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Essay on Kinship & Social Structure
Kinship is the human relations based on natural crash and marriage. Kinship is founded on social differences and cultural creations. In all societies, the links between blood relatives and relatives by marriage are assigned certain legal, political, and economic significance that does not depend on biology. At the basis of kinship is the primary mother-child bond to which diverse cultures have added different familial relations. Additional kin are recruited to this basic unit by the principle of descent, which connects one generation to the other in a systematic way and which determines certain rights and obligations across generations.
Descent groups can be traced through both sexes (that is, ambilaterally) or through only the male or the female link (unilaterally). In unilaterally traced groups the descent is known as patrilineal if the connection is through the male line or matrilineal if it is through the female line. Less frequent forms for tracing descent are the parallel system, in which males and females each trace their ancestry through their own sex; and the cognatic method, in which the relatives of both sexes are considered, with little formal distinction between them.
The study of kinship has directed much attention to the terms people use to classify and identify their relatives. Kin are everywhere categorized into distinct groups with specific roles and behavior. The way in which people classify their kin has many practical applications. Thus, the familial relationships peculiar to a society will largely determine the allocation of rights and their transmission from one generation to the next. The succession of office and titles and the inheritance of property are implicit in the kinship system. Property can pass across generations in several ways, as, for example, from the mother's brother to the sister's son (in matrilineal societies); from the father to the father's younger brother (in some patrilineal cultures); or from the father to his son......
