Kinship, Descent, and Marriage Systems

△ = male, ○ = female, = (double horizontal line) = marriage (a slash through it = divorce). A vertical line from a marriage shows descent; a horizontal top line joins siblings.

Mother, Father, Brother, Sister (Z, since S is taken), Son, Daughter, Husband, Wife. Strings are read left to right, e.g. MBD = mother's brother's daughter.

Parallel cousins are linked through same-sex siblings (FBD, MZS); cross-cousins are linked through opposite-sex siblings (MBD, FZD). Many societies call parallel cousins 'brother/sister' (marriage = incest) while cross-cousins are ideal spouses.

Tracing relatives equally through both parents; it produces a kindred — a fuzzy, ego-centered network that differs for every person and dissolves at death, making a poor corporate property-holding group.

Descent traced through only one line (patrilineal or matrilineal), producing sharp-edged, enduring lineages and clans that survive individual deaths and marriages.

Matrilineal descent means group membership passes through mothers, but authority often rests with the mother's brother — e.g. Trobriand fathers are indulgent playmates while the maternal uncle is the disciplinarian (Malinowski).

Double descent: different things pass through different lines (e.g. land patrilineally, ritual office matrilineally). Ambilineal: individuals choose which parent's group to affiliate with.

A socially recognized union creating rights over sexuality, labor, property, and the status of children — a definition loose enough to include Nuer ghost marriage and woman-woman marriage.

A man marries a woman 'for' his deceased brother; the children are counted as belonging to the dead man, keeping his line alive in the patrilineage.

He saw that the words people use for relatives were not mere vocabulary but a blueprint of social structure — kinship is a cultural system built on top of biological facts, not a direct readout of them.