140(z5 KINSHIP AND MARRIAGE Kinship: Kinship studies were initiated by an American lawyer, Lewis Henry Morgan, who lived western New York State. He was intrigued by the kinship system of the Iroquois Indians and with their extended forms of kinship terminologies which allowed brothers and sisters and extended cousins of the same generation to be labeled as"father "or"mother""by a child of the succeeding generation Descent and Inheritance Marriage establishes affinal relationships between the kin, or"consanguines" of the wite and those of her groom. Affines are thus people who are married to our consanguines. Consanguines are those who are related to us in a"kin"like way, or through blood. Kinship"is defined as the network of relationships created by genealogical connections, and by social ties modeled on the natural"relations of genealogical parenthood In many societies, the ideal result of the union of marriage is children and a posterity. Children from marriage represent social, as well as physical, continuity and collateral. Their identity is henceforth bound up with those of their parents, family, lineage, and so forth. Children will be recognized as members of a specific "descent "group. Descent refers to social recognition of a common parent or ancestor. Sometimes the actual relations are known and emphasized; other relations, or fictive kinship, base their behaviors on the model of descent even through there may not be any actual blood ties. By a convenient fiction, persons are transformed into kinsfolk and assimilated within the communitys common ancestry. Since they are treated like kin, they become kin in a real sense Patrilineal Descent: Patrilineal descent is present when rules of identity and inheritance state that a child belongs to his or her father's clan. This means that all offspring of a man belong to his clan, as he belonged to his father's clan. A daughter belongs to her father's clan; but her children do not. The belong to the clan of their father One well-known example is the Tallensi 1. Every Tallensi belongs to his or her father's patrilineal descent group(sometimes llda“ corporate group,” or corporation.) 2. All political and religious rights are obtained are transmitted through the patrilineage 3. A man must marry a woman from another patrilineage 4. Members of many patrilineages recognize a common ancestor. When a sacrifice made to the ancestor, persons from these lineages are entitled and sometimes obliged to attend 271
5. Persons of the same patrilineage are obliged to hold certain economic and religious responsibilities toward one another. They share unique ties of kinship which bind them together in ways which are not found among non-kin. Thus, Fortes has called kinship the"axiom of mity. "(Similar to Frosts"Hired Hand: "Home is a place, where when you go there, they have to take you in. Matrilineal Descent In matrilineal societies, a child belongs to the clan of his or her mother and not that of the father This kind of descent and inheritance is found among the Asante of West Africa, the Trobrianders of Melanesia, and the Navajo Indians of N.A. Among the Trobrianders, the continuity of the clan is not through a man's own children but through those of his sister. When descent is traced through the mother's lineage, or matriliny, the men nevertheless monopolize all the positions of power; a man's closest relative is his sister and his most immediate heir and successor is her son In such systems, therefore, the maternal uncle serves as more of an authority figure than does a childs own father. Even marriages are considered weaker or less important than the perpetuation of the ties of the matrilineage. Within such marriages, men posses few rights, beyond general sexual access to their wives; and within such families, men own few obligations to their wives and their own children. In Asante, marriage is even regarded as somewhat of a necessary inconvenience; and in-laws are considered to be somewhat of a menace. Traditional Asante households, at least during the first years of marriage, have the wife and her brother(s) under one roof. The woman's husband maintains his own household nearby. He visits his children from time to time and gives them minor gifts. But his real allegiance is to his sisters hildren.They will inherit from him. After a few years, if the marriage survives, the husband and wife will eventually co-habit under one roof. By then the identity of the children is firmly established within the matrilineage. Needless to say, Asante marriages are hardly stable and do not often last long Marriage and Forms of Alliance Assuming that unions between the closest kin are excluded by incest prohibitions, there are basically three possibilities 1. One can marry whom one likes 2. One must marry outside one's own immediate group 3. One must marry inside ones own immediate group How the group is defined and constructed varies from society to society. The second approach (out-marriage or exogamy) is common when the members of a group are already strongly united and feel little need for further social integration. Lineages and clans are often, though not always, fiercely exogamous, taking brides from those considered to be non-kin, and even enemies. Where this is the case, in-marriage is discouraged by a definition of incest that precludes marriage within the group. Incest is regarded with an almost universe disgust and
repudiation throughout the world. The incest taboo both prohibits sexual partners and promotes out-marriage. Denial of marriage and sexual access to women of one's group makes them available as partners to males of another group Where marriage within the community is strongly valued, making out-marriage prohibited,is endogamy. This principle applies to the various divisions of the Indian caste system, and to various religious groups, including Mormons. In the caste system, the rigid purity of a particular caste is preserved by marrying within the caste; although an infinite number of sub-castes makes marrying“up” or marrying“down” a routine possibility.. These practices are known as herpergamy and hypogamy, respectively. Many Muslim societies of the Middle-East follow a less exacting forms of endogamy, strongly favoring marriage between the sons and daughters of brothers(known as patrilateral cousin marriage). This preference is sometimes so great that a man possesses a right to marry his fathers brothers daughter. Such a daughter is not free to marry another suitor unless all such males have renounced their claim on her Other rules regarding marriage concern numbers of spouses. Most societies like our own practice monogamy, or one spouse. However, in the U.S., a noted alteration on monogamy is serial monogamy, in which persons have a succession of spouses. This is due to the frequency of divorce and remarriage. No state legally allows more than one spouse at a time. But some people have numerous spouses, one after the other There are a handful of different kinds of polygamy, or plural spouses. Polygyny refers to plural wives. When sisters are involved, the term used is soral polygyny. Polygyny was common in the old Testament, and was practiced by Jacob and others Much more rare than polygyny is the practice of polyandry. This refers to the marriage of one woman to several more than one man. When brothers are involved, the term used is adelphic or fraternal polyandry. Today, among ethnic Tibetans in northwest Nepal, the ideal form of marriage is fraternal polyandry. The oldest brother in this case is the senior husband, and is regarded as the father of all the children, even though he is not likely the real biological father Marriage Transactions In many societies, marriage is somewhat of an exchange. In small scale societies, the reproductive capacities and domestic services of women are recognized and acknowledged at marriage by the transfer of property. When payment of goods, usually cattle or other domestic animals, is passed from the husband's kin to the wife's kin, this transaction is known as bridewealth. Many societies in Africa recognize cattle as the preferred form of bridewealth The Bantu have a saying, "Cattle beget children; "which means that cattle are given in bridewealth for a sister who will provide children- another form of status and"wealth in people-to the lineage of her husband Residence
Neolocal residence: The newly married couple forms a new independent household, with no residential affiliation to either the groom's family or the bride's family. This is common in Al merica a nd in northern Europe. Societies with bilocal residence requires the new couple to live with either the groom's family or the bride's family. Bilocal residence is found on Dobu Islands near New Guinea and Borneo in Indonesia. Virilocal residence: This common form of residence is where the newly married couple go to live in the household of the groom's parents. This helps to incorporate to some degree the new bride among the grooms kin. Virilocal marriage is common throughout the Mediterranean especially North Africa, and in many places in tropical Africa
Religion How is religion defined? What is religious practice and experience? Some definitions What if we said that religion was whatever involves a stated belief in spirits, gods, or mystical entities of some sort? With this definition, however, there are two problems 1)The first is that the anthropologist Rodney Needham of Oxford tried to apply and translate the word"belief"into the religious language of the people in Indonesia with whom he lived for some time. Needham claimed that there was no equivalent in their language for our concept of religious belief. 2)The second problem deals with what may be viewed as entities of a existence which is not part of this everyday world What is called"religion"may therefore look very different from one society to another. There may be an emphasis on religious belief, on religious practices such as certain kinds of rituals, or an emphasis on shared emotions. For our purposes we will consider religion as"an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman beings This definition was originally given, in part, by E B. Tylor a Oxford 100 years ago; and it has been reiterated by current scholars such as Jack Goody, Robin Horton and Mel spiro Pollution and Purity Many religions stipulate not just things people should do, such as sacrifice and ritual, but also things they should not do: eating certain foods, wearing certain clothes, coming into contact with people of other religions or of lower status, etc. Prohibitions and"taboos" are some of the most fundamental aspects of religion, in part because they distinguish and often socially separate, persons of different religions. They bring religious life into everyday social existence by estricting, sanctioning and prohibiting social interactions and behaviors Proscriptions and taboos regarding food and clothing are common aspects of many religions They often served to keep distinct and apart people and things deemed to be importantl different: men and women, impure people(menstruating women, unclean men) and pure people, high and low-status people, meat and milk products, etc. Rules about food-what to eat, when to eat it, with whom to eat it- are of central importance in many religions In the religions of the Middle East(Islam, Judaism, Christianity), meals serve as key symbols of religious affiliation and as a means through which religious acts are carried out. During the Passover Seder, the house must be cleansed of all leaven; throughout Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, Muslims may not partake of food from sun-up to sun-down; and the importance