Ant 9

KINSHIP AND GENDER CHAPTER 16

FAMILIES, MARRIAGE, KINSHIP, AND GENDER VARY WIDELY AROUND

THE WORLD

 What are families, and how are they structured in different societies?

 Why do people get married?

 In what ways are males and females different, or are they?

 What does it mean to be neither male nor female?

WHAT ARE FAMILIES, AND HOW ARE THEY STRUCTURED IN

DIFFERENT SOCIETIES?

 Families fulfill similar functions in most societies:

 Comfort and belonging for members, sense of identity, shared values and ideals, economic cooperation, and nurturance of

children

 Although the functions above are common, the patterns of achieving them are constructed in culturally specific

and dynamic systems of kinship:

 Kinship is the social system that organizes people in families based on descent and marriage.

KINSHIP CHART

 A visual representation of family

relationships.

 These charts are useful for diagramming

biological relationships, if not the cultural

meanings associated with these

relationships.

 Here the chart shows members of the

extended family from a husband/father’s

perspective. Of course, the chart could be

drawn from the wife/mother’s perspective as

well.

THE SIX BASIC SYSTEMS OF

KINSHIP

Anthropologists have identified six different basic

kinship systems. The differences can be understood

by how people refer to the different cousins.

FAMILIES ARE DYNAMIC

 Families are not permanent entities, since

members come and go. Individuals may be

members of multiple families in the course

of a lifetime, beginning with a natal family:

 The family into which a person is

born and (usually) raised.

 In other words, families are dynamic.

WHAT IS THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY?

 The realities of life in any given society often create a gap between its real and idealized family types.

 Politicians and religious leaders in the United States often argue for “traditional” marriages, families, and

values—

 rarely bothering to specify which traditions they’re referring to.

THE SITCOM “TRADITIONAL” FAMILY

 Working father, stay-at-home mother, dependent children → nuclear family

 A recent and short-lived phenomenon in the United States

 Low birth rates during Depression and WWII

 Unprecedented economic growth, family stability, and a lot of babies in the 1950s

 Spurred the development and spread of suburban housing

 Began to change in the late 1960s in many interconnected ways:

 More women in the workforce

 More two0income households

 Fewer children (one or two, rather than three or four)

 More divorces

 More blended families

THE NUCLEAR FAMILY

 Still, the United States and many other nations in the world view the nuclear family as an ideal form.

 Nuclear family: the family formed by a married couple and their children.

 The most basic unit if kinship.

FAMILY COOPERATION

 Families function as corporate groups: groups of real people who

work together toward common ends much like a corporation

does

 Extended families were common in 19th century America

 Households shared by nuclear relatives, grandparents, unmarried aunts

or uncles, etc. A larger group of relatives often living in the same

household

 In hard economic times, extended-family households provide a larger

number of potential wage earners to contribute to the family’s needs (Photo Courtesy of Robert L. Welsch)

TYPE OF EXTENDED FAMILIES: DESCENT GROUPS

Clan

 A group of relatives who claim to be descended from a single ancestor

 Ancestor may be an animal or supernatural entity

 Most often exogamous

Lineage

 A group composed of relatives who are directly descended from known ancestors

 Usually a literal human ancestor

Types of Clans and Lineages

Type Definition Features Examples

Patrilineal Membership based on descent

from common male ancestor

Inheritance of property rights, rights, names, and

titles comes through father.

Omaha Indians, Nuer of South

Sudan, most Americans inherit

names patrilineally.

Matrilineal Membership based on descent

from common female ancestor

Every man or women is a member of his or her

mother’s clan. Not about political power but

identity and group membership.

Trobriand Islanders.

Cognatic Descent through both mother

and father

Membership in multiple clans is possible and typical. Samoans of Central Polynesia.

UNILINEAL DESCENT

Patrilineal: reckoning descent through males from the

same ancestors.

 Most clans and lineages in nonindustrial societies are

patrilineal.

Matrilineal: reckoning descent through women, who are

descended from an ancestral woman.

 Everyone is a member of his or her mother’s clan

 A person’s strongest identity is with his or her relatives

in a mother’s clan and lineage.

HOW FAMILIES CONTROL POWER AND WEALTH

One cross-cultural function of families is managing their members’ wealth. In this sense, wealth is broader than just

currency, including resources, the work and reproductive capacity of family members, and inheritance rights when a

member dies.

 Anthropologists studying nonindustrial societies in early to mid-twentieth-century realized that women’s labor in

the fields and gardens in horticultural, agricultural, and pastoral communities was extremely important to the

family.

 Bride price - exchange of gifts or money to compensate another clan or family for the loss of one of its women along with

her productive and reproductive abilities in marriage (Example: Cattle, pigs, shell, labor)

 Childprice - intended to buy rights of a woman’s children, compensation to women’s family for a child who now belongs

to a different clan.

 Dowry – gifts or money given to a daughter to ensure her well-being in husband’s family.

 Rules of Inheritance - an orderly process and keep wealth and property in the family.

RULES OF INHERITANCE

 Families also control wealth, property, and power through

inheritance rules

 Create an orderly process and keep wealth and property in the family

 Inheritance rules have been codified as law in Western countries for

centuries

 Nonindustrial societies, even those without legal codes, also have

inheritance rules.

WHY DO PEOPLE GET MARRIED?

 Many forms and purposes; has not “always” been one way

 Marrying for love is a recent development

 In most countries, marriage is about creating economic and

political alliances between families.

 Marrying for romantic love seen as risky

 Marriage creates formally recognized ties between families

 Any children resulting from the union are considered

“legitimate.”

FORMS OF MARRIAGE

 Polygamy: any form of plural marriage. Previously far

more common in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the

Pacific than it is today.

 Polygyny: When a man is simultaneously married to

more than one woman

 Polyandry: When a woman has two or more

husbands at one time.

MARRIAGE RULES

 All cultures have rules regarding sex and marriage.

 In arranged marriages, parents may select partners from specific

socioeconomic, religious, educational, or ethnic backgrounds

 Incest taboo: the prohibition on sexual relations between close family

members

 Some cultures prohibit marriage between cousins (or, at least, specific types of

cousins), while others do not

WHY IS THERE AN INCEST TABOO?

 The prohibition against sexual relations between specified individuals,

usually parent-child and sibling relations at a minimum.

 What constitutes a relative, and therefore incest, varies widely from

culture to culture.

 Evolutionary explanations:

 an adaptive measure to avoid birth defects associated with incest

 “Westermarck effect”: natural selection causes us to lack sexual attraction

toward people in and around our natal families.

 Cultural explanations: taboos can be explained socially

IN WHAT WAYS ARE MALES AND FEMALES DIFFERENT?

 Differences are reinforced by powerful, ongoing messages that tend to

stereotype roles.

 These stereotypes have become topics of intense debate:

 Why are women excluded from certain kinds of jobs?

 Why are men dominant in certain professions?

 What is gender?

 Gender is defined as the expectations of how male and females should behave

WHY DOES OUR CULTURE CONSTRUCT GENDER DIFFERENCES IN

THESE SPECIFIC WAYS?

 Primary explanation in our culture: males and females are “hardwired”

differently

 Differences in sex, the reproductive forms and functions of the body, are

often thought to produce differences in attitudes, temperaments,

intelligences, aptitudes, and even achievements between males and females

 Male-female differences are shaped by a mix of biology, environmental

conditions, and sociocultural processes

 Useless dichotomies?

 Biology or culture

 Sex or gender

WHAT ARE COMMON GENDER STEREOTYPES?

 Women are supposed to have "clean jobs" such as secretaries, teachers,

and librarians

 Women are nurses, not doctors

 Women are not as strong as men

 Women are supposed to make less money than men

 Women don’t need to go to college

 Women are not politicians

 Women are quieter than men and not meant to speak out

 Women are supposed to be submissive and do as they are told

 Women are supposed to cook and do housework

 Women are responsible for raising children

 Women do not have technical skills and are not good at "hands on"

projects such as car repairs

 Women are supposed to look pretty and be looked at

 Women love to sing and dance

 Women do not play video games

 All men enjoy working on cars

 Men are not nurses, they are doctors

 Men do "dirty jobs" such as construction and mechanics; they are not

secretaries, teachers, or cosmetologists

 Men do not do housework and they are not responsible for taking care

of children

 Men play video games

 Men play sports

 Men enjoy outdoor activities such as camping, fishing, and hiking

 Men are in charge; they are always at the top

 As husbands, men tell their wives what to do

 Men are lazy and/or messy

 Men are good at math

 It is always men who work in science, engineering, and other technical

fields

 Men do not cook, sew, or do crafts

GENDER STEREOTYPES

 Simply put, gender stereotypes are generalizations about the roles of each gender. Gender roles are generally neither positive nor negative; they are simply inaccurate generalizations of the male and female attributes.

 Gender stereotypes begin the second a baby’s gender is found out. As soon as we find out it’s a girl, we immediately begin decorating a pink nursery filled with soft décor and butterflies and flowers. We assume that our daughter will be very "girly" and fill her closet with frilly dresses and her toy box with tea sets and dolls.

 Stereotyping is no different when it’s found out that a boy is on the way. The nursery is decked out in blue, his closet is filled with tiny jeans, polo shirts, and boots, and the theme is usually something like jungle animals or dinosaurs; something tough. Boys’ toys consist of trucks, dinosaurs, action figures, and video games.

 Are you surprised to hear that most parents admit that they do not teach their sons how to do chores such as washing dishes or folding laundry? Instead, they teach them to take out the trash and mow the lawn; from the get-go boys are made to think that certain household chores are "women’s work."

BEYOND “EITHER/OR”

 The dichotomy between males and females breaks down as variations in

chromosomes. Starting with the basics, human females possess two X

chromosomes on their 23rd pair of chromosomes, while males possess an XY

on their 23rd pair. This minor variation is what differentiates males from females

on a genetic level, which gives rise to all of the biological differences.

 Some individuals diverge from the male-female norm and are called intersex,

exhibiting sexual organs and functions somewhere between, or including, male

and female elements.

 One estimate puts the frequency of intersex in the United States at 1.7% of all

live births, but the rates of intersex vary between populations.

 Different societies deal with intersex differently: some do not make anatomical

features the dominant factors in constructing gender/sex identities, and some

cultures recognize biological sex as a continuum.

MORE THAN TWO

 Some people diverge from male-female norm, called intersex

 Societies deal with intersex differently:

 Some do not make anatomy the dominant factor in constructing

gender/sex identities

 Some cultures recognize biological sex as a continuum

 North American and European societies – which construct sex as either

male or female based on genitalia – have considered intersexuality

abnormal, sometimes even immoral

 In the US most intersex children are treated shortly after birth with “sex-

assignment surgery”, where genitalia is constructed based on cultural

assumptions

“Human Rights for Hermaphrodites, Too!” (hermaphrodite was previously the

common term for intersex) (Photo: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images)

GENDER VARIANCE

 Male/female dichotomy is constructed

 Many gender/sex systems around the world are less

rigid or constraining than our own

 Example: the Navajo recognize five genders (Male,

Female, Nadleeche [intersex], Nadleeche [masculine

female], Nadleeche [feminine male]. In India three

genders are now recognized

 In many societies, some people live their lives as

neither male nor female

 Have a culturally accepted, often prestigious, symbolic

niche and social pathway

THIRD GENDER SYSTEMS IN OTHER SOCIETIES

 Third gender often entangled in debates about

sexuality

 Gender/sex identities are established not by sexual

practices but through social performance

 Example: The Navajo Nádleehé (one who is constantly

changing) are individuals that combine male and female

roles and characteristics and are highly respected,

participating in religious ceremonies and acting as

spiritual healers and go-betweens in arranging

marriages and mediating conflicts.

IS HUMAN SEXUALITY JUST A MATTER OF BEING STRAIGHT OR

QUEER?

 Sexuality is usually seen as binary: heterosexual or homosexual,

but in reality, human sexuality is complex and subtle and exists

along a continuum

 Continuum from asexual (non-sexuality) to polyamorous (love of

many).

 Major difficulty in studying sexuality in other societies is the

problem of adequately naming it

 Concepts of same-sex sexuality also vary widely across the globe.

Societies place limits on sexuality by making rules about who can

sleep with whom

 Modern governments have asserted unprecedented levels of control

over sexuality, implementing and enforcing laws that limit the kinds of

sexual relations their citizens can have

CONCLUSION

 The concept of sexuality—who can sleep with whom and the sexual relationships and practices in which people

engage– is a key dimension of the larger theses of kinship and gender

 These concepts are intertwined in complex ways, shaping the ideas and social patterns a society uses to organize

and control males and females, as well as those who do not fit these categories.

 Its important to remember that the ways in which we think of these matters, are not as universal as we may

assume and these constructs are not as “stable” as we think. Rather they feel stable in our everyday experiences

because they are powerful cultural constructions reproduced and upheld in our everyday lives and most

important social institutions