Kinship

Kinship refers to ties between and among people and groups that are created by blood or marriage. Individuals related by blood (having a common genetic ancestry), such as parents and their children, and brothers and sisters, are called consanguineal kin. Those related by marriage, such as husband and wife, and in-laws, are called affinal kin. Kin ties are cultural universals and throughout human history have been the basic ties that bind persons to one another. Nearly all people spend a good part of their lives interacting with both blood and affinal relatives. Kinship, along with gender and age, has also been one of the primary criteria societies have used to sort their members into social categories.

An individual's set of ties is called his or her genealogy. Which individuals fit into a particular individual's genealogy, and how they fit, is established by cultural norms and rules which define the meanings and boundaries of kinship groups. These rules govern matters such as whom may marry whom, who are kin, which kin one lives near following marriage, what labels are used for kin, and what obligations govern behavior between kin. Across cultures, there is considerable variation in these rules and in their effect on the structure and functioning of communities and societies.

Kinship, unlike one's genealogy, is a social construct that converts genealogical relations into meaningful social relationships. In no culture are all genealogical relationships recognized as kinship relations, as people always have some kin who they do not know of, and others who they do know of, but who play no role in their lives. In addition, there is much variation across cultures and even across families in a single culture in the breadth and depth of relations who are considered to be kin. In societies where kinship is an important organizing mechanism, kin relations are often traced back several generations while in many modern societies, few people can trace their kin back more than two or three generations.

Kinship is important to the study of community for several reasons. First, as noted above, kinship is one of the basic ordering mechanisms of all human societies. Second, one's kin group, whether confined to the nuclear family or extended out to a much wider genealogy, is a primary social group for most people throughout their lives. Those ties often continue after death, as people are much more likely to leave property to kin and most people mark the death of close kin with religious rituals. Third, kin-based societies and communities remain common in some parts of the world, including the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Fourth, kinship is important in migration, with immigrants often maintaining ties to kin in the homeland and assisting their immigration. Fifth, rules and beliefs about kinship affect community social services efforts and programs, especially those directed at families and family members.

From the late nineteenth century until the 1970s, kinship was a major focus of cultural anthropology, with information gathered and analyzed from hundreds, if not thousands of cultures around the world. Since the 1970s, interest in kinship has waned as anthropology has shifted its attention to cultures and societies in the modern world and the relationships among societies. Nonetheless, there remains a substantial body of knowledge about kinship, including the building blocks of kinship systems—post-marital residence, descent, and [Page 816]kinship terminology—as well as other topics such as kin relations, fictive kin, and kin-based societies.

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