Marriage and Family / Kinship and Descent
After this unit you should be able to:
1. Give a cross-culturally valid definition of family.
2. Give a cross-culturally valid definition of marriage.
3. Explain three functions of marriage.
4. Define incest and summarize four theories explaining why the incest taboo is universal.
5. Explain and give examples of endogamy and exogamy.
6. Describe how unilineal descent systems make cousin marriages possible and often preferable.
7. Understand the circumstances that foster the practice of polygyny.
8. Explain the circumstances in which polyandry occurs and the ways in which it is adaptive.
9. Understand the practice of bridewealth and why it is important to recognize its social, as well as economic, aspects.
10. Understand the factors leading to the high divorce rate in the United States
11. Understand the variety of residence patterns after marriage.
12. Explain under what circumstances nuclear families are found and why they are not more common in the United States.
13. Explain under what circumstances extended families are found and in which economies they are most beneficial.
14. Describe modern-day family structure and its functions.
After reading and studying Chapter 10, you should be able to:
1. Explain how the complexity of human social organization differs from that of any other species.
2. Contrast the importance of kinship as a factor in social structure of small-scale societies with its importance in industrialized societies.
3. Give a clear definition of kinship.
4. Recognize the importance of cultural rules for kinship classification that may not account for biological factors.
5. Diagram their own or another’s kinship systems.
6. Describe how sex and age are important in determining kinship relationships.
7. Explain the structure of both patrilineal and matrilineal descent systems.
8. Understand the organizational hierarchy of moieties, phratries, clans, and lineages.
9. Describe the three types of cognatic descent and explain what is a bilateral system’s kindred.
10. Explain the six basic systems of classification of kin. (Well, at least understand a little about them…)
