an overview of kin work across a variety of cultural contexts (1987). One area where women labor outside of the marketplace includes housework and caregiving for family members within the home. In her fieldwork among Italian-Americans, di Leonardo defines kin work as “the conception, maintenance, and ritual celebration of cross-household kin ties, including visits, letters, telephone calls, presents, and cards to kin; the organization of holiday gatherings; the creation and maintenance of quasi-kin relations; decision to neglect or to intensify particular ties; the mental work of reflection about all these activities, and the creation and communication of altering images of family and kin vis-à-vis the images of others, both folk and mass media” (442-443). While the specific details of duties like writing holiday cards takes place in a specific place and time, the concept that there is work associated with maintaining kinship ties and how that work is designated or assumed in gendered ways is applicable to diverse contexts. One thing to note here is that there is an assumption of who kin are, based on socio-cultural constructs (e.g., who even gets or expects a holiday card — is it who is recognized as a relative through birth or law? Is it kin based on friendship and other relational ties that are meaningful?). On top of understanding who your kin are, there is work done to maintain those ties. Some of that work might be expected and can upheld or transgressed and others are further strengthened and cemented through regular work and practice.

Kinship, Transnationalism and Technology

We have discussed some examples of kinship systems both in the US and in other countries and become familiar with some of the terms and how concepts like lineage are woven into the texture of everyday life and milestones like marriage and having children. We have discussed scenarios that include widowhood and connections between life and death, gender and family, and political and economic power. The late 20 th century and early 21 st century in particular have surfaced additional questions and insights about kinship as it intersects with transnational flows, immigration, and technology. These add additional factors to ever-changing landscapes that, to large degree, have long contended with transnational flows via colonialism and imperialism as well as the circulation of norms related to “family” and the ways in which it plays out both in domestic and political domains.

Kin relations converge with a wide range of other topics of interest such as economic and political power. One example of contemporary complexities in kinship is in Christine Ward Gailey’s Blue Ribbon Babies: Labors of Love : Race, Class, and Gender in US Adoption Practice . In her research on adoption, she notes how white couples pursuing adoption via independent or private agencies seek out “healthy white babies” or “blue ribbon” babies. They often seek out international adoption and avoid open adoption, denoting perceptions of the quality of the babies themselves as well as the severing of ties from biological parents and biological links to lineage. Meanwhile, single Black and white women as well as middle class Black couples and working class white married couples choose a different route, often pursuing foster adoption. What is highlighted in this book is both the differing preferences for types of adoption (e.g., international vs domestic and closed vs open) as well as how those preferences are inextricably tied to parents’ perception of children, their backgrounds and needs, and how that impacts integration into the life and lineage of the adoptive family.

PODCAST: Kathryn Mariner

Listen here to this podcast episode where we interview Kathryn and hear about her work. Read and explore additional publications from Kathryn which include:

• American Elegy: A Triptych
• White Parents, Black Care: Entanglements of Race and Kinship in American Transracial Adoption
• “Who you are in these pieces of paper”: Imagining Future Kinship through Auto/Biographical Adoption Documents in the United States

Transnational flows or international contexts introduce additional factors to how kinship is defined and how that plays out in terms of economic and social expectations. For example, a family that immigrates from one country to another may create and expand their kin relations to include “relatives” in their new country of residence, making and cementing ties where they might not have been included in the context of the country of origin. One simple way this plays out is when “aunties” and “uncles” are included as family, with the bonds of social support as well as the concrete supports that can come from roles such as assistance in childrearing or connections to employment opportunities, even without the requisite lineal ties that might have been part of the criteria for defining aunt and uncle relationships in a non-immigrant community contexts. Immigrant and migrant communities and the context of economic and political challenges reframe kinship ties, roles and responsibilities in new ways often adding additional pressures to provide economic support to family from one direction to the other. Sacrifice is defined on both sides of the lines crossed and blurred through the migration process.

Zooming in on the practice of transnational or international adoption, we see how kinship can become complex in the context of global flows and the sometimes productive, sometimes tenuous relationship between national identity and globalization. Eleana Kim is an anthropologist who has studied transnational adoption of babies from South Korea to the US and the implications of those babies returning to visit Korea as adults. In “Our Adoptee, Our Alien: Transnational Adoptees as Specters of Foreignness and Family in South Korea,” Kim recounts how adopted Koreans are welcomed back to their birth country under the legal designation of “overseas Koreans” under a state-sponsored globalization project (2007). She writes:

Designed to build economic and social networks between Korea and its seven million compatriots abroad, this policy projects an ethnonationalist and deterritorialized vision of Korea that depends upon a conflation of “blood” with “kinship” and “nation.” Adoptees present a particularly problematic subset of overseas Koreans: they have biological links to Korea, but their adoptions have complicated the sentimental and symbolic ties of “blood” upon which this familiarist and nationalist state policy depend. Because international adoption replaces biological with social parenthood and involves the transfer of citizenship, to incorporate adoptees as “overseas Koreans,” the state must honor the authority and role of adoptive parents who raised them, even as they invite adoptees to (re)claim their Koreanness (2007, 497).

In this example of transnational adoption, we see the complex relationship between birth and adoptive ties in the making of kin as it intersects with macro-level projects in nationhood and in global flows. Legal and social bonds converge and diverge with the complexities of racial identity. For example, Korean American adults who return to Korea to reunite with their birth families discovered that their rights to sponsor Korean relatives’ entry into the U.S. are nullified or forfeited. This is an example of how the severing of kin relationship from birth to and through adoption changes the definition of “relative” and the legal rights that can be attached to the sponsorship of relatives joining family through immigration.

In this scenario, adoptive parents are the only legally recognized genitors as well as socially recognized parents in the U.S. context. The reason for the shift in genitor (or birth parent) designation is because, historically, babies were designated as “orphans” before going through the adoption process. This plays out in the context of the major rise in adoption out of Korea in a post-war context. Decades after the war in a time when Korea’s economic and global status as a “developed” nation places new and emerging challenges on family definitions, choices, and population demographics. Kim documents how more and more adults are choosing to have fewer children or no children at all. In 2006, Korea had a birthrate of 1.08 which was the lowest among developed nations at that time, adding context to a history of overseas adoption that takes on new shape, building on post-war landscapes to a present-day population health discourse among national policymakers concerned with not having enough babies to sustain the nation.

The geopolitical context of adoption, immigration, and kin relations is indeed complex. Technology also introduces pathways for kin relations to be defined and redefined. For example, building on the writings of Marilyn Strathern (1992), Charis Thompson’s “Strategic Naturalizing: Kinship in an Infertility Clinic” (2001) reflects on her fieldwork in infertility clinics in California in the 1990s. Thompson reveals insights into contemporary notions of kinship. She points to the clinic as a site where notions of kin relationships are made and remade, and how that plays out in the context of reproductive technology clinics where biological definitions of being related and social definitions of parenthood sometimes collide, converge, and conflict. She writes, “In the process, the meaning of biological motherhood is somewhat transformed; in particular, biological motherhood is becoming something that can be partial. This work is thus about ‘doing’ kinship, as opposed to simply ‘being’ a particular and fixed kind of kin” (175). In particular, Thompson raises questions about the need to understand kinship in the context of donors and surrogates who are close friends or family members (vs. contracted individuals). Kinship is not just about who is defined and designated as a parent but also includes all of the implications that come from parental roles as well as the need to be explicit about relationships in order to avoid possibilities of incest. Through a range of case studies, Thompson suggests several ways of understanding kinship in the context of reproductive assistance. Stages in the establishment of pregnancy are determined to be “relational” when they implicate kin relations whereas the stage is called “custodial” if it enables relatedness but does not itself become part of kinship understandings. For example, in a custodial stage, a woman might be instrumental in the conception or bearing of the child (i.e., biologically involved) but not a part of the kinship network (i.e., not implicated as mother).

Technologies (both biomedical and legal) have influenced the making of kin. Examples range from birth control and in vitro fertilization to surrogacy and artificial insemination. Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp have explored the impact of assisted reproductive technologies on kinship and society. For example, medical technologies have helped children with disabilities to survive in ways that they may not have in the past (Ginsburg and Rapp 2011). Ginsburg and Rapp argue that such “disruptions of reproduction” are inextricably tied to rises in learning disabilities and that the politics of reproduction therefore have an indelible mark on the contemporary context of developed nations. Learning disabilities doubled each decade after the 1970s, resulting in a 15% rate among US students. In addition to the development of new technologies, policy changes and disability rights legislation and portrayals of more nuanced or positive representations of children and adults with disabilities in the media have also increased in recent decades. They converge to transform the American context of children and parenthood to be more inclusive of people with disabilities and to bring together family relationships, technology, and social justice. Ginsburg and Rapp emphasize, “With nearly every interview, we heard stories about how families have had to reimagine everything from household budgets to school careers, to sibling relations, to models of humanity that take into account life with a difference. We argue that the stories our respondents told us about living with disability—from the moment of birth onward—collectively constitute a ‘new kinship imaginary’ with temporal and social implications” (2011, 3).

PROFILE: Tam Perry, Associate Professor, School of Social Work, Wayne State University

What prompted you to study social work and anthropology? How did one area of study start to lead to the other and then to thinking about them in conjunction with one another? Anthropology was a discipline that I was not directly exposed to until later in my academic career when I was entering my joint PhD program in social work and anthropology. I was interested in investigating the ways that anthropology and social work could merge. As social work is a helping profession, it is often utilized by its skilled professionals who “talk” in roles as advocates and brokers of services. My choice to specialize in linguistic anthropology allowed me to develop a framework for understanding how language acts both as a response to behaviors and also influences other behaviors. Recognizing linguistic patterns that are present within families and understanding linguistic practices could contribute to finding better ways for social workers to work with older persons and their families.

Alongside others committed to the intersection of social work and anthropology, I have become active in a group called Scholars Across Social Work and Anthropology (SASW). SASW aims to integrate social work and anthropology by (1) developing knowledge at the intersection of these fields; (2) fostering greater dialogue among social workers and anthropologists; (3) promoting collaboration on teaching and research; and (4) facilitating outreach and mentorship between scholars at all stages of their careers. SASW was founded in 2016 in a basement hallway at the annual conference of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR). Since that first “underground” meeting, membership has grown to approximately 50 active members. Thus far, members are primarily faculty and doctoral students in either social work or anthropology departments, though we welcome all who have an interest in the intersection of these two fields. The founding executive committee includes John Mathias (Florida State University), Matthew Chin (University of Virginia) and Lauren Gulbas (University of Texas at Austin). Please see our paper, “Interrogating Culture: Anthropology, Social Work, and the Concept Trade” (Mathias et al., 2020). As articulated by Dr. Gulbas, SASW is committed to the idea that systematic and rigorous qualitative research can be used to improve well-being and help meet human needs. Gulbas notes, “My engagement with social work has helped me to envision how to build on the vital intersections between medical anthropology and social work to confront important social problems and effect change. I have found there has been no better way to explore these synergies than through my collaborations with Scholars in Social Work and Anthropology.”

Much of your research has taken place in Detroit. Can you share a little bit about how you develop both short term and long-term relationships in field research and how anthropology as well as social work training informs how you approach connecting with people and places?  I have been active in Detroit since joining the faculty of Wayne State in 2012. Cultivating strong, trusting relationships with stakeholders in the Detroit community is a critical part of my work and personal ethos. I develop these relationships by consistently following through and following up with the people I meet. I regularly attend a variety of community events and am very committed to a local coalition, Senior Housing Preservation Detroit. In this coalition, I serve as research chair and help with the Strategic Planning process. Many of the projects we do in this coalition which aims to raise awareness about the concerns of those living in senior housing in the City’s core are possible because of long-standing relationships. I have always co-published and co-presented with members of this coalition (see Perry et al. 2015, 2017, 2020, in press).

Anthropology informs this work through the discipline’s emphasis on prolonged engagement and the level of detail needed to understand the lived experience from multiple angles (older adult, service providers) as well as the need to connect these details to macro policies and advocacy. Our multi-agency coalition often shares accounts of older adults facing displacement and other challenges recently as a result of COVID. My macro social work training on advocacy and the importance of understanding the individual and social determinants contributing to inequity are also always incorporated into my research and service approaches.

Your work focuses on housing transitions among older adults. Can you talk about the research and how it illustrates the importance of thinking about kin relations as changing over time? Kin relations have been part of most of my research projects with older adults in Detroit.  My dissertation work explored the processes of voluntary relocation, and my later projects involved older adults and their relationships to their homes and communities in times of involuntary displacement or environmental challenges. It is very clear that many of these decisions or the repercussions of challenges involve a host of kin. These kin structures constantly change as we examine resources, caregiving obligations and gentrification. I have written a paper with a section “kinship and lightbulbs” (Perry, 2014) illuminating (pun intended!) the intersection of kin relations with material possessions, in this case, collections of light bulbs. These lightbulb collections ensured that the patriarch of the household facilitated safe lighting and by inference, a safe physical environment. When he moved to senior living, this social role, as indexed by the selling of the lightbulb collection, was also transformed. My latest research project, Navigating Time and Space: Experiences of Aging with Hemophilia, also investigates aspects of kin relationships in this rare, genetically transmitted, bleeding disorder. The intersection of age with hemophilia in this population that has been gravely stricken by the HIV/AIDS pandemic highlights the “lack of a roadmap” in terms of older real and fictive kin in a population that never expected to age.

Your new project specifically examines how issues of housing and aging play out for urban Black American populations. Can you share a little about this project? More generally, how do you develop ideas for new projects and build on previous work while continuing to explore new ideas?  Working in Detroit, a predominantly Black American city, housing opportunities include reflections on historical homeownership opportunities, employment opportunities and system navigation. In general, projects tend to build upon themselves as insights are gained and research networks expand. For example, my interest in understanding housing challenges has expanded to working with urban planning researchers to understand how older adults are depicted in “development” materials, or in many cases, not featured, so depictions of “family” focuses on couples with small children (see Berglund et al. 2020). I’ve also been involved with larger work on building trust when it comes to engaging in research with communities of older adults in Detroit and Flint through the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research. This includes examining best practices with Community Advisory Boards as a way to highlight historically marginalized voices (Mitchell et al. 2020). During initial waves of COVID-19, MCUAAAR engaged in a telephone outreach project to engage older adults to understand immediate concerns (Rorai & Perry, 2020).

Another example of kin-making in a contemporary context is the defining of hope and loss in both surrogacy and adoption. Christa Craven writes about kinship and “de-kinning” in LGBTQ communities in the context of reproductive loss. Reproductive loss can include failed adoption or miscarriage. After conducting interviews with LGBTQ parents in the US, Canada, Belgium, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, New Zealand and Scotland, Craven finds how reproductive loss can be de-kinning by marking the lack of family formation while new kinships can also be formed through practices such as creating physical memorials, having religious or spiritual services, or remembering kin-making experiences through tattoos and art.

Adoption, surrogacy, and assisted reproductive technologies underscore what many have called new kinship studies or the second coming of kinship studies. Motherhood disaggregates into categories such as genetic, birth, adoptive and surrogate, distinguishing between social and biological parenting (Strathern 1992, 27). For example, Janet Carsten discusses the evolution of anthropological thought on kinship from Levi-Strauss to today (Warburton and Edmonds 2016). Thinking about the topics of global flow alongside surrogacy and technology in the context of more recent events, we see how quickly kin relations are made, interrupted, and remade. News stories marked with headlines such as “Israeli Dads Welcome Surrogate Born Baby in Nepal on Earthquake Day” (Harris 2015) illustrate how policy, sexual orientation, circulation of people and things across borders, and natural disasters come together. In this particular story, two dads who are barred from adoption in their home country of Israel due to their sexual orientation fly to Nepal to meet their child, trying to find their surrogate in the middle of earthquake recovery. In this journey to make kin, the story begins with sperm in Israel that is frozen and flown to Thailand where a South African donor supplied her egg for fertilization. The embryo was then flow to Nepal where it was implanted in an Indian woman who had agreed to be the surrogate. W hether the egg donor and surrogate were paid and to what degree they were able to negotiate the terms of their labor are not details explicitly included in the news report.

Surrogate labor and its relationship to social power structures have led to discussions about women, particularly poor women, are relegated to “womb renting” for wealthy foreigners. Added reflection also comes from researchers who provide important critiques of commercial surrogacy based on these power differentials as well as calls to analyze limitations in these debates such as essentializing narratives of surrogates as agency-less individuals. Bronwyn Parry acknowledges that commercial surrogacy can indeed be exploitative but also cautions against fetishized, exceptionalist narratives that define it as inherently so when other forms of bodily labor are also spaces of potential and real exploitation. Parry writes:

One of the powerful implications of perpetuating racialized and gendered accounts of surrogacy that characterize the practitioners (the surrogates) as an oppressed and exploited minority is that they actively prohibit such women from occupying the role of benefactor of reproductive labour to the more privileged Indian or white Western women and men who avail themselves of their services. Keeping them in this role, whilst simultaneously denying the significance of their labour, works to strip them further of both power and self-respect (2018, 228).

Better regulation that encourages or mandates more information sharing and the building of structures for more equitable negotiation are distinguished from exceptionalist narratives that might require the entire act of commercial surrogacy to be banned because the entire practice is seen as inherently exploitative. Parry cautions against falling into narratives of agency-less women that might address some inequities while further perpetuating others.

In examples like these, we see how marginalization and power might play out in one locale (gay men in Israel who want to be fathers) but also position them to interact in other locales (such as in Thailand and Nepal) in ways that leverage the power and privilege that accompanies the financial means to pursue assisted reproductive technologies and international travel. In this way, the complexities of kinship are mediated, facilitated, and disrupted by law, social and economic power, as well as unforeseen events that connect many countries and people of different cultural backgrounds to one another in the making of this family.

Recall our opening chapter where the context of COVID-19 brings anthropological issues to the forefront. Within this context, we also see how surrogacy and transnational flows take shape in the midst of a global pandemic (Maynes 2020). BioTexCom operates a center in Ukraine and released footage of surrogate babies born and awaiting their meeting with their parents but facing delays due to travel restrictions put in place as result of COVID-19 response. The center has been criticized for some of its practices in the past, and as an example of the complications of the transnational reproductive “market” for surrogacy and for lack of regulations. For example, parents who are one of the more frequently represented customers of BioTexCom may rely on its presence in Ukraine because surrogacy is not legal in their country of residence. This is further complicated by socioeconomic and class divisions that allow only certain would-be parents to travel to far away locales where surrogacy is permitted. For example, not all people in Spain (where surrogacy is illegal) who want to be parents through surrogacy have the option or means to travel internationally to Ukraine. Local and state-specific laws thus collide with financial resources and class status when it comes to this modern-day configuration of parenthood.

These are just some of the ways in which technology, policy and transnational contexts impact the shifting definitions of kinship and family. Over the years, anthropologists have grappled with the ways in which human beings make meaning out of our mutual relations. From a world where simplified concepts of kinship helped to broaden narrow definitions of family to a more critical and reflexive discussion about how those early endeavors also had negative repercussions in the way they upheld static and homogenizing notions of kinship in non-Western societies, anthropology as a discipline continues to evolve in its study of kin relations. Lessons from the discipline now integrate key themes such as the role of technology and state policy and stratifications that exists due to persistent race, gender, and class-based barriers in access to resources (Inhorn 2020).

FOR FURTHER READING

• Digital Elder Care
• The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives Between Nepal and New York
• The Circulation of Children: Kinship, Adoption, and Morality in Andean Peru

Kinship sits as a foundational principle in cultural anthropology, but it is a foundation that has shaped and shifted over time. How anthropologists think and write about kinship itself as universal or particular or as static versus in flux has itself evolved over time. Some historically understood notions of kin relations may remain cogent today but none remain “stuck” in the past or limited to definitions provided in a singular diagram. In a world where people, things, and ideas flow across group, clan, and nation-state borders, relationships between people have and will continue to shift.

By introducing some concepts and how they play out in different cultural contexts, we hope to underscore the fact that there is a wide range of diversity—and that there are no obvious givens when it comes to who relates to whom. Migration, transnational adoption, assisted reproductive technologies, and the converging spheres of legal, political, economic, and social contexts all challenge us to continuously interrogate how we think of our mutual relationships. Any changing roles, rights, and responsibilities must then be examined in all the ever-changing ways they impact kin relations in ways that underscore the diversity of ways human beings find belonging and community with one another.

CURRENT EVENTS & CRITICAL THINKING

• People Staff. “51-Year-Old Mother Serves as Her Daughter’s Surrogate After She Is Unable to Get Pregnant.” People , June 25, 2020. https://people.com/human-interest/mother-carries-daughters-baby/ .

The article features a story of a 51-year-old mother Julie Loving and a 29-year-old daughter Breanna Lockwood. The daughter had several miscarriages and was told that her uterus was unable to successfully carry a child. The Lockwoods looked for several surrogacy agencies, but the costs were very expensive. However, Lockwood’s fertility specialist Brian Kaplan suggested Lockwood to consider surrogacy, “specifically from a family member or friend instead of an agency to save the dental hygienist more than $100,000.” After series of careful medical examination and consultation, Loving volunteered to become a surrogate for her grandchild. This article provides an interesting example of kinship and pushes the boundaries of definition of motherhood. Although the baby was born through the 51-year-old mother’s uterus, genetically, the baby is 100% biologically related to the 29-year-old of daughter and her husband. The article is an example of modern medical technology re-defining the definition of traditional kinship.

• Strabuk, Alexa. “There Is No Way to Capture the Full Complexity of Transracial Adoption.” International Examiner , January 2, 2020. https://iexaminer.org/there-is-no-way-to-capture-the-full-complexity-of-transracial-adoption/ .

This opinion post covers complex layers of transracial adoption discourse and shares stories of adopted children growing up in a family of different race. Being Asian-American and a transracial adoptee herself, Strabuk shares brief history of transracial adoption in the US and modern international political background behind Asian kids’ adoption to the West. Questioning mass media’s generalized “happy endings” of adoptees and Strabuk writes, “A happy ending in the media erases the very real structural realities of the adoption industrial complex, one that orchestrates the exchange of babies for money. By watering down adoption, by overlooking the problems with white savior and colorblind parenting, the mainstream media uses transracial adoption to support its latest diversity campaign.”

Critical Thinking & Discussion Questions:

• Draw a kinship diagram of your family, however you define it. What are some places where it was easy to depict in a diagram? What are some places where it was challenging? What does relative ease or challenge say about the social and cultural norms you were raised in? Alternatively, you could do this exercise with a famous person, whether a celebrity in popular culture or a historic/political figure and ask the same questions.
• Define some key ways in which legal, biological, and socio-cultural definitions of kinship converge and diverge. How might this play out in the case of adoption or surrogacy?
• How have kinship concepts evolved over the course of the history of anthropology?

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group
• Scholars Across Anthropology & Social Work

Teaching Cultural Anthropology for 21st Century Learners Copyright © 2023 by Sheena Nahm McKinlay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations

Home » Kinship

Co-edited by Gavin Van Horn, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and John Hausdoerffer

We live in an astounding world of relations. We share these ties that bind with our fellow humans—and we share these relations with nonhuman beings as well. From the bacterium swimming in your belly to the trees exhaling the breath you breathe, this community of life is our kin—and, for many cultures around the world, being human is based upon this extended sense of kinship.

Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations is a lively series that explores our deep interconnections with the living world. These five Kinship volumes—Planet, Place, Partners, Persons, Practice—offer essays, interviews, poetry, and stories of solidarity, highlighting the interdependence that exists between humans and nonhuman beings. More than 70 contributors—including Robin Wall Kimmerer, Richard Powers, David Abram, J. Drew Lanham, and Sharon Blackie—invite readers into cosmologies, narratives, and everyday interactions that embrace a more-than-human world as worthy of our response and responsibility. These diverse voices render a wide range of possibilities for becoming better kin.

From the recognition of nonhumans as persons to the care of our kinfolk through language and action, Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations is a guide and companion into the ways we can deepen our care and respect for the family of plants, rivers, mountains, animals, and others who live with us in this exuberant, life-generating, planetary tangle of relations.

Purchase Options

The kinship book series comprises five volumes (listed below, with a framing question that animates each respective volume)..

Vol. 1. – Planet

Cosmic/Elemental/Planetary Kinship Contributors: David Abram, Ginny Battson, Marcia Bjornerud, Brenda Cárdenas, Ceridwen Dovey, Marcelo Gleiser, Art Goodtimes, Sean Hill, Robin Wall Kimmerer, J. Drew Lanham, Manulani Aluli Meyer, Steve Paulson, Craig Santos Perez, Heather Swan, Bron Taylor, Andrew S. Yang

With every breath, every sip of water, every meal, we are reminded that our lives are inseparable from the life of the world—and the cosmos—in ways both material and spiritual. What are the sources of our deepest evolutionary and planetary connections, and of our profound longing for kinship? 

Watch the Kinship Book Club discussion of Vol. 1: Planet

Vol. 2 ­– Place

Bioregional Kinship Contributors: Aaron Abeyta, Bethany Barratt, Elizabeth Bradfield, Art Goodtimes, John Hausdoerffer, Sean Hill, Lisa María Madera, Curt Meine, Gary Paul Nabhan, Melissa Nelson, Lillian Pearce, Devon G. Peña, Craig Santos Perez, Enrique Salmón, Gavin Van Horn, Diane Wilson

Given the place-based circumstances of human evolution and culture, global consciousness may be too broad a scale of care for us. To what extent does crafting a deeper connection with the Earth’s bioregions reinvigorate a sense of kinship with the place-based beings, systems, and communities that mutually shape one another?

Watch the Kinship Book Club discussion of Vol. 2: Place

Vol. 3 – Partners

Interspecies Kinship Contributors: Sharon Blackie, Nickole Brown, Brenda Cárdenas, Ourania Emmanouil, Monica Gagliano, Anne Galloway, Sean Hill, Julian Hoffman, Tim Ingold, Toby McLeod, Martin Lee Mueller, Steve Paulson, Richard Powers, Merlin Sheldrake, Eleanor Sterling, Heather Swan, Manon Voice, Rowen White

How do cultural traditions, narratives, and mythologies shape the ways we relate, or not, to other beings as kin? How do relations between and among different species foster a sense of responsibility and belonging in us?

Watch the Kinship Book Club discussion of Vol. 3: Partners

Vol. 4 – Persons

Interpersonal Kinship Contributors: Elizabeth Bradfield, Brian Calvert, Brenda Cárdenas, Shannon Gibney, Graham Harvey, Lyanda Fern Lynn Haupt, John Hausdoerffer, Brooke Hecht, Liam Heneghan, Andy Letcher, Freya Mathews, Daegan Miller, Susan Richardson, Kimberley Ruffin, David Taylor, Manon Voice, Andreas Weber, Brooke Williams, Orrin Williams

Kinship spans the cosmos, but it is perhaps most life changing when experienced directly and personally. Which experiences expand our understanding of being human in relation to other-than-human beings? How can we respectfully engage a world full of human and nonhuman persons?

Watch the Kinship Book Club discussion of Vol. 4: Persons

Vol. 5 – Practice

Kinship Practices and Ethics Contributors: Sharon Blackie, Nickole Brown, Sunil Chauhan, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Tom Fleischner, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Matthew Hall, John Hausdoerffer, Trebbe Johnson, Robin Wall Kimmerer, María Isabel Morales, Ajay Rastogi, Jill Riddell, Enrique Salmón, Amba Sepie, Heather Swan, Maya Ward, Kyle Whyte, Orrin Williams, Anthony Zaragoza

From the perspective of kinship as a recognition of nonhuman personhood, of kincentric ethics, and of kinship as a verb involving active and ongoing participation, how are we to live? What are the practical, everyday, and lifelong ways we  become  kin?

About the co-editors:

Gavin Van Horn is the Executive Editor of Humans & Nature Press Books . His writing is tangled up in the ongoing conversation between humans, our nonhuman kin, and the animate landscape. He is the co-editor (with John Hausdoerffer) of Wildness: Relations of People and Place ,   co-editor (with Dave Aftandilian) of  City Creatures: Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness , and the author of  The Way of Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds . 

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, botanist, writer, and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, and the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a student of the plant nations. Her writings include  Gathering Moss  and  Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants . As a writer and a scientist, her interests include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens domestic and wild.

John Hausdoerffer , jhausdoerffer.com, is author of  Catlin’s Lament: Indians, Manifest Destiny, and the Ethics of Nature  as well as co-author and co-editor of  Wildness: Relations of People and Place  and  What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be?  John is the Dean of the School of Environment & Sustainability at Western Colorado University and co-founder of Coldharbour Institute, the Center for Mountain Transitions, and the Resilience Studies Consortium. John serves as a Fellow and Senior Scholar for the Center for Humans and Nature. 

Listen to the Kinship Podcast

View the kinship art exhibition, praise for kinship.

center for humans & nature

humans & nature press

humans & nature farm

Forty miles north of Chicago, the Center is home to breathtakingly beautiful prairie, savanna, wetland, woodland, and ravine in the homelands of the Council of Three Fires—the Potawatomi, Ojibwa, and Ottawa.

Center for Humans & Nature 17660 West Casey Road Libertyville, Illinois 60048

The Sociology of Kinship: A Case for Looking Back to the Future

• First Online: 02 November 2021

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• Alexandra Maryanski 4  

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Kinship fired the imagination of scholars in sociology and anthropology for generations, although kinship per se is no longer regarded as a particularly useful concept for the study of family life in modern societies. Kinship theory rests on a global literature stockpiled over the last 150 years with clashing theories over whether kinship is a biological, sociological, or psychological phenomenon, how and why exogamy and the incest taboo originated, the role kinship plays in social integration, and even whether kinship and the nuclear family are a facet of human nature or an invented social construct. This essay reviews the compelling ideas of the leading kinship theorists in sociology and anthropology during the Axial Age of kinship. And, surprisingly, as this chapter will document, some early speculations on kinship and its related elements have now been corroborated in the light of primate data and the fossil, molecular, sociological, and archeological records, with findings that have the potential to revitalize sociological theory and practice. The near discarding of kinship theory in sociology is thus a rather foolish line of reasoning.

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The kinship literature is so enormous that only a representative sample of the leading kinship theorists and their contributions are possible in this essay.

Polygyny is the marriage of several women to one man at the same time; polyandry is the marriage of several men to one woman; bilateral descent lines are through both the mother’s and father’s relatives; unilineal descent lines are limited to either the mother’s or father’s relatives; patrilocal is a postmarital residence where the married couple live in or near the groom’s home; matrilocal is a postmarital residence where the couple live in or near the brides’ home; neolocal is a postmarital independent household; and avunculocal is a residence shift where a male leaves his patrilocal residence as an adult to reside with his mother’s brother before and after marriage. Two excellent (and easy to read) books on kinship for the interested are Fox ( 2003 ) and Schusky ( 1983 ).

The nuclear family is the starting point for creating larger kinship networks. The polygynous family is a compounded extension of the nuclear unit because each wife has her own offspring, usually her own residence, and they share a single husband. Exceptions are very rare. For example, the traditional Nayar, a group of castes living on the coast of India, once practiced a form of polyandry. The Nayar castes, however, comprised only a small slice of Indian society, and their very specialized occupations are said to account for their mating arrangement. About 1890, Nayar kinship patterns shifted to monogamy and a gradually emerging nuclear family (Gough 1961 ; Murdock 1949 , pp. 1–40)

J.D. Freeman ( 1961 ) noted that corporate kindred groups are rare but possible with bilateral descent, but they are never organized on the basis of a common ancestor (like a clan) and they are very small in size.

Six basic types of kinship terminology have been identified worldwide, although every society adds some variations. By tradition, they are called, Iroquois, Eskimo, Omaha, Hawaiian, Sudanese, and Crow. Sudanese is the most complex system because it assigns a distinctive kin term to each near relative, and it has eight different cousin terms. Interestingly, Old English and Latin kin terms conform to a Sudanese pattern. Crow (named after a native American tribe) is a mirror image of Omaha and is associated with a matrilineal kinship system.

Morgan’s division of kinship terminologies into descriptive and classificatory is a misnomer given that both classificatory and descriptive terminologies merge some relatives. Morgan knew this, but his intent was to distinguish between kinship terminologies that isolate out the nuclear family with special kin terms from those that lump them in nomenclature with other relatives. Critics have attacked Morgan over what they thought was a blunder on his part, but they were apparently ignorant of his reasoning when he made this distinction. The terms are still used in the kinship literature despite this obvious problem.

Spencer’s Descriptive Sociology or Groups of Sociological Facts (1873–1934) is a huge compilation of cross-cultural materials drawn from archeological, ethnological, historical, and other sources, classified and arranged by Spencer. Originally commissioned in the 1860s in preparation for writing Principles of Sociology , he later published them for future students, along with a trust fund to complete the series. In all, there are 15 fat volumes that include a series of tables and columns using the same categories for each type of society. For example, some columns have a heading that relates to some social, cultural, or institutional structure of society (e.g., religious, ceremonial, linguistic, artistic, and domestic relations). Other columns have headings for the sociological, organic, and inorganic environment (e.g., past history, contact with neighbors, climate, geography, and animal life).

Durkheim taught a lecture course at the Lycée de Sens in 1883–1884 where he refers to the family as “the primary and most natural grouping of individuals” and “the seed from which society as a whole is born” (see Gross and Jones 2004 , pp. 255–257).

As senior editor, Durkheim reviewed whatever caught his fancy, especially books and articles on social organization and religion. His articles on incest, totemism, and primitive classification were all published in L’Année sociologique as Mémoires originaux

Durkheim’s publications on kinship and the family (outside of his Journal reviews and in Suicide ) include the published introductory family lecture (discussed above), a fragment of the seventeenth lecture that he delivered in 1892 on the “Conjugal Family” (published posthumously in 1921) and in 1906 “Divorce by Mutual Consent.”

Durkheim essentially adopted Robertson Smith’s view on kinship in blood. As Smith put it: “The idea that kinship is not purely an affair of birth …has quite fallen out of our circle of ideas; but so, for that matter, has the primitive conception of kindred itself…To know that a man’s life was sacred to me …it was not necessary for me to count cousinship with him by reckoning up to our common ancestor; it was enough that we belonged to the same clan and bore the same clan-name” ( 1889 , p. 255).

Rivers did not entirely reject the notion of survivals, but he confined these so-called leftovers from the past to a few systematic features (Davis ([ 1936 ] 1980, p. 47).

Murdock was very critical of the way the Boasian school had “exorcised the bogey of evolutionism.” He considered Boas “extravagantly overrated by his disciples… [and]… the most unsystematic of theorists, his numerous kernels of genuine insight being scattered amongst much pedantic chaff” ( 1949 , p. xiv).

A.R. Radcliffe-Brown taught social anthropology in Chicago, Oxford, Alexandria, Sydney, London, Manchester, Johannesburg, and pretty much around the globe (Evans-Pritchard and Eggan 1952 ).

Following Davis, social distance has three manifestations: an individual’s private feelings toward certain individuals, open, overt behavior, or contact, and social norms that distinguish different classes of individuals ([1980] 1936 , p. 164).

Parsons notes that this characterization is for urban middle-class American society. For the upper-class elite, kinship solidarity usually persists as it is associated with status of ancestry, transfer of estates, etc. And this main kinship pattern also differs among the lower classes, although this has not been studied, he said, using a structural perspective.

A kinship system can be examined from two distinctive vantage points: An Ego-centered focus (the anchor for a kindred) or an ancestral focus (the anchor for a clan). A clan can exist in perpetuity, whereas a kindred comes in and out of existence with the birth and death of an Ego.

The great apes (our closest relatives) are all forest living. Orangutans are arboreal and nearly solitary, and the only stable group is a mother with dependent offspring. Gorillas are mostly terrestrial and live in regenerating and high-altitude forests and ravines. They are organized into loosely woven heterosexual groups or “bands” which average about 15 gorillas. While a gorilla band is made up of a shifting collection of individuals, it is organized around a leader male and includes a number of adult females with dependents and up to four adult males. Chimpanzees are tree-living and also hang out on the forest floor. The only stable group is a mother and her dependent young. Chimpanzees share nearly 99% of our DNA and as King and Wilson ( 1978 , p. 90) highlighted “the chimpanzee-human difference is far smaller than that between species within a genus of mice, frogs, or flies.” So, given that species usually build on the social structure that they inherit, it is a good bet that early hominins started out with an organizational arrangement much like the promiscuous and community living chimpanzees (see Maryanski 2018 and Turner and Maryanski 2008 )

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UCLA Department of Sociology, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Omar Lizardo

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Maryanski, A. (2021). The Sociology of Kinship: A Case for Looking Back to the Future. In: Abrutyn, S., Lizardo, O. (eds) Handbook of Classical Sociological Theory. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78205-4_12

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Mr Salles Teaches English

Kingship in Macbeth

(a grade 8 essay, improved to grade 9).

Hi again Mr Salles - I hope you are well,

Here is an essay I have written on the theme of kingship, tyranny and natural order.

If you have a spare few minutes, please let me know what mark this would get and how I can improve it to get full marks :)

Shakespeare cleverly crafts the themes of kingship/tyranny/natural order through the devolution of Macbeth. By contrasting morality and corruption within Macbeth and Banquo, Shakespeare cautions against ambition and associates it with the supernatural - a very disturbing idea for the contemporary audience, contributing to Shakespeare’s overall purpose of trying to flatter King James I and warn the nobility against rebellion.

Shakespeare constructs Banquo as a foil to Macbeth by illustrating their contrasting reactions to the same evil force - the supernatural and temptation. Banquo represents the route that Macbeth chose not to take: the path where ambition does not lead to betrayal and murder. Thus, it is Banquo’s ghost, rather than Duncan’s, that haunts Macbeth and conveys to the contemporary audience that restraint will lead to a fruition of power as Banquo’s lineage stays on the throne for the longest.

The witches’ equivocation: “ Lesser than Macbeth, and greater ” paradoxically suggests the drastic difference between Banquo and Macbeth, foreshadowing character development as the witches' prophecies come true. Banquo will never be king, but he does father a line of kings. Macbeth, on the other hand, will become the King of Scotland which is commendable in terms of the Divine Order; Macbeth’s reign of power will be one of selfishness and greed as he fulfils his cruel desire for power, eliminating all obstacles that stand in the way of his kingship.

As a result, Macbeth holds the shorter end of the stick in this paradox, facing paranoia, insomnia, guilt, and a tragic demise, therefore proving its accuracy. Here, Shakespeare is flattering King James I, as he was descendant of Banquo and Fleance, in order to gain his trust and potentially patronage for his theatre. This also helps Shakespeare later in the play when he subtly warns James I not to be repressive and tyrannical in his rule.

Shakespeare ensures Banquo isn’t perfect as he is tempted on some level by the Witches’ prophecy, but his ability to reject evil is what makes him a moral character and an antithesis to Macbeth. He is less able to resist temptation when he sleeps “ I dream’d of the three weird sisters last night ”, but instead of trying to hide this, he confesses to God and asks for help in remaining moral and virtuous.

This references the Bible as Jesus was tempted three times by the devil and resisted: perhaps Shakespeare is attempting to draw parallels between Banquo and Jesus which would have been largely impactful to a Christian contemporary audience, further warning about the devastating consequences of temptation and tyranny by contrasting this with the holy and biblical ideas associated with resistance to temptation and ambition.

Shakespeare demonstrates how the acquisition of power invokes an irreversible change in character, subverting the audience’s expectations as he implies that a person’s poor qualities are amplified by the crown and personal desire - Macbeth becomes paranoid.

In the beginning of the play, Macbeth is conveyed as the epitome of a loyal and quintessential Scottish soldier when the captain recalls Macbeth’s noble actions as he “ carv’d the passage ” of the traitor Macdonwald. Specifically, the emotive verb “ carv’d ” carries strong connotations of combative expertise and nobility. Alternatively, it could allude to him carving his name famously in the beginning of the play and eventually notoriously at the end of the play, foreshadowing his drastic moral decline. The stark contrast between Macbeth murdering an enemy of the king (which would be seen as an enemy to God due to the Divine Right of Kings believed by the contemporary audience) and when he commits regicide - the ultimate sin.

Shakespeare explores the consequences of usurpation - for the nation it is a nightmare; an illegitimate king can only become a tyrant, using ever greater acts of violence to maintain his rule. However, Shakespeare is careful to emphasise how the tyrant himself suffers at his own hands - violence traumatises the violent person as well as the victims. Macbeth ‘ fixed [Macdonwald’s] head upon our battlements ’. The head is symbolic as a motif of Macbeth’s declining heroism. First he is at his moral peak as he beheads the King’s enemy, effectively God’s enemy in the eyes of the contemporary audience, then after having his moral endurance tested in the form of ‘ supernatural soliciting ’ he goes out to commit regicide, losing all virtue. Finally, Shakespeare uses this motif to highlight the negative consequences to his audience as the ‘head’ foreshadows Macbeth’s later disgrace as his own head becomes described as ‘ the usurper’s cursed head’ that is reminiscent of his previous morality before he was corrupted by ambition and the witches’ prophecies.

Supernatural

Shakespeare forces his audience to question whether the unlawful act of treason has a supernatural urge, whether there are malign witches and demonic forces working against the moral bonds of mankind. Macbeth’s growing inclination towards ‘supernatural soliciting’ leaves him in a perplexed self-questioning state " why hath it given me earnestness of success/commencing in a truth ?” Linguistically, the sibilance of ‘ supernatural soliciting’ is deliberately used by Shakespeare to raise his audience’s alarm, given the satanic connotations and reference to devastating sorcery in the form of ‘soliciting’.

Likewise, Macbeth’s rhetorical question is used by Shakespeare to create a self-doubting, unstable and malevolent fallacy created by the engagement with the ‘agents of the dark’.

This repeated motif of the supernatural was especially significant to a contemporary Christian audience as witches were believed to be women who made a pact with the Devil, but it also would have especially attracted the interests of King James I - Macbeth was first performed to him and his courtiers. James I hated witchcraft and wrote Daemonologie - a book about the supernatural. Here, Shakespeare is flattering the king by incorporating his interests into his play and is also warning the nobility who were unhappy with James as king at the time by suggesting their desire to overthrow James I was manipulated into existence by the supernatural and witches.

Mr Salles Teaches English is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to get top grades, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a very ambitious title – normally you would have just kingship or tyranny set as the question. And then you are going to make it even more ambitious by introducing the supernatural!

This has led to a very convoluted thesis – having at least 3 ideas is excellent, but it has to make sense. You could simplify this:

Shakespeare contrasts the characters of Macbeth and Banquo to caution against ambition. Unchecked ambition is associated with the supernatural, which allows Shakespeare characterise ambition as inherently evil. Macbeth becomes a tyrannical king because he welcomes “supernatural soliciting.” The focus on the supernatural also contributes to Shakespeare’s overall purpose of trying to flatter King James I and warn the nobility against rebellion.

Notice how I have structured this differently in order to make one point at a time.

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When Kinship Is Traced Through Women, Their Health Follows

Anthropologists have long been intrigued by the Mosuo, an ethnic Chinese community that lives in Yunnan province. The Mosuo share a common language and cultural practices, but they are unique in that they maintain what anthropologists call two different kinship systems: matriliny and patriliny.

More specifically, inheritance passes from mothers to their children among the matrilineal Mosuo and from fathers to sons among patrilineal Mosuo. Globally, matriliny is less common than patriliny—and some societies now link inheritance and kinship through both parents.

In general, women have greater autonomy and control of resources in matrilineal Mosuo communities. The reverse is true in patrilineal ones. This difference could be powerful. A study published last fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences comparing the two Mosuo communities suggests cultural factors such as gender norms can significantly contribute to differences in men’s and women’s health. Their findings suggest that women’s health improves significantly in matrilineal communities.

“This is an exceptionally cool study,” wrote Robert Quinlan , an anthropologist at Washington State University, in an email to SAPIENS. Quinlan, who did not participate in the work, added that the new findings show that “the way people  think  about kinship influences gender differences in chronic disease risks.”

The new findings come from an interdisciplinary team, including anthropologists, biologists, and demographers from the United States and China who studied the Mosuo.

The researchers compared men and women in the two groups for hypertension, a risk factor for numerous diseases, and checked their blood for a biomarker linked to chronic inflammation, which can lead to many health problems, including cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes. According to the research team’s leader Siobhán Mattison , an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of New Mexico, she and her colleagues found no significant differences in these measures among men in the matrilineal and patrilineal groups.

The situation for women, however, told a different story. In the patrilineal communities, women had a significantly higher prevalence of hypertension and the biomarker linked to inflammation than men. For example, 37.4 percent of these women had a higher prevalence of hypertension, compared with 29.7 percent of men. Women in these groups also had more than double the rate of inflammation compared with men.

“The way people think about kinship influences gender differences in chronic disease risk,” says anthropologist Robert Quinlan.

This pattern was reversed in the matrilineal communities. Women had lower rates than men for both the inflammation biomarker and hypertension, with much smaller differences between men and women overall.

The researchers also studied whether being the head of a household—whether male or female—might relate to health. They found that heads of households had lower inflammation markers but a higher prevalence of hypertension than others in their society.

Though the authors are unsure how to explain the elevated prevalence of hypertension, they note that household heads generally have more autonomy in their decision-making and better access to resources. Both factors could help reduce the likelihood of disease.

These findings, Mattison notes, suggest that greater support and agency among the matrilineal Mosuo benefit women’s health. It’s also possible that having a woman head a household improves the health of other women and girls in that home. “Men aren’t doing worse, under matriliny, it’s just that women seem to be doing better,” she says.

The new findings fit into a larger set of studies involving matriliny, patriliny, and patriarchy. Broadly, matriarchy and patriarchy are defined as systems related to power within a society—whereas matriliny and patriliny relate to issues of inheritance and determining kin. Many societies are both patriarchal and patrilineal, but many anthropologists doubt the existence of a true matriarchy today because, even in the matrilineal societies, men typically maintain powerful government and community roles.

Christopher von Rueden , an anthropologist at the University of Richmond, who was not involved in the Mosuo study, notes that the new work suggests “matrilineal and patrilineal systems affect the psychology of women and men differently, particularly related to [a] sense of control and stress.”

Past studies comparing matrilineal and patrilineal communities suggest something similar. For example, von Rueden cites a comparison of the patriarchal and patrilineal Maasai in Tanzania with the matrilineal Khasi in India. That work, published in 2009, suggests that men are more competitive than women in patriarchal communities and women are more competitive than men in matrilineal groups. And a 2019 study suggests that girls are less risk averse than boys in matrilineal Mosuo communities when they first enter school—but this pattern reverses over time as the students attend schools where most other pupils are part of the traditionally patriarchal Han ethnicity in China.

According to von Rueden, patrilineal and matrilineal families give men and women different opportunities for social networking, occupations, and levels of control within a household. It’s possible, he notes, that the new health-linked findings from the Mosuo reflect the fact that the women in matrilineal groups have more social support from their closest kin and that , more so than autonomy, supports health. There may also be differences in wealth in these kinship systems that contribute to the findings. Further study could clarify which of these factors is most powerful in understanding health and well-being outcomes in men and women.

Katherine Wander , an anthropologist at Binghamton University and one of the study authors, hopes their work influences public health. “The current approach,” she argues of health interventions, “tends to treat women as though they’re rather lacking in social context.”

And Quinlan noted an added lesson in the fact that the men in matrilineal and patrilineal communities had similar health outcomes. “Matriliny doesn’t reverse gender biases so that women dominate men,” he explained. “It seems to reduce inequality significantly for a healthier population overall, at least among Mosuo people.”

Deepa Padmanaban is a freelance journalist based in Bangalore, India. Her work has been published in BBC Earth, National Geographic , The Atlantic , The Christian Science Monitor , The Cut , and other publications. Follow her on Twitter  @deepa_padma .

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Kinship: essay on the system of kinship in india.

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Essay on the System of Kinship in India!

The system of kinship, that is, the way in which relations between individuals and groups are organised, occupies a central place in all human societies. Radcliffe-Brown (1964) insisted on the study of a kinship system as a field of rights and obligations and saw it as part of the social structure. Evans-Pritchard’s study of the Nuer of the southern Sudan (1951) focused on kinship groups, particularly groups based on descent in the male line from known ancestor.

Morgan called them gens (clans). However, Morgan’s view, along with that of McLennan and Sir Henry Maine, that the kinship systems should be equated with evolutionary law, is not favoured today. Kinship systems are not subject to cumulative evolution as the evolution of technology is Kinship systems cannot be ranked as better or worse, higher or lower. They simply represent alternative ways of doing things, namely, in terms of acknowledged rules and regulations regarding succession, inheritance and marriage.

Evans-Pritchard showed how gens functioned as political groups in Nuer society. He emphasised on the recruitment, perpet­uation and functioning of such groups in Africa. Emphasis on interpersonal relations between individuals and groups is found in the study of kinship by Meyer Fortes. Thus, we can look at the total society and ask how it forms its kinship groups, and how they function.

We can look at the network of the relationships that bind individuals to each other in the ‘web’ of kinship. Kinship systems are also seen as methods of organising marriage relations between groups. Through marriage, Levi-Strauss (1969) observes, members are recruited to kinship groups.

A female is recruited as a wife, as a daughter-in-law and so on through her marriage to another group; and a male through his marriage is recruited as husband, son-in-law of his wife’s parents. Thus, kinship group alliances are transacted through marriage.

Robin Fox (1967) writes:

“The study of kinship is the study of what he (man) does and why he does it, and the consequences of the adoption of one alternative rather than another”. Fox further says: “The study of kinship is the study of what man does with these basic facts of life such as mating, gestation, parenthood, socialization, sibling ship, etc.”

Four basic principles outlined by Fox regarding kinship are as follows:

1. The women have children.

2. The men impregnate the women.

3. The men usually exercise control.

4. Primary kins do not mate with each other.

In its commonest definition, kinship is simply the relations between ‘kin’, i.e., persons related by real, putative or fictive consanguinity as stated by Fox. However, it is difficult to define and find the ‘real’ consanguinity.

Generally, we remember people up to two to three generations. Thus, a consanguine is one who is defined by the society as a person related by real or supposed blood ties. However, blood relationship’ in a genetic sense has not necessarily anything to do with it.

We draw a distinction between ‘pater’ or legal father from the ‘genitor’ or actual biological father. In case of adoption also a child is treated as consanguine. A female becomes a consanguine after her marriage as soon as she bears a child. Consan­guinity is thus a socially defined quality. Affines are married to consanguines, for example, in the case of levirate.

John Beattie [1974) provides an adequate explanation of kinship. According to him, the basic categories of biological relationship are available as a means of identifying and ordering social relations. Kinship provides categories for distinguishing between the people.

Hence, kinship categories are more social than jural or economic. The categories of kinship are used to define social relationships – distinct types of social behaviour and particular patterns of expectations, beliefs and values.

These social relations may be of authority and subordination, of economic exchange, of domestic cooperation, of ritual or ceremonial nature, and they may be enacted in many different ways. In this way, kinship refers to the ways and means by which social ordering takes place.

But kinship is also a principle of succession, inheritance of property, bifurcation and divisions. A couple of studies have revealed that ‘factions’ in Indian villages are found corresponding to castes, sub-castes, clans and even lineages. Kinship encompasses, therefore, a whole way of life.

It is necessary to know language, values and behaviour of people in a given society to understand its kinship system. Kinship provides a guide to a very great many of the social relationships in which a person is involved in his life.

It provides a way of trans­mitting status and property from one generation to the next. This is true about all societies irrespective of the levels of their techno­logical and industrial advancement. Based on kinship we also find effective social groups even in modern democratic societies. Thus, realising kinship as a complex and elaborate system, Malinowski (1954) referred it as ‘kinship algebra’.

Kinship Terminology :

Murdock (1949), while analysing the interrelation between kinship terminology and kinship behaviour, mentions two categories of kinship terms:

(1) Terms of address, and

(2) Terms of reference.

Terms of address form an integral part of the culturally patterned relationships between kinsmen. Terms of reference are linguistic symbols denoting one of the two statuses involved in each such relationship. Since any status is defined in terms of the culturally expected behaviour, there are a priori reasons for assuming a close functional congruity between the terms of reference and the relationship in which the denoted kinsmen interact. A close corre­lation has been found between the terminological classification of kindred or relatives and the social classification. But, the congruity between kinship terms and behaviour patterns is not absolute.

The gap between the two is due to the application of a single classificatory term to a variety of different relatives – for example, ‘mother’ to all the wives of the father. The kinship terms like ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’ are unable to explain the proper relations unless they are specified in contextual terms.

‘Uncle’ can be referred to denote father’s brother, mother’s brother, father’s sister’s husband and so on. Kinship terminology is determined by several factors such as historical influences, differences in language, psychological processes, rules of marriage, etc.

Some of the important kinship terms defined by Lucy Mair (1984) are as follows:

Kindred are a body of persons, who are genea­-logically linked to the ego. They may have common obligations to the ego.

All the people who are related by blood’ in any way to an individual are known as cognates.

Those who are related to a person by marriage are affines.

Corporate groups:

These are continuing property holding groups. Corporate groups are recruited by descent – patrilineal or agnatic and matrilineal or uterine kin.

A corporate group recruited by descent is called a lineage. There may be several lineages in a given clan.

It indicates the ‘side’ of the kinship group.

It refers to the ‘line’ of the kinship group.

Kinship in India:

Kinship in India can be analysed within family and beyond family separately as well as in terms of the nexus between the two. Kinship within family would include ‘primary relatives’ with the focus on intra-family relationships, which include husband and wife, father and son, mother and daughter, mother and son, father and daughter, elder and younger brother, elder and younger sister and brother and sister. These relationships are part of the same nuclear family, which is also referred as ‘family of procreation’.

Kinship beyond family comprises of ‘secondary’ and ‘tertiary’ relatives. Murdock (1949) refers to eight ‘primary’ and 33 ‘secondary’ relatives. Each secondary relative has primary relatives. The tertiary relatives number 151 possible kins, and there are also ‘distant’ relatives who are beyond the tertiary relatives.

In India, we have, generally speaking, ‘clan exogamy’ and ‘caste endogamy’. A given caste has several clans, and a given clan has several lineages. The common ancestor of lineage members is usually an actual, remembered person, but the common ancestor of a clan is typically a legendary, supernatural entity. The members of a clan are spread over a given area, and hence they find themselves unable to have common interests or joint action.

A clan, however, provides generally a basis for corporate activity, common worship- On the basis of clan, eligibility for marriage within a given caste is determined. In many ways, more than clan-based primordiality, there is caste-ethnocentrism in regard to observance of rituals, performance of economic activities, mutual aid, etc. ‘Feminal kin’ and ‘fictive kin’ too provide basis for commonality of interests and allegiance.

It is noted that kinship is certainly a major basis for social organisation, but at the same time it is also a basis for division and dissension in regard to succession and inheritance of property. Hostility at times supersedes lineage unity. Fights between sons and grandsons, brothers and cousins have been experienced quite often. Sibling rivalry has also been observed.

Karve’s Study of Kinship Organisation in India:

Iravati Karve (1953) undertakes a comparative analysis of four cultural zones with a view to trace out something like a regional pattern of social behaviour. A region may show various local patterns. There are variations between castes because of hierarchy and caste-based isolation and separation. Karve analyses the process of acculturation and accommodation in the context of kinship. She has adopted a historical perspective covering a span of 3,000 years based on ethno-sources, observations and folk-literature along with Sanskritic texts.

Karve’s comparative study takes the following points into consideration:

1. Lists of kinship terms in Indian languages,

2. Their linguistic contexts and corresponding behaviour and attitudes,

3. Rules of descent and inheritance,

4. Patterns of marriage and family, and

5. Difference between the Sanskritic north and the Dravidian south.

Karve spells out the configuration of the linguistic regions, the institution of caste and family organisation as the most vital bases for understanding of the patterns of kinship in India. She divides the whole country into northern, central, southern and eastern zones keeping in view the linguistic, caste and family organisation.

The kinship organisation follows roughly the linguistic pattern, but in some respects language and kinship do not go hand in hand. For example, Maharashtra has Dravidian impact, and the impact of northern neighbours speaking Sanskritic languages could be seen on the Dravidian kinship system.

Despite variations based on these factors, there are two common points:

(1) Marriage is always within a caste or tribe, and

(2) Marriage between parents and children and between siblings is forbidden.

Kinship in North India :

In north India, there are (1) terms for blood relations, and (2) terms for affinal relations. There are primary terms for three generations of immediate relations and the terms for one generation are not exchangeable for those of another generation. All the other terms are derived from the primary terms.

The northern zone consists the areas of the Sindhi, Punjabi, Hindi (and Pahari), Bihari, Bengali, Asami and Nepali. In these areas, caste endogamy, clan exogamy and incest taboos regarding sexual relations between primary kins are strictly observed.

The rule of sasan is key to all marriage alliances, that is, a person must not marry in his patri-family and must avoid marriage with sapindra kin. Gotras in the old Brahmanic sense of the word are exogamous units. Sometimes a caste is also divided into endogamous gotras or exogamous gotras as also gotras which do not seem to have any function in marriage regulations.

There is village exogamy. Thus, there are at least four basic features of kinship in north India:

(1) Territoriality,

(2) Genealogy,

(3) Incest taboos, and

(4) Local exogamy.

Considerations of caste status tend to restrict the area of endogamy. Marriage prohibitions tend to bar marriage over a wide area in terms of kinship as well as space. Cognatic prohibitions and local exogamy are strictly adhered to in marriage alliances.

Four-gotra (sasan) rule, that is, avoidance of the gotras of father, mother, grandmother and maternal grandmother is generally practised among Brahmanas and other upper castes in north India. However, some intermediate and most of the lower castes avoid two gotras, namely, that of father and mother.

Kinship in Central India :

The central zone comprises the linguistic regions of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh (now Chhattisgarh also), Gujarat and Kathiawad, Maharashtra and Orissa with their respective languages, namely, Rajasthani, Hindi, Gujarati and Kathiawadi, Marathi and Oriya. All these languages are of Sanskritic origin, and therefore, they have affinity to the northern zone. But there are pockets of Dravidian languages in this zone. There is also some impact of the eastern zone. Tribal people have their unique and somewhat different situation compared to other people in the region.

In regard to the central zone the following points may be noted:

1. Cross-cousin marriages are prevalent which are not witnessed in the north zone. Cross-cousins are children of siblings of opposite sex, parallel cousins are children of the siblings of the same sex.

2. Many castes are divided into exogamous clans like the north zone.

3. In some castes exogamous clans are arranged in a hypergamous hierarchy.

However, none of these features are found all over the zone. In Rajasthan, for example, Jats follow two-gotra exogamy along with village exogamy; Banias practise four-gotra rule; and Rajputs have hypergamous clans, and feudal status is an important consideration in marriage alliances.

Rajputs are not a homogeneous caste. They put a lot of emphasis on purity and nobility of descent. The fact of being a hero and a ruler has been a major consideration. Symbolic marriages (marriage with sword) were quite a practice. Status of mother on either side is also a factor in marriage alliances.

In Kathiawad and Gujarat one finds a mix of peculiar local customs and northern practices. Some castes allow cross-cousin marriages, others allowed marriages once a year, and some others permitted once every four, five, nine or twelve years. When the marriage year arrives, it is announced from village to village and there is a rush to perform marriages. The practice of ‘Nantra’ (levirate) exists even today. Brahmanas, Banias, Kunbis and higher artisan castes follow the northern pattern of kinship organisation, but some practices of southern region are also observed.

Cross-cousin marriage among the Kathi, Ahir, Ghadava Charan and Garasia castes is quite common. Kolis and Dheds and Bhils (tribe), allow both types of cross-cousin marriages. Thus, Rajasthan and Gujarat largely follow northern pattern. The terminology is Sanskritic in origin and some kinship terms have central Asiatic derivation.

Karve observes that Maharashtra is an area where Sanskritic northern traits and the Dravidian southern traits almost hold a balance with perhaps a slight dominance of the former. Northern languages spoken are like Gujarati, Rajasthani, Himachali and Hindi. The tribals in the area speak Mundari. The Dravidian languages are mixed up with the Sanskritic languages. Maharashtra kinship structure is a little different from both southern and northern zones.

The Marathas and Kunbis together form about 40 per cent of the population; Marathas are supposed to be higher in status but a rich Kunbi can reach the status of a Maratha. The two groups call themselves Kshatriyas. Maratha-Kunbi complex has been a ruling clan. Even today headman or patil is a Maratha in a village.

Kunbis are divided into exogamous clans. Some practise levirate; other consider cross-cousin marriages as a taboo; but some others do not prohibit such marriages. In central Maharashtra hypergamy and clan exogamy exists. In southern Maharashtra there are instances of both types of marriages, namely, cross-cousin and uncle-niece. The clan organisation of the Marathas has some similarity with that of the Rajputs.

For example, mythological origin comparable with Rajputs is also claimed by the Marathas. Their names are also similar to that of Rajputs. The rule of exogamy is, however, not dependent on the clan name but on the symbol connected with the clan. The symbol is called devaka. No two people having the same devaka can marry. The clans and the devaka both play a significant role in marriage. Status of a clan is important in hypergamous marriage alliances.

Marathas have as many as 96 clans. Among these, there are concentric circles of mobility and status. Ethnically, there is no homogeneity. There are panchkula, a cluster of five clans, then there are ‘seven clans’, and all are hypergamous divisions. No taboo is attached to bilateral kinship like north zone. No parallel-cousin marriages are allowed. There is also taboo on paternal-cousin marriages. Generally, preference for a man’s marriage is with his maternal cross-cousin. Sisters can and do marry the same man. Brothers generally avoid marrying two sisters. Levirate is practised among the northern Kunbis. However, exchange marriages are avoided.

The tribal people in Orissa like Gonds, Oraons and Konds speak Dravidian languages, and their kinship system can be equated with that of the Dravidian-speaking people. The Munda, the Hondo and some of the Saora speak Mundari languages. The Oriya-speaking people have the same type of caste divisions as are found in northern regions with slightly different names.

Brahmanas in Orissa seem to be immigrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Aranyaka Brahmanas and Karans (Kayasthas) do not allow cross-cousin marriages. Some agricultural castes allow cousin-marriages, but others prohibit. Junior levirate is found among the poorer classes.

Kinship in South India:

There are five regions in the southern zone consisting of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the regions of mixed languages and people. The southern zone presents a very compli­cated pattern of kinship system and family organisation. Here, patrilineal and patrilocal systems dominate. However, some sections have matrilineal and matrilocal systems, and they possess features of both types of kinship organisation. Some castes allow polygamy, whereas some have both polygyny and polyandry. In Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and among some castes of Malabar, patrilineal and patrilocal joint family dominates as in the northern zone.

The Nayars, the Tiyans, some Moplas in Malabar region and the Bants in Kanara district have matrihneal and matrilocal family, and it is called tharawad. It consists of a woman, her brothers and sisters, her own and her sister’s sons and daughters. No affinal relation lives in the tharawad. Some consanguines are excluded (children of the males). There is no husband-wife, father-children relationship in a tharawad.

In the southern zone there is the system of caste endogamy and clan exogamy similar to the northern system. It is called as ‘Bedagu’ or ‘Bedaga’ or ‘Bali’ in Karnataka. The Kotas of Nilgiris call it ‘Keri’, the Kottai Vellals call it ‘Kilai’, the Koyas name it ‘Gotta’ and the Kurubas call it ‘Gunpu’. Some Telugu people call it ‘Inti-peru’, and the Malayalis mention it ‘Illom’. In Travancore, it is referred to as ‘Veli’. The word ‘Gotra’ is also widely used. The main symbols used for clans are of silver, gold, axe, elephant, snake, jasmine, stone, etc.

In northern zone village exogamy is a widely accepted norm. But, in southern zone, there are inter-marrying clans in the same village. Gonds do not observe village exogamy. The only principle is that of exogamy or illom or veli. A given caste is divided like northern castes into exogamous clans. Inter-clan marriages do not cover all clans. Within an endogamous caste, there are smaller circles of endogamous units made up of a few families giving and receiving daughters in marriage.

The southern zone has its peculiar features which are quite different from that of the northern part of India. Preferential marriages with elder sister’s daughter, father’s sister’s daughter, and with mother’s brother’s daughter are particularly prevalent in the southern zone. The main thrust of such a system of preferential marriages lies in maintaining unity and solidarity of the ‘clan’ and upholding of the principle of return (exchange) of daughters in the same generation.

However, there are taboos on marrying of younger sister’s daughter, levirate, and mother’s sister’s daughter. Maternal uncle and niece marriages and cross-cousin marriages result in double relationships. A cousin is also a wife, and after marriage a cousin is more of a wife than a cousin.

Comparing the southern kinship system with the northern one we can mention that there is no distinction between the family of birth and the family of marriage in the south whereas such a distinction is clear in the northern India. In the north, terms for blood relatives and affinal ones are clear, whereas in the south many terms do not indicate this distinction clearly.

For example, Phupha-Phuphi for father’s sister’s husband and father’s sister and Mama-Mami for mother’s brother and his wife are used in the north, whereas in the south Attai is used for both Phuphi and Mami. Mama is used for both Phupha and Mama. In the north, there are the ‘extended family of birth’ and the ‘extended family of marriage’. There is no such distinction in the south. No special terms are used for affinal relatives in the south. Same relatives appear in two successive generations in the south.

Thus, southern and northern kinship systems differ in the context of relations by marriage and relations by birth and more particularly in regard to the arrangement of kin in different genera­tions. There does not seem to be any clear-cut classification of kin on the principle of generation at all in the southern terminology. In south zone all the relatives are arranged according to whether they are older or younger than ego (self) without any reference to gener­ation.

There are no words for brothers and sisters in the Dravidian languages. However, there are words for ‘younger’ and ‘older’ brothers and sisters. A number of terms are used in common for (1) father and elder brother (Anna, Ayya), (2) mother and elder sister, (3) younger brother and son (Pirkal), and (4) younger sister and daughter (Pinnawal). These terms denote respectability to the elders and not to the actual blood relationships. The point of reference is the ego – and the persons older and younger than the ego are ranked based on their age.

Age, and not generation, is the main consideration in the southern kinship system. Marriage is outside the exogamous kin group called Balli or Begadu or Kilai. Exchange of daughters is favoured and marriage among the close kin is also preferred. The rules of marriage are: one must marry a member of one’s own clan, and a girl must marry a person who belongs to the group older than self, and also to the younger than the parents.

Older cross-cousins and also younger brother of girl’s mother are preferred. A person can marry any of his younger female cross-cousins and also a daughter of any of his elder sisters. Consequently, we find recip­rocal relations and kinship terms referred to this reciprocity.

Louis Dumont highlights the following points about the southern kinship system:

1. Principle of immediate exchange,

2. A policy of social consolidation,

3. A clustering of kin group in a narrow area,

4. No sharp distinction between kin by blood and kin by marriage, and

5. Greater freedom for women in society.

Kinship in Eastern India:

The eastern zone is not compact and geographically it is not contiguous like other zones. Besides northern languages, Mundari and Monkhmer languages are also spoken. The main communities are Korku, Annamese, Saka, Semang and Khasi. The other languages are Mon, Khmer and Chain. The area consists of a number of Austro-Asiatic tribes.

All the people speaking Mundari languages have patrilineal and patrilocal families. The Ho and Santhal have the practice of cross-cousin marriage. But till the father’s sister or the mother’s brother are alive, they cannot marry their daughters. This condition makes cross-cousin marriage a rare phenomenon. The Bondo people, for example, do not have taboo on cross-cousin marriage, but one does not find an example of cross-cousin marriage among them, as reported by Elwin.

The Ho and Munda have separate dormitories for bachelors and maidens and they indulge in pre-marital sexual relationships. Sometimes these relationships result into marriages but quite often the marriage mate is different from the mate of the dormitory days. All these people are divided into exogamous totemistic clans. A person must marry outside of the clan and also outside of the circle of near relations like first cousins.

Money is given for procuring a bride. Service by the would-be-husband in girl’s father’s house is also considered as bride price. After marriage one establishes his separate household, but may keep his younger brother and widowed mother, etc., along with him in his newly established house. The Mundari people thus differ from the rest of India in not having joint family. People maintain patrician relations by common worship of ancestors and residence. They extend help to each other but live independent life.

The Khasi of Assam speaks Monkhmer language, and they are a matrilineal people like Nayars, but are quite different from them. The Nayars have a matrilineal joint family and husbands are only occasional visitors. The Khasis have joint family with common worship and common graveyard, but the husband and wife live together in a small house of their own. After death the property goes to mother or youngest daughter.

If there are no female relatives, widow gets half of the property if she opts not to remarry. A man’s position is like that of a Hindu bride in the patri-family. But there is difference because the Hindu bride is incorporated as a member of her husband’s family whereas a Khasi husband is considered as a stranger. A woman enjoys a great amount of freedom. After divorce children are handed over to her. The Khasis have clan exogamy. Marriages of parallel cousins are not allowed. Cross-cousin marriage is also quite rare.

Though we have drawn a sketchy view of the kinship organi­sation in India, we come to know that both rigidity and flexibility exist side by side in regard to values and norms related to the kinship systems. These are reflected in regard to divorce, widow remarriage, incest taboos, caste endogamy, clan exogamy, rule of avoidance, family structure, systems of lineage and residence, authority system, succession and inheritance of property etc.

However, kinship continues to be a basic principle of social organi­sation and mobilisation on the one hand and division and dissension on the other. It is a complex phenomenon, and its role can be sensed even in modern organisations. Migration, mobility and education have weakened the kinship systems and rules of clan organisation because members of a caste/sub-caste or of a clan do not live at the same place. Matriliny in Kerala has almost withered away. In north-east also it has become weak.

Related Articles:

• Regional Variations in Kinship System and Its Socio-Cultural Correlates in India
• Kinship System: Essay on Kinship System (563 Words)

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Article Contents

Introduction, a life course approach to kinship care practice, the framework’s practice domains, acknowledgements.

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A Kinship Care Practice Framework: Using a Life Course Approach

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Marie Connolly, Meredith Kiraly, Lynne McCrae, Gaye Mitchell, A Kinship Care Practice Framework: Using a Life Course Approach, The British Journal of Social Work , Volume 47, Issue 1, January 2017, Pages 87–105, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcw041

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In recent years, kinship care has become a major contributor to the delivery of out-of-home care services in most Western jurisdictions. Over time, statutory kinship care has been modelled on the more established foster-care system. Yet the particular nature of kinship care differs from stranger care arrangements in important ways. This often results in kinship carers and their children being disadvantaged and poorly responded to within foster-care-dominated systems. This article discusses the development of a kinship care practice framework that responds to the particular needs of kith and kin carers and the children they care for within statutory systems of care, and which also takes into account the particular complexities of kinship care practice. Recognising that kinship carers come to the role at different ages, from siblings, aunts and uncles, as well as grandparents, the framework takes a life course approach that responds to both the generic and age-specific needs of the carer. Life course issues and challenges are considered across four domains supporting practice that is: child-centred; relationship-supportive; family and culturally responsive; and system-focused.

Throughout human history, children have been looked after and supported by people other than their parents. Child-care support is provided, and children have been permanently cared for by kin. Yet this fundamental expression of relationship between family members has only recently featured as a care option for vulnerable children within statutory systems of care.

Over the past twenty years, there has been an important shift in child welfare towards the use of extended family systems to support and care for vulnerable children. Governments across the industrialised world now prioritise kinship care as the preferred care option for children who cannot live with their parents. In Australia, statutory kinship care, which includes kith and kin placements, now provides 50 per cent of all statutory care ( AIHW, 2015 ). Similarly, in New Zealand, 51 per cent of children in out-of-home care are in a family/whanau placement ( CYF, 2014 ). Whilst slower to advance in the UK, there has nevertheless been a notable increase in the number of statutory family and friends placements in recent years ( Farmer, 2009 ). Despite these increases, research and practice development has not kept pace with the growth of kinship care internationally.

Although kinship care has developed as a distinct care type in child welfare statutory services, practice responses to kin carers have generally been modelled on traditional foster-care approaches. As kinship care, and professional experience within it, have increased, writers and practitioners have argued against this one-size-fits-all approach ( O’Brien, 2012 , 2014 ; Doolan et al. , 2004 ; Connolly, 2003 ). The ongoing debate in the international literature questions whether kinship care is essentially different from foster-care requiring kinship-specific practices ( O’Brien, 2014 ). It is clear that there are differences. For example, the child is generally known to the kinship care-giver—indeed the care-giving relationship may be well established when the placement is formalised. Kinship care-givers may find child welfare involvement intrusive or even offensive and the dynamics within the kinship care system may cause practitioners to feel uncertain about their role and responses. Research suggests that relative care-givers can find it more difficult to enforce protective restrictions during parental access ( Rubin et al. , 2008 )—something that requires a careful practice response. Drawing on the literature, Testa (2013) also suggests that kinship care-givers may underplay their child’s behaviour difficulties, which is a problem in view of research showing the level of disability and complex needs of children in kinship care ( Mitchell, 2014 ; Breman, 2014 ). Further, Breman (2014) found two common stressors for kin carers not experienced by foster-carers: conflict with the birth parents (77 per cent of the sample) and financial stress (52 per cent being on income support and/or being in debt). There are also age-cohort differences between foster and kinship carers. Grandparents looking after grandchildren tend to be dominant in kinship care, which is not the case in foster-care. Also, while there are young foster-carers, it is less likely that they would be caring for children as close in age to themselves as is the case when kinship carers are caring for siblings. Aldgate and McIntosh (2006) caution against assuming that kinship care arrangements are ‘risk-free zones’. Difficult challenges for practice arise from these matters and from the particularly complex and multi-layered kinship care family dynamics in which the carer frequently has a central place. The generic models and approaches from foster-care available for practitioners are not necessarily helpful when working specifically with kin. Writers are now beginning to develop practice models that are designed to support the needs of kinship carers, such as O’Brien’s (2014) conceptual model for kinship care assessment, and a growing focus on developing models of therapeutic care tailored to kinship care ( McPherson and MacNamara, 2014 ).

Practice frameworks have the potential to integrate research evidence, ethical principles and practitioner experiential knowledge in ways that support good practice in the field ( Connolly and Healy, 2013 ). Beddoe and Maidment (2009) argue the importance of engaging multiple sources of knowledge to strengthen practice. Others suggest the need to develop ethical frameworks that can assist workers to navigate murky areas of practice, particularly when practice decisions can have a critical effect on human rights ( Lonne et al. , 2009 ). Connolly and Morris capture these ideas, reinforcing the connection between diverse knowledge domains and practice action: ‘… frameworks based on research findings, ethical principles, natural justice and human rights, will help to clarify and reinforce practice behaviours that support good outcomes for children and their families’ (2012, p. 48).

This article adds to the practice-focused initiatives within the kinship care area, through the creation of a kinship care practice framework that responds to the particular needs of kith and kin carers within statutory systems of care. It is the result of a research/practice collaboration between OzChild, a non-government child and family service in Victoria, Australia, and academics at the University of Melbourne. Senior practitioners and researchers came together in an iterative process, contributing research and practice knowledge and building the framework based on that knowledge. In doing so, however, an immediate difficulty presents itself—kinship carers themselves are not homogeneous. Indeed, even within grandparent cohorts of kinship carers, differing life course challenges and issues can apply. For example, Purcal, Brennan, Cass and Jenkins (2014) illustrate age-cohort differences within a grandparent carer group when they categorise grandparent care-givers across three life course stages: young grandparents under fifty-five years of age; mid-life grandparents aged between fifty-five and sixty-four years; and older grandparents aged from sixty-five years onward. Whilst there may be common issues across the three cohorts, their experiences will also differ according to their particular life stage. Purcal et al. (2014) note that the younger grandparents in their study were more strongly attached to the labour force than the older grandparents. Perhaps not surprisingly, mid-life and older grandparents were more likely to experience long-term illness or disability. In conclusion, they suggest that ‘more individually tailored, age-sensitive policy design and improved age-appropriate service provision could improve the circumstances of grandparents and the grandchildren for whom they care’ ( Purcal et al. , 2014 , p. 484).

Grandparents looking after grandchildren has become synonymous with kinship care, and the limited kinship care research has generally focused upon them as a care-giver cohort. It is clear that grandparents play a critical role in the care of grandchildren. A broader range of relatives are nevertheless involved in supporting vulnerable children, including siblings caring for their brother or sister, aunts and uncles, and ‘family friends’ or people known to the child or parents via their communities. In the UK, siblings caring for siblings is the second largest group of kinship carers ( Selwyn and Nandy, 2012 ) and, in the USA, sibling care, while small, may be the third-largest group after grandparents, aunts and uncles ( Denby and Ayala, 2013 ). There are as yet only limited statistics about the number of family friends caring for children in Australia or elsewhere. Two studies from Victoria found that 20 per cent ( Kiraly and Humphreys, 2014 ) and 12 per cent (Breman,, 2014) of carers in their samples were kith rather than kin. For this reason, we have taken a more nuanced response to kinship care support, based on a developmental life course approach.

Life course dynamics arise in part from the interplay of trajectories and transitions, an interdependence played out over time and in relation to others. Interdependence emerges from the socially differentiated life course of individuals, its multiple trajectories and their synchronization ( Elder, 1985 , p. 32).

This interpretation incorporates the important relational interdependencies that characterise kinship care, while at the same time embracing the life course development of individuals within families.

While much has been written about human development and the life course, we will focus briefly here on normative life course issues in adulthood that are particularly relevant to kinship carers and their children.

Early adulthood

Early adulthood, has been identified as occurring from the ages of eighteen years to thirty-five years. It is considered an important time for identity confirmation, synonymous with role transitions: completing education, beginning work, partnering/marrying and parenthood ( Arnett, 1997 ). Relational development becomes important as partnerships develop and new families form ( Harms, 2010 ). During this stage, young adults continue to draw upon their parents for emotional and financial support; indeed, some will continue to live at home with their parents. In general, there is often less connection with siblings during these years, as young adults make their way in the world of work. Increasingly, peers provide emotional and practical support. According to Harms, ‘young people today also face the challenges of a capsulized workplace and increasing pressure to have tertiary qualifications’ (2010, p. 325). Pressures in accommodation where young people are priced out of the housing markets, or where there is a constrained rental market, can also create stress and crisis for some. For kinship carers of siblings, educational, employment, relationship and financial challenges can intensify in the context of a lack of support from parents normatively available to their peers.

While young adulthood is typically a time for coupling and relational development, middle adulthood is characterised by partnership stability.

Middle adulthood

There are differing views about the parameters of what might be called middle adulthood but, in this article, we will identify the age range as from thirty-five to sixty-five years. Although middle adulthood is often characterised as being a time of negative deficits—menopausal transitions and coping with an empty nest—the problem focus in early writings tends to present misconceptions of mid-life ( Lachman et al. , 2015 ). Alternatively, middle adulthood can be seen as a peak time in terms of income generation, work status, leadership and self-confidence. Seen from a multidirectional perspective, Lachman et al . note that mid-life ‘can be seen as a pivotal period in the life course in terms of a shift to a focus on maintenance and stability of functioning’ (2015, p. 24). Some will become parents for the first time during this phase, while others will enjoy grandchild relationships. Networks are often well established, and friendships consolidated. They note, nevertheless, that middle adulthood can also be a time of multiple role pressures and financial hardship for some, which is potentially exacerbated in kinship care situations. Time can be heavily divided between work and family, with some taking on the responsibilities of caring for their parents, and coping with loss when parents die. From an individual perspective, there can be both gains and losses during this stage in life: ‘Gains in control come from acquiring experience, developing mastery, reaching a peak of knowledge, competence and expertise. At the same time there are declines in functioning, performance and productivity, with increasing constraints tied to ageing’ ( Lachman et al. , 2015 , p. 25).

Late adulthood

Late adulthood is defined here as being from sixty-five years onward. During this time, people are less attached to employment and move towards retirement in the formal sense, although timing with respect to retirement is likely to be influenced by the resources people have available to them. There tends to be a decline in physical and cognitive functioning, which may include mobility issues ( Harms, 2010 ). Loss within relationships becomes more common as friends and loved ones experience declining health or die. Many people, however, remain in warm and satisfying relationships over many decades, and the grandparent role can create an important sense of generativity and purpose. Indeed, the ‘new aged’ has been identified as ‘the healthiest, wealthiest and most active cohort of old people in history’ ( Edgar, 2002 , p. 17). Not all experience this, however. Some experience poverty, frequently seen among kinship carers ( Kiraly, 2015 ; Breman, 2014 )—a poverty specifically increased by the financial burden of caring for young kin. This added financial pressure occurs alongside the loss of the grandparent–grandchild relationship, and can be further complicated by grief and guilt relating to their own parenting. Some also experience health and mental health concerns, unexpected care-giving responsibilities, and some experience loneliness and ageism ( Harms, 2010 ).

Considered in the context of briefly explored life course changes, there are particular challenges for kinship carers adapting to a care-giving role. For example, kinship carers may feel out of sync with their peers when the caring role impacts on their ability to maintain their friendship network. Feelings of isolation can be a problem for carers across the life course. The young carer may experience a loss of social life impacting on their partnering opportunities. They may experience difficulty with the sibling/parent role, particularly as they often share a trauma history with their sibling. Similarly, grandparents across the middle and late adulthood years have to deal with being both grandparent and parent. These carers have to manage relationships with their own children, whilst also having to consider their children’s parenting, and their own. Carers in middle adulthood can also find themselves torn between competing demands—balancing work and unexpected child-care responsibilities or caring for children while they care for their own elderly parents. These kinship dynamics feature across the life course, but the nature of the issues differs for early, middle and late adulthood carers.

Kinship Care Practice Framework

… good outcomes for children are measured in terms of their social and intellectual competence, and their physical and psychological well-being. Good outcomes are achieved through positive parenting, a stable family life, strong family and kin relationships, community involvement and supportive social networks’ (Connolly and Morris, 2012, p. 18).

Across the framework’s practice domains and triggers, these measures of good outcomes are reinforced.

Child-centred

Over the past few decades, there has been an increased emphasis on the development of child-centred practices ( Bessell, 2013 ; D’Cruz and Stagnitti, 2008 ). There is no agreement on what constitutes a child-centred approach but Goodyer does identify some basic practice principles: ‘… engaging with children and their families, understanding and providing services that reflect their individual needs, and seeing and taking into account their wishes and feelings’ (2011, p. 17). Interpreting a child’s interests through an adult’s lens can miss important opportunities to engage children in solutions. In this regard, authors have noted the critical importance of fostering children’s participation in order to understand their particular needs ( Connolly, 2015 ). Understanding the needs of the child from the child’s perspective and developing kinship carer awareness of the child’s perspective are important ideas in the kinship care practice framework.

Being child-centred is also about working towards good outcomes for children. Children in care can experience complex problems ( Tarren-Sweeney, 2013 ; Osborn and Bromfield, 2007 ; Mitchell, 2014 ). Indeed, Tarren-Sweeney’s research suggests that ‘such difficulties are a hallmark feature of the clinical presentations among a large proportion of children in care’ (2013, p. 734). They may experience poor mental health, and their family history may be characterised by trauma. They may well have experienced abuse, neglect and trauma, with their accompanying effects on attachment and development, including brain development ( Wise and Connolly, 2014 ; Stronach et al. , 2011 ). They may have experienced placement disruption causing placement vulnerability. They may have specialist educational needs. While children in out-of-home care confront many challenges, they can also be resilient. Care-givers and practitioners need to understand the child’s needs, build on strengths and acknowledge their capacity for resilience in overcoming adversity.

Relationship-supportive

When workers made use of the various relationship skills the clients generally did better on the outcome measures. The clients saw the workers’ ability to listen and understand their problems as particularly valuable. These qualities were also related to improved outcomes (Trotter, 2004, p. 162).

Whilst the evidence supporting relationship-based practice is early in development, and caution is expressed in terms of critiquing research findings, the cultivation of relationships that are ‘strong in collaboration, alliance, expressed empathy, and positive regard’ is generally endorsed ( Kazantzis et al. , 2015 , p. 426).

In the context of kinship care, relationship-based practice is particularly important. The dynamics of kin relationships can be fraught, particularly when a child has been removed from their parents because of child abuse or neglect. Issues of contact can create safety concerns that the kinship carers may struggle to manage in the context of family loyalties ( Kiraly and Humphreys, 2013 , 2014 ). Maintaining positive family relationships is important to the child’s long-term interests and well-being. The maintenance of sibling relationships, for example, is considered important across international jurisdictions, yet it seems that what McCormick (2010) refers to as the relationship rights of siblings are not always at the forefront of practice. A collaborative relationship between worker and carer can help workers to understand the difficulties carers face and work towards child safety within the context of strengthened family relationships.

Family and culturally responsive

Connected to relationship-based practice is the need to be both family and culturally responsive. Ecological theory and research, and theory that integrates culture, meaning, learning and development, as well as a range of family theories, provide important lenses and pointers for practitioners in kinship care ( Bronfenbrenner, 1979 ; Garbarino, 1992 ; Vygotsky and Cole, 1978 ; Bruner, 1990 ; Sewell, 2005 ). Families can be a source of great strength for kinship carers, providing both emotional and practical support ( Morris and Connolly, 2010 ). At the same time, family relationships can be fraught, and the worker needs to be able to assess the risks and opportunities within the extended family network ( Brown and Sen, 2014 ).

Although there has been much written about the importance of cultural responsiveness in child protection ( Miller and Jones Gaston, 2003 ), cultural interpretations can nevertheless be discordant in practice ( Connolly et al. , 2006 ). The ability to be culturally responsive requires attention to attitude, knowledge and skills ( Diller, 2004 ; Lum, 2003 ). This is a particularly salient issue in Australia given the overrepresentation of indigenous children in kinship care ( AIHW, 2015 ). It requires a willingness to engage with culture, understanding community dynamics and the historical interventions that have impacted on children and families, particularly indigenous peoples ( Gilbert 2013 ; Ruwhiu 2013 ; Kiraly et al. , 2015 ). It includes working in partnership with local communities to strengthen access to cultural networks of support, identifying traditional sources of knowledge, and thinking beyond the formality of professional care in ways that enable the nurturing of cultural knowledge ( Fulcher, 2012 ).

Research relating to the reunification of children from care to their parents is limited and there are significant gaps in the reunification knowledge base. That said, research does suggest that children in kinship care are less likely to be reunited in a timely way with birth parents ( Shaw, 2010 ; Bronson et al. , 2008 ), raising issues for practice. Parental engagement is important to successful reunification ( Prasad and Connolly, 2013 ), and key practice messages from the literature supports the meaningful engaging of parents in the work.

System-focused

We have added ‘system-focused’ to the framework because a considerable amount of the research into kinship care suggests that kinship carers are not receiving the system support they need to provide well for their children. Whether in response to implicitly held assumptions that kin carers should meet the cost of caring for their kin, or for some other reason, kinship care is funded at a significantly lower level than foster-care in some jurisdictions ( Breman, 2014 ). Yet, kinship carers face many physical and socio-economic difficulties ( Boetto, 2010 ; Dunne and Kettler, 2006 ; Breman, 2014 ), and they often have poor access to services ( Wichinsky et al. , 2013 ). Specific socio-economic differences can also be age-stage related as the costs of providing for children exacerbates normal financial fluctuations, such as when a care-giver may be expecting to enter retirement. Care-givers further report feeling ‘isolated from friends and family, and feeling unsupported at a time when they are likely to need greater social support’ ( Strozier, 2012 , p. 876). Developing support systems that are age-relevant to the care-giver’s own life course expectations requires a shift from a one-size-fits-all response. The social support of an early adult care-giver will differ from care-givers in middle and late adulthood. Hence, responding to the particular needs of the care-giver creates opportunities to explore different types of informal support.

Practical assistance is of critical importance to kinship care-givers, and research indicates that ‘financing is at the heart of kinship care’ ( O’Brien, 2012 , p. 135). O’Brien argues that kinship care has evolved in a piecemeal fashion, generally built on a foster-care model, but not always resourced as such. Despite having children with often extremely difficult behaviour, kinship carers receive fewer services in Australia and elsewhere ( Farmer, 2009 ; Bromfield and Osborn, 2007 ; McHugh and valentine, 2010 ). Kinship carers are also often left to ‘fend for themselves’ when it comes to casework support and assistance from social workers ( Brown and Sen, 2014 ). This is therefore an area that the practice framework seeks to address. It reinforces the importance of workers being an advocate for kinship carers, supporting their practical, legal and financial needs, and using both informal and formal systems to do so.

Turning knowledge into action: the framework’s kinship care practice triggers

The framework’s practice triggers are informed by both the life course perspective and issues identified in the kinship care research across the four domains above ( Figure 1 ). It is important to note that there are some triggers that are common across carer age cohorts, and some that are more specific to the particular life stage. The generic triggers are influenced by the parental environment cluster model, which ‘posits three clusters of factors in the parental environment that affect parental ability to create and maintain an environment of well-being for children’ ( Burke et al. , 1998 , p. 397).

Although originally developed as a model of neglect, Denby and Ayala (2013) note the relevance of its three clusters: p arental s kills , social support and resource management to kinship carer concerns.

The parenting skills cluster, as the name suggests, focuses on the knowledge and skills required to parent children well. This includes having an understanding of children’s development, developing good parent/child communication patterns and the practical skills of parenting—such as providing daily care and adopting positive disciplinary techniques. Denby and Ayala suggest that, for a younger carer who has not previously cared for a child, this can be particularly important to the development of skill and knowledge. Likewise, grandparents may be holding onto old values, beliefs and practices about parenting that are no longer acceptable today. Further, care of children who have experienced abuse and neglect, and therefore significant trauma, involves having a strong knowledge of attachment and attachment disorders, and development that has been affected by trauma ( Tarren-Sweeney, 2013 ), as well as knowledge about how to help children heal, and develop, despite their experiences ( Manley et al. , 2014 ; Perry, 2006 ). Some children and carers will also need specialist therapeutic support.

The second cluster relates to the development of social support systems including, where possible, the strengthening of family involvement and support. Working to engage informal support systems for parents has been identified as important in the literature ( Hunter and Price-Robertson, 2014 ). Indeed, Melton suggests that informal support can often be more helpful to parents than formal programmes, which often ‘have little logical relation to the needs and hopes of the children and families for whom they are intended’ (2013, p. 1). Research indicates that kinship carers frequently experience isolation ( Lin, 2014 ). Building sustainable systems of support that are life-course-specific through family or community networks can be critical to their well-being. This remains, however, an ongoing practice challenge as carers may not have access to a positive social or familial network that they can be linked into, nor one that wants to deal with the challenges of the children they are caring for. While existing networks can sometimes be activated through skilful casework intervention, realistically, social supports such as respite, camps or social activities for children may need to be resourced. While funds are often available for such support in foster-care, it is difficult to access this funding in kinship care. Specific intervention may also be needed to help kinship carers develop a support system. There are some promising programmes in the Family Services area which aim to build sustaining social networks ( Mitchell et al. , 2015 ) and this presents an opportunity for service development in kinship care.

The third cluster relates to resource management and the carer’s ability to access resources. Where children have significant emerging mental health difficulties, or other disabilities, this includes ability to access specialist assessment and treatment services for the child. It also includes educational support for the children, financial assistance, access to good housing and health care, legal advice, counselling support and practical assistance such as respite and day-care ( Denby and Ayala, 2013 ). Research repeatedly notes the disadvantage faced by kinship carers in terms of access to these resources ( Farmer, 2009 ; O’Brien, 2012 ; Testa, 2013 ; valentine et al. , 2013 ; Harnett et al. , 2014 ). This indicates a very real need for workers to advocate on behalf of the kinship care-givers to assist them to access formal and informal supports. In some jurisdictions, it also means challenging community, political and policy assumptions that kin should meet the full cost of such services.

The generic practice triggers apply to carers of all ages. Informed by the environmental cluster model described above, they ask questions about the degree to which practice supports the strengthening of parenting skills, the generation of family and community support, and the advocacy that is provided.

In addition to the generic practice triggers, the kinship care research and insights from the life course literature are woven into specific triggers that are life-course-specific across the practice domains. For example, the child-centred triggers provide practice reminders relating to the need for child-centred assessments, while at the same time being cognisant of the carers own developmental needs. The British Assessment Framework ( HM Government, 2015 ) and the Looking After Children framework, developed in the UK and used elsewhere, including in parts of Australia, provide a comprehensive set of assessment domains that focus specifically on the child’s developmental needs (health, education, emotional development, identity, family and social relationships, social presentation). Importantly, however, the British Assessment Framework also includes parenting capacity (basic care, ensuring safety, emotional warmth, stimulation, guidance and boundaries, stability) and family and environmental factors (resources, community, family’s social integration, income, employment, housing, wider family, family history and functioning). Other jurisdictions also have specifically designed kinship carer assessments to support kinship care practice.

The relationship - supportive triggers touch on relationship dynamics, in terms of both the worker/family and dynamics within the family itself. They address some of the complicating relationship factors that emerge in kinship care, such as siblings raising siblings and the inherent issues with respect to discipline. They raise questions about issues around the wider family relationships and their potential to impact on placement safety and stability. Triggers also touch on the management of relationship in the context of multiple roles, and reinforce the need to facilitate positive change through the worker/family relationship. Use of the triggers in this domain operates in the context of knowledge of the importance of the kin relationship between carer and child, and the need at all times to support this primary relationship. Strengths-, competency- and resiliency-based practice is vital in this task ( Saleebey, 1996 ; Hetherington and Blechman, 1996 ).

The family and culturally responsive triggers explore areas of connection to family and culture, which can be different according to the age of the carer. In terms of culture, younger carers may be working through their own issues relating to cultural beliefs, needs and identity. Older carers may have cultural networks that can be a real strength if worked with as such. With respect to family the triggers encourage an exploration of both the risks and opportunities within the family system. The exploration may expose significant isolation or unsupportive networks requiring highly skilled and creative efforts to expand a very limited informal social support system.

The system - focused triggers recognise the importance of system support for kinship carers and in particular their practical, legal and financial needs. The worker is encouraged to advocate on behalf of the kinship carer exploring their needs, such as for respite support, transport and accommodation. The system-focused triggers also touch on the broader needs of carers, such as supporting their educational needs. There is an emphasis on strengthening both formal and informal age-appropriate support, increasing the visibility of carers, reinforcing both their rights and needs.

The practice triggers are not intended to be a checklist. Rather, they are reminders of good practice that can facilitate the exploration of the needs, wants and hopes of kinship carers and their children.

While the focus of this article has been on kinship care, it is acknowledged that an age-related approach might also be relevant across care-giving types, such as to support the particular needs of foster-carers. Practice frameworks provide a means through which research, ethical principles and experiential knowledge can be brought together to support practitioners in particular areas of practice ( Connolly and Healy, 2013 ). While acknowledging that kinship care and foster-care share some issues in common, in developing the kinship care practice framework, we are reinforcing the need for kinship-specific responses that are more aligned to the particular needs of kinship carers and their children. Its knowledge base is drawn from the research, practice literature and from the insights from senior practitioners in the field. Hopefully, for organisations, it provides a high-level vision of good practice in kinship care, and for practitioners, it provides an accessible tool to support them in their work.

We would like to thank Merilyn Di Blasio, Bronwyn Harrison, Neha Mascarenhas and Caroline Walsh for participating in the framework development workshops and contributing to the development of the practice framework.

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How To Tackle The Weirdest Supplemental Essay Prompts For This Application Cycle

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Writing the college essay

How do you write a letter to a friend that shows you’re a good candidate for the University of Pennsylvania? What reading list will help the Columbia University admissions committee understand your interdisciplinary interests? How can you convey your desire to attend Yale by inventing a course description for a topic you’re interested in studying?

These are the challenges students must overcome when writing their supplemental essays . Supplemental essays are a critical component of college applications—like the personal statement, they provide students with the opportunity to showcase their authentic voice and perspective beyond the quantitative elements of their applications. However, unlike the personal essay, supplemental essays allow colleges to read students’ responses to targeted prompts and evaluate their candidacy for their specific institution. For this reason, supplemental essay prompts are often abstract, requiring students to get creative, read between the lines, and ditch the traditional essay-writing format when crafting their responses.

While many schools simply want to know “why do you want to attend our school?” others break the mold, inviting students to think outside of the box and answer prompts that are original, head-scratching, or downright weird. This year, the following five colleges pushed students to get creative—if you’re struggling to rise to the challenge, here are some tips for tackling their unique prompts:

University of Chicago

Prompt: We’re all familiar with green-eyed envy or feeling blue, but what about being “caught purple-handed”? Or “tickled orange”? Give an old color-infused expression a new hue and tell us what it represents. – Inspired by Ramsey Bottorff, Class of 2026

What Makes it Unique: No discussion of unique supplemental essay prompts would be complete without mentioning the University of Chicago, a school notorious for its puzzling and original prompts (perhaps the most well-known of these has been the recurring prompt “Find x”). This prompt challenges you to invent a new color-based expression, encouraging both linguistic creativity and a deep dive into the emotional or cultural connotations of color. It’s a prompt that allows you to play with language, think abstractly, and show off your ability to forge connections between concepts that aren’t typically linked—all qualities that likewise demonstrate your preparedness for UChicago’s unique academic environment.

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How to Answer it: While it may be easy to get distracted by the open-ended nature of the prompt, remember that both the substance and structure of your response should give some insight into your personality, perspective, and characteristics. With this in mind, begin by considering the emotions, experiences, or ideas that most resonate with you. Then, use your imagination to consider how a specific color could represent that feeling or concept. Remember that the prompt is ultimately an opportunity to showcase your creativity and original way of looking at the world, so your explanation does not need to be unnecessarily deep or complex—if you have a playful personality, convey your playfulness in your response; if you are known for your sarcasm, consider how you can weave in your biting wit; if you are an amateur poet, consider how you might take inspiration from poetry as you write, or offer a response in the form of a poem.

The goal is to take a familiar concept and turn it into something new and meaningful through a creative lens. Use this essay to showcase your ability to think inventively and to draw surprising connections between language and life.

Harvard University

Prompt: Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you.

What Makes it Unique: This prompt is unique in both form and substance—first, you only have 150 words to write about all 3 things. Consider using a form other than a traditional essay or short answer response, such as a bullet list or short letter. Additionally, note that the things your roommate might like to learn about you do not necessarily overlap with the things you would traditionally share with an admissions committee. The aim of the prompt is to get to know your quirks and foibles—who are you as a person and a friend? What distinguishes you outside of academics and accolades?

How to Answer it: First and foremost, feel free to get creative with your response to this prompt. While you are producing a supplemental essay and thus a professional piece of writing, the prompt invites you to share more personal qualities, and you should aim to demonstrate your unique characteristics in your own voice. Consider things such as: How would your friends describe you? What funny stories do your parents and siblings share that encapsulate your personality? Or, consider what someone might want to know about living with you: do you snore? Do you have a collection of vintage posters? Are you particularly fastidious? While these may seem like trivial things to mention, the true creativity is in how you connect these qualities to deeper truths about yourself—perhaps your sleepwalking is consistent with your reputation for being the first to raise your hand in class or speak up about a cause you’re passionate about. Perhaps your living conditions are a metaphor for how your brain works—though it looks like a mess to everyone else, you have a place for everything and know exactly where to find it. Whatever qualities you choose, embrace the opportunity to think outside of the box and showcase something that admissions officers won’t learn about anywhere else on your application.

University of Pennsylvania

Prompt: Write a short thank-you note to someone you have not yet thanked and would like to acknowledge.

What Makes it Unique: Breaking from the traditional essay format, this supplement invites you to write directly to a third party in the form of a 150-200 word long letter. The challenge in answering this distinct prompt is to remember that your letter should say as much about you, your unique qualities and what you value as it does about the recipient—all while not seeming overly boastful or contrived.

How to Answer it: As you select a recipient, consider the relationships that have been most formative in your high school experience—writing to someone who has played a large part in your story will allow the admissions committee some insight into your development and the meaningful relationships that guided you on your journey. Once you’ve identified the person, craft a thank-you note that is specific and heartfelt—unlike other essays, this prompt invites you to be sentimental and emotional, as long as doing so would authentically convey your feelings of gratitude. Describe the impact they’ve had on you, what you’ve learned from them, and how their influence has shaped your path. For example, if you’re thanking a teacher, don’t just say they helped you become a better student—explain how their encouragement gave you the confidence to pursue your passions. Keep the tone sincere and personal, avoid clichés and focus on the unique role this person has played in your life.

University of Notre Dame

Prompt: What compliment are you most proud of receiving, and why does it mean so much to you?

What Makes it Unique: This prompt is unique in that it invites students to share something about themselves by reflecting on someone else’s words in 50-100 words.

How to Answer it: The key to answering this prompt is to avoid focusing too much on the complement itself and instead focus on your response to receiving it and why it was so important to you. Note that this prompt is not an opportunity to brag about your achievements, but instead to showcase what truly matters to you. Select a compliment that truly speaks to who you are and what you value. It could be related to your character, work ethic, kindness, creativity, or any other quality that you hold in high regard. The compliment doesn’t have to be grand or come from someone with authority—it could be something small but significant that left a lasting impression on you, or it could have particular meaning for you because it came from someone you didn’t expect it to come from. Be brief in setting the stage and explaining the context of the compliment—what is most important is your reflection on its significance and how it shaped your understanding of yourself.

Stanford University

Prompt: List five things that are important to you.

What Makes it Unique: This prompt’s simplicity is what makes it so challenging. Stanford asks for a list, not an essay, which means you have very limited space (50 words) to convey something meaningful about yourself. Additionally, the prompt does not specify what these “things” must be—they could be a physical item, an idea, a concept, or even a pastime. Whatever you choose, these five items should add depth to your identity, values, and priorities.

How to Answer it: Start by brainstorming what matters most to you—these could be values, activities, people, places, or even abstract concepts. The key is to choose items or concepts that, when considered together, provide a comprehensive snapshot of who you are. For example, you might select something tangible and specific such as “an antique telescope gifted by my grandfather” alongside something conceptual such as “the willingness to admit when you’re wrong.” The beauty of this prompt is that it doesn’t require complex sentences or elaborate explanations—just a clear and honest reflection of what you hold dear. Be thoughtful in your selections, and use this prompt to showcase your creativity and core values.

While the supplemental essays should convey something meaningful about you, your values, and your unique qualifications for the university to which you are applying, the best essays are those that are playful, original, and unexpected. By starting early and taking the time to draft and revise their ideas, students can showcase their authentic personalities and distinguish themselves from other applicants through their supplemental essays.

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Kentucky kids should stay with family when a crisis hits, but kinship care needs help

There are things we do well in kentucky around kinship care and there are things that need improvement. for the past five years, we’ve needed improvement regarding the initial placement process..

At the second gubernatorial debate in October 2023 , Governor Andy Beshear acknowledged the plight of kinship. Later he said, “We must do everything we can to ensure their needs are met." 

Kinship care is when a child is living with relatives or close family friends other than their parents. These children may be victims of abuse and neglect and/or formally in the child welfare system; while many for a myriad of reasons are informally left with relatives or friends.

Kinship care placement process needs improvements

There are things we do well in Kentucky around kinship care and there are things that need improvement. For the past five years, we’ve needed improvement regarding the initial placement process. This is when a caregiver is given paperwork from the Department for Community Based Services which captures specific custody details around placement with them.  

When placement is offered, it’s an emotional time for a caregiver.  They are in shock as they hear details about the circumstances of the child’s removal from their home such as abuse, neglect and sometimes even dealing with the child’s required hospitalization. 

At the initial placement conversation, there’s a multitude of things to consider such as researching many services; learning about the family court system and DCBS requirements; determining the emotional and physical needs of the child. A caregiver might not be thinking clearly and there are many unknowns. The initial wrong decision can affect longer-term services for the child.

I am a foster kid with a college degree. That shouldn't be rare, but it is. Here's why.

Kinship care needs funding

This year, we found an answer to improving the initial placement process. It is Senate Bill 151 .  Though it should have been simple and was unanimously approved and signed into law. It has a history to sort out in regards to implementation. At the center of the issues, there’s a Feb 8 th estimate created by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services that reflects the need for $20 million in additional general funds to implement. There’s also a referenced Kentucky Supreme Court ruling that basically states that if there isn’t funding, there doesn’t have to be implementation. 

The bill was amended with stricter parameters and was presented on Feb 29 to the House Families and Children’s committee. There were no objections or concerns raised at the meeting and the bill unanimously moved forward until signed by the Governor on April 5.  

The amended bill reduces costs (from the Feb 8 CHFS estimate) by limiting placement time option to 120 days and through other potential administrative regulation changes. It’s even better cost wise, if we get federal funding. 

At the July 30, IJC Children and Families meeting, the CHFS secretary shared that they would be happy to ask for federal funding. The $20 million estimate that holds SB-151 hostage from implementation did not include federal funds.  Kentucky gets approximately 72 cents of every dollar of applicable federal funds.

As legislators continue to pursue the issues, we wait until the next committee meeting in late-August.  As a kinship advocate who understands the seriousness of needed changes like SB-151 for vulnerable families; it feels like a series of games of “Whack-A-Mole”, where each event leads to another meeting with something new, but without tangible results. I’m most concerned about families becoming ineligible for longer term services because we are waiting for resolution. I also feel we can do more around better communication of the services in the interim.

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We need a private working meeting with CHFS, some legislators, key experts/stakeholders, where we’d assess potential funding sources; review the amended bill and revise regulation changes all focused on one goal - creating a definitive plan to do the work expeditiously. We shouldn’t leave the room until we have an agreed upon plan. I’d volunteer my time and gather state and national child welfare experts who would give their time. 

The Governor was right when he said we should be doing everything we can to ensure that their kinship needs are met.  We need his intervention to keep the promise to kinship families. 

We can’t change the past, but we can change today and the future. Let’s get to work on SB-151.

Norma Hatfield is a grandmother raising two grandchildren in Hardin County and long time kinship advocate; she is President of the Kinship Families Coalition of Kentucky

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