Kinship

Category: Fields of research

Kinship encompasses the social relationships that arise from the culturally recognized bonds of marriage, descent, and so-called “fictive” ties. Far beyond mere biology, kinship serves as a vital framework through which societies organize roles, responsibilities, inheritance, residence, authority, and identities. Anthropologists analyze kinship not only as a network of interpersonal relationships but also as a lens through which cultural meanings are constructed and social orders are maintained. Kinship has long been a cornerstone of anthropological inquiry. Family is a part of kinship relations, but is often restricted to the closest kinship relations. Kinship systems and family life are found in every society and culture, but their forms differ widely across the World. Kinship and kinship systems are mainly the focus of anthropology and ethnology, while sociology pays more attention to the family.

Kinship Terminology Used in Anthropology

Kinship relations that are based on biological ties, i.e., “blood-related”, are referred to as consanguineal kinship. Kinship relations based on marriage are referred to as affinal kinship. Biological relations to ancestors (parents, great-grandparents, etc.) are called “descent”. Cultures around the World use various “descent systems”. Kinship systems usually distinguish between lineal and collateral descent. Lineal descent is a direct line of biological ancestry, i.e., connects an individual only to his or her direct ancestors and directs descendants. Collateral kinship connects an individual with relatives that are not in a direct line of descent, i.e., brother, sister, uncle, aunt, cousin, etc. Lineal descent systems can be unilineal or bilateral. In unilineal systems, descent is traced through only one line – maternal or paternal. In patrilineal systems, descent is traced only through paternal ancestors, while in matrilineal systems, descent is traced only through maternal ancestors. In bilateral systems, also known as cognatic kinship, descent is traced through both maternal and paternal lines. One distinct form of bilateral systems is known as ambilineality. In Ambilineal systems of descent, found in societies from Southeast Asia, Polynesia, Micronesia, Northwest America, and West Africa, individuals can choose whether to affiliate themselves with their father's or mother's line of descent. Descent systems determine group membership, inheritance rights, and often political leadership. It is important to note that most societies that use the matrilineal systems of descent don’t have a matriarchal power system.

A specific type of descent system is the lineage system. Lineage systems are formed when a group of individuals is defined and united by descent from a common ancestor. In societies where lineages exist, they can play a significant role in the functioning of the society. Small lineages trace descent to a close ancestor, while large lineages trace descent to distant, or even mythical and fictitious ancestors. Lineages can be traced through patrilineal, matrilineal, or some combination of both descent systems. A clan is a group that consists of individuals who believe that they are connected by common ancestry, but are not able to trace descent to a specific common ancestor. In many cases founding ancestor of a clan is mythological – an animal, plant, or some object. In societies that possess both lineages and clans, lineages function as a subdivision of a clan.

A large number of societies in their collateral kinship terminology and kinship systems differentiate between parallel and cross cousins. The cross-cousin of an individual is his or her parent's opposite-sex sibling’s child, i.e., for a woman, her cross-cousin is her father’s sister’s child, while for a man, his cross-cousin is his mother’s brother’s child. Parallel cousin of an individual is a parent’s same sex sibling’s child, i.e., for a woman, her parallel cousin is her mother’s sister’s child, while for a man, his parallel cousin is his father’s brother’s child. A specific type of collateral relationship is avunculate. The avunculate is a social institution, referring to a special relationship between a male individual and his sister’s son. In societies where avunculate exists uncle (mother’s brother) of a man usually plays a more important authority role than his father.

Fictive kinship refers to kin-like relationships that are not based on biological relatedness or marital ties. Some of the examples are: adopted children, godparents, and ritual siblings, a.k.a., “blood brothers”.

Marriage is a socio-cultural custom that is, similarly to family and kinship systems, culturally universal. Marriage represents a socially recognized union between two or more individuals. Marriage is most often characterized by proscribed sexual relations, economic partnership, and shared living (cohabitation) of married spouses. Whether through traditional rules or by codified law, marriage always involves rights and responsibilities between the spouses, and often between them and their children, families, and communities. There are two main types of marriages – monogamous and polygamous. Monogamous marriages involve only two individuals, while polygamous marriages involve three or more individuals. Polygamy can be divided into two distinct forms – polygyny (one man is married to two or more women) and polyandry (one woman is married to two or more men). Polygyny is ethnographically much more common than polyandry. Polygyny is mostly found in various Asian and African societies, though it is often practiced by a minority of men in those societies, those who possess enough power, wealth, and status to afford more than one wife. Polyandry is extremely rare and is found only in a few Himalayan societies, where, customarily, one woman marries two or more brothers.

Most societies practice some form of economic exchange between families of individuals who are going to be married before the marriage can be enacted, usually in some form of bride price or dowry. Bride price refers to a situation where the groom, or his parents or relatives, give some form of wealth to the family of the bride-to-be. Dowry is a custom where the bride’s family bequeaths her with money or valuable goods (gold, jewelry, land) that are to be used for the economic prosperity of a married couple.

In every society, marriages are subject to the rules of endogamy and exogamy. Endogamy refers to cultural rules that impose or allow marriages between members of the same group (family or clan), while exogamy refers to rules that forbid in-group marriages and thus only allow out-group marriages. Marriages that go against the rules of exogamy are subject to the incest taboo. Although the prohibition of incest is culturally universal, rules vary according to the minimal distance of the familial relationship that is needed for the marriage to be allowed, and whether the forbidden closeness is determined only through blood relationship (consanguineal kinship) or through marriage too (affinal kinship). Some societies have specific endogamic rules that mandate what happens when the first spouse of a person dies. In a system known as levirate, after the death of a first husband, the second husband has to be a brother of the first; while rules of sororate mandate that the second wife a man has to be a sister of his first wife.

Some societies have additional forms of marriage, apart from those considered before. Concubinage is a form of semi-official marriage when a man engages in an open, long-term sexual relationship with a woman (concubine), who is not his official wife. Concubines and their children are not subject to the same rights and obligations as official wives. Concubines can be free women or have limited freedom (slave, serf, indentured servant, war prisoner, etc.). Another form of specific marriage is ghost marriage (also known as posthumous marriage), where a woman marries a deceased person so that he can become the genealogical father to her children. Homosexual marriage became legal in dozens of countries in the 21st century, but it was also present in some traditional societies such as the Nuer, Azande, and Cheyenne.

Across societies, types of families and their households differ. The two main types of household life are the extended family, where multiple generations live together, and the nuclear family, where only spouses and their minor children live together. According to the gender that heads the family, we have patriarchal (man is the head of the family) and matrifocal (woman is the head of the family) families. Depending on the residence patterns of newlyweds, there are several types: matrilocal, patrilocal, neolocal, avunculocal, and bilocal. residence. In matrilocal residence groom moves to the household of his bride; in patrilocal residence bride moves into the household of her husband, and in neolocal residence married couple moves to a new place, separated from both of their natal households. Avunculocal residence refers to moving to the household of the groom’s maternal uncle. Bilocal residence allows a new couple to choose whether to move in with either the husband’s or the wife’s family.

Early Evolutionary Anthropological Theories of Kinship

The early anthropological studies of kinship and family were predominantly done from an evolutionary perspective. Authors such as Henry Lewis Morgan, Friedrich Engels, Edward Tylor, and Sir James Frazer explored the evolutionary and historical development of families and kinship. They argued that endogamy rules serve to strengthen intergroup solidarity.

In Primitive Marriage (1865), John F. McLennan studied marriage rules in several societies and concluded that the prohibition of endogamy serves as an evolutionary survival mechanism as it promotes reciprocity, cooperation, and harmony between groups that intermarry.

Johann Jakob Bachofen, in his book Mother Right (1861), studies the cultural evolution of humanity. Analyzing the huge ethnographic material, which primarily consisted of myths, he concluded that matriarchy preceded patriarchy in the evolution of the family and society. He viewed motherhood as a source of religion and morality and believed that the original deities were of the female form. He explains the emergence of the matriarchy by the assumption that primitive people did not possess knowledge about the connection between sexual relations and the conception of a child. Since men could not establish paternity, all children belonged to women. When men understood the source of fatherhood, they became able to distinguish their offspring from the offspring of other men, which enabled them to establish power over women and children and form a patriarchy.

Henry Lewis Morgan, in the 1859–1862 period, embarked on new fieldwork, intending to collect information related to native American kinship systems. In addition to his own fieldwork, he sent questionnaires to government officials and missionaries throughout the world, so they could collect data concerning kinship systems from the countries where they worked. This research served as the basis of his book Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871). This book contains diagrams and data related to 200 kinship terminologies from all over the world. Morgan discovered that similar kinship terminology was used by native Americans who spoke different languages and had different historical and cultural backgrounds. In those languages same term that referred to father was used to designate father’s brother, and the same was the case for mother and mother’s sister. Using the fact that the same type of kinship terminology was used by Tamil people in southern India, Morgan concluded that Native Americans originated in Asia. Morgan divided kinship terminologies into classificatory and descriptive types. Classificatory languages have terms that represent many different types of relationships, while descriptive terminology has terms that refer to only one type of relationship between people. The language of Seneca is an example of a language with classificatory kinship terminology. This language also used one term for father and father’s brother, and one for mother and mother’s, but it also had the same term for one’s sister and female parallel cousins, and another one for someone’s brother and male parallel cousins; while the terms for cross-cousins were different.

Morgan believed that in the history of humankind, there was moral evolution of marriages and family life, and that at a most primitive level existed total promiscuity, then came the consanguine family, after it the punualua family, followed by the patriarchal family, and finally, came the monogamous family. Different societies can be at different levels at the same time, but all have to go through the same path. He also believed that a culture's current kinship classification, because they are naturally conservative, actually represents the type of marriage and family that previously existed in that culture. Classificatory kinship systems are thus ‘fossils’ or vestiges of the evolutionary stage of group marriage and sexual promiscuity, as it was impossible to distinguish between one’s father and father’s brother. With the advent of civilization and monogamous marriage, descriptive classification developed to clearly differentiate all family relations.

Friedrich Engels's book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) was inspired by the works of Lewis H. Morgan. Engels studied the historical development of marriage, family, private property, and the economy, as well as political relations and states. Engels adopts Morgan's evolutionary classification of marriages and family types. In the beginning, there was group marriage, which was followed by a „consanguine“ type of marriage and family, after that came the "punalua" family (marriage between brothers from one family and sisters from another family), then a „pairing family“ developed, and finally, a monogamous family was formed. In group marriage, there were no rules prohibiting incest, and sexual intercourse was allowed even between close relatives. With the termination of group marriage, the first form of family is formed - the family of blood kinship or consanguine family, where sexual intercourse was restricted to members of the same generation. In the punalua family, there is a ban on marriages between siblings, so for the first time, there is a difference in classification between cousins on the mother's side and relatives on the father's side. Since the lines of kinship were distinguished at this stage, this caused the appearance of "gentes", that is, kinship lines. Since kinship can be determined with certainty only through the mother's line, the matrilineal calculation of kinship and matriarchy was formed.

Gradually, there was a ban on marriages with all relatives on the maternal line, which was the basis for the formation of matrilineal gentes. Due to the expansion of the rules according to which marriages can be concluded, a pairing family (family of couples) appears, in which, most often, one man and one woman marry, although some men could have more than one wife or mistress, while women were required to be strictly faithful to one man. However, even in this type of marriage, the marital relationship status could be easily broken, and the children still belonged only to the mother. In this type of marriage, the purchase and abduction of women for the sake of marriage also occur. Women do most of the work in these families, but their social position is also high. Due to poorly developed production, private ownership is rare, and communist relations prevail in the household.

With the advent of animal husbandry, there is a sharp jump in the level of economic production, and this leads to the emergence of slavery, because, for the first time in history, defeated members of another tribe can be of economic benefit to the victor, as slave labor. With cattle breeding comes the greater economic role of men, so they also become owners of cattle and slaves. This also leads to changes in family relations, as it causes patrilineal calculation of kinship and to right of inheritance of property only through the paternal line, which, in the end, leads to the fall of matriarchy and the arrival of patriarchy to power. Engels believes that the fall of the matriarchy is "a historic defeat for women of world proportions". Men came to power, while women became subordinate to male autocracy, and their purpose became only to serve and give birth to children. Patriarchy, unlike matriarchy, where relations between the sexes would be more equal, introduces the autocracy of men as the heads of the family, not only over women but also over children and family slaves. To ensure that children born in wedlock are the direct biological descendants of the father, complete control over the movement and behavior of the woman is introduced. Although polygamy was reserved only for men, it was rare and a privilege only for richer men.

James George Frazer, in Totemism and Exogamy (1887), argues that primitive people lacked the knowledge of biological reproduction and attributed births to totems, which led to the rules of exogamy and matriarchal and patriarchal family structures.

Theories of Kinship from the Structural-Functionalist Perspective

British structural-functionalist scholars such as Bronislaw Malinowski, Meyer Fortes, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, and E. E. Evans-Pritchard championed the “descent theory” of kinship. They argued that kinship systems function as a basis for political and economic alliances to ensure that roles and obligations are fulfilled so that social order can be maintained. Malinowski, studying the Trobriand Islanders, emphasized the significance of matrilineal kinship and the symbolic roles that rituals and myth play in reinforcing these relations. These classical approaches typically assumed the primacy of descent—an inheritance of status and group membership either through the father’s or mother’s line.

Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown believed that kinship serves a crucial function in social structure, and that it is the most important organizing and integrating force in it. Kinship and kinship terms reflect social structure and social norms. In the article “The Study of Kinship Systems” (1941), he defines the family as the basic cell of the social structure. Different family relations (levirate, the sororate, the avunculate) and their corresponding kinship terminologies and kinship systems are the basis for the network of social relations as they proscribe the rights and duties of every individual. Radcliffe-Brown developed the “descent theory”, which states that patrilinear and matrilinear descent groups are the main organizing principle for the majority of tribal societies.

E. Evan Evans-Pritchard, in The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (1940a), describes the socio-political organization of the Nuer was based on segmentary lineage, smaller groups that related to the other groups like the branches of a tree, with every branching attributed to the ancestral splits between patrilinear lines of common descent. That is, the social-political distance was based on generational separation from the common patrilineal ancestors. Every individual branch or group was in a state of constant hostility toward other groups, but when faced with the hostility of lineages that were further up the line of descent, then the closest groups would unite. These interlocking oppositions function as the structural principle of political and social organization. Evans-Pritchard defines their political organization as ordered anarchy, as they lacked centralized government or permanent chiefs, but the order came out of those oppositions between segments.

The only political authority, although sporadic, among the Nuer were so-called leopard-skin chiefs, who came from structurally minor kin groups, and whose role was to mediate conflicts between different segments. The charismatic prophets could also emerge during times of distress, and they had their own followers and served as their religious-political leaders. The political structure of the Nuer also had age grades for both genders, and they were universal for all the Nuer and crossed over genealogical and territorial boundaries.

In Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer (1951), Evans-Pritchard focused more on matrilateral and affinal kinship and the role of women in Nuer society. He showed that maternal ancestors could be inserted into the paternal line of descent. Specific female-focused cultural customs, such as woman-to-woman marriage and ghost marriage, also existed among the Nuer.

Kinship in the Perspective of Lévi-Strauss’s Structuralism

Claude Lévi-Strauss is known for his “alliance theory” of kinship. In The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), he argues that there are three types of fundamental exchange in a society: the exchange of women by rules of kinship (exogamy), the exchange of goods and services according to the rules of the economy; and the exchange of symbols according to linguistic rules. Kinship and exchange of women function as a form of social reciprocity, as it serve to strengthen reciprocity and create alliances between descent groups. Marriage creates alliances between groups, transforming kinship into a structure of communication and economic exchange. Lévi-Strauss shows that there are two basic forms of marriage exchange: direct (restricted) exchange and generalized exchange. The direct exchange involves bilateral cross-cousin marriage, and this is often combined with the dual organization of society, where the whole society is divided into two halves (in anthropology, these divisions are called moieties) with each half having certain reciprocal symbolic properties relating to the other half. Children are a dynamic and asymmetrical element in the kinship structure.

Apart from theoretical differences between descent theory and alliance theory, ethnographic data for the former theory drew mostly on data from African societies, while alliance theory was based on data from Asian and American societies.

Kinship in the Perspective of Symbolic Anthropology

Symbolic and interpretive anthropologists, like David Schneider, questioned the universality of biological definitions of kinship. Schneider’s landmark book, A Critique of the Study of Kinship (1984), rejected the idea that all societies share a biologically grounded notion of kinship. Schneider argued that American kinship was deeply rooted in ideas of biogenetics and love, and that projecting these ideas globally overlooked culturally specific meanings. Kinship came to be viewed not as a rigid blueprint but as a flexible, culturally embedded system of meaning-making.

Feminist and Postcolonial Interventions

Feminist anthropologists expanded the field further by highlighting the gendered dimensions of kinship. They questioned the patriarchal biases inherent in earlier theories that often centered on male lineages, property, and authority. Feminists emphasized the reproductive labor of women, the role of caregiving, and the importance of matrifocal or woman-centered networks, particularly in marginalized communities. Postcolonial scholars, meanwhile, interrogated how colonial administrations used kinship classifications to control and reshape subject populations. For instance, imposed distinctions between “tribal” and “modern” family forms often ignored or distorted indigenous systems. These critiques underscored the political and historical dimensions of kinship.

References:

Bachofen. An English Translation of Bachoffen's Mutterrecht (Mother Right) (1861): A Study of the Religious and Juridical Aspects of Gynecocracy in the Ancient World (2007);

Davis K. A Structural Analysis of Kinship (1960);

Durkheim. Division Of Labor In Society (2014, in French 1893);

- The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (2012 , in French 1912);

- Primitive Classification (1967, in French 1902);

Engels. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (2010, in German 1884);

Evans-Pritchard. The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (1940);

- Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer (1951);

Frazer, James George. Totemism and Exogamy (1887);

Hobhouse. Mind in Evolution (1901);

- Morals in Evolution (1906);

- The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples (1915);

Lenski. Power and Privilege (1966);