Kinship And Descent Descent Groups Lineages Clans Phratries And

A descent group is a social group whose members claim common ancestry. A unilineal society (such as the Iroquois system) is one in which the descent of an individual is reckoned either from the mother's or the father's descent group. With matrilineal descent individuals belong to their mother's descent group. With patrilineal descent, individuals belong to their father's descent group.

In a society which reckon s descent bilineally (such as the Eskimo system), descent from both father and mother is equally important.

2 Lineages, clans, phratries and moieties

A lineage is a descent group who can demonstrate their common descent from an apical ancestor. Lineages can be matrilineal or patrilineal, depending on whether they are traced through mothers or fathers, respectively. Whether matrilineal or patrilineal descent is considered most significant differs from culture to culture.

A clan is a descent group that claims common descent from an apical ancestor but cannot demonstrate it (stipulated descent). If a clan's apical ancestor is nonhuman, it is called a totem. Examples of clans are Scottish, Irish , Tlingit, ChineseThe consort clan ( Pinyin: waichi is the family, clan or a group related to a spouse or a empress dowager of the Chinese dynastic ruler or a warlord. The leading figure of the clan was either a sibling, cousin, or parent of the consort or concubine. Famou and Japanese clansList of Japanese clans Abe clan of Mikawa Adachi clan Amago clan Asakura Asano Ashikaga clan Ashina Azai Chousokabe Date clan Fujiwara clan Hachisuka Hatakeyama Hayashi Hojo clan late Hojo clan Hosokawa clan Kikkawa Kiso Kitabatake Kyogoku Maeda clan Mina.

A phratryA phratry is an anthropological term for a kinship division consisting of two or more distinct clans which are considered as single unit, but which retain separate indentities with the phratry. In pre-Classical Greece, each tribe phyle was divided into ph is a descent group containing at least two clans which have a supposed common ancestor.

If a society is divided into exactly two descent groups, each is called a moietyA moiety is a specific segment of a molecule. For example, aniline has a phenyl and an amino moiety. Ethidium bromide has both these. Moiety is a term used to describe descent groups in cultures which are divided exactly into two descent groups. Caesar us, after the FrenchFrench le francais la langue francaise is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered only by Spanish and Portuguese. French is the 11th most spoken language in the world, spoken by about 77 million people (called Francophones) as a mother to word for half.

3 The nuclear family

The Western model of a nuclear familyA nuclear family is a household consisting of two parents and their legal children (siblings), as distinct from the extended family. Whilst the family is a near-universal cultural phenomenon, nuclear families do not form the family unit in every society. consists of a couple and their children. The nuclear family is ego-centered and impermanent, while descent groups are permanent (lasting beyond the lifespans of individual constituents) and reckoned according to a single ancestor.

Kinship calculation is any systemic method for reckoning kin relations. Kinship terminologies are native taxonomies, not developed by anthropologists.

The notion of the nuclear family has been largely dismissed, as have other theories which argue for a universal core unit of kinship.

4 Legal ramifications

Kinship and descent have a number of legalThis article is about law in society. For other possible meanings, see law (disambiguation). Law (a loanword from Danish-Norwegian lov , in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules of conduct which mandate or proscribe (or both) specified relationshi ramifications, which vary widely between legal and social structures.

Most human groups share a taboo against incest; which relatives are forbidden from marriage by the rules tend to vary widely once you move beyond the nuclear family. At common law, the prohibitions are typically phrased in terms of "degrees of consanguinity."

More importantly, kinship and descent enters the legal system by virtue of intestacy, the laws that at common law determine who inherits the estates of the dead in the absence of a will. In civil law countries, the doctrine of legitime plays a similar role, and makes the lineal descendants of the dead person forced heirs. Rules of kinship and descent have important public aspects, especially under monarchies, where they determine the order of succession, the heir apparent and the heir presumptive.

5 See also

Family

Kinship and descent

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1 Descent groups