7 How Do Humans Organize Themselves?
Social Groups
We like to think that the social groups we are members of are somehow innate or natural—something we’re born with. However, research in primate and human groups indicate how social groups are adaptive cultural behaviors. Our primate cousins have various kinds of social groups, many of which are identifiable in human groups as well.
We find pair-bonded species such as golden lion tamarins, who mate for life. Then there are polygynous species like howler monkeys, where one male lives with many females. How are these adaptive behaviors? Golden lion tamarin females usually have multiple births, twins, triplets, and sometimes quadruplets. For the young to survive, it is necessary for the males to be involved in offspring care. This happens more readily when the offspring are biologically the male’s. If the male only has one mate, then he is assured that the offspring he is caring for are his. In evolutionary terms, his energy is going towards the propagation of his own genetics. Polygyny is adaptive when there is a critical resource necessary for breeding success. If a dominant male already has a mate, females may still choose him as a mate because he has already demonstrated his ability to control necessary resources. This is a specific type of polygyny called resource defense polygyny. Of course, the adaptive significance of these types of systems may be more complicated in human groups.
Anthropologists have always been interested in how people organize themselves, particularly in how the forms of organization help the group adapt to local environments, both cultural and natural. Anthropologists in the 19th-century assumed that any type of cultural organization that did not look like the industrial, imperialist societies of the United Kingdom and the United States of America was primitive and inferior (remember—do not take this statement out of historical context; academic disciplines were products of their time). By the turn of the century, Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology, advocated for understanding cultural practices within their cultural context. He was not interested in trying to classify cultural groups through hypothetical evolutionary progress, which at the time was laden with notions of superiority and inferiority. Boas is the first anthropologist to espouse a culturally relative approach. He thought the differences between cultures was simply that—differences. He did not view any culture and its people better than others.
Anthropological research has often focused on households as a critical unit of social organization. A household is “a domestic group whose members live together and cooperate on a daily basis in production and share the proceeds of labor and other resources held in common” (Harris and Johnson 2007, 120). This is the social unit where members of the group procured resources to share with one another. It is the unit where they reproduced themselves and taught the next generation what they needed to know to survive within the larger group.
Archaeologists look for ancient evidence of households. In fact, the archaeology of household began in the late 1970s. The purpose of this focus was to examine how domestic units lived and changed over time; in other words, how they adapted. Through examination of the material remains left behind, we can infer how people lived, how they acquired and consumed resources, how they interacted with one another, and perhaps how they self-identified. However, archaeologically it can be difficult to determine what type of marriage pattern was practiced, how the family was organized, and how the group reckoned kinship. Not impossible, but difficult. Archaeologists use data collected by cultural anthropologists to develop models to help them interpret the archaeological record, which is why studies of all types of living groups is important.
Specific types of archaeological data are needed to address social groups. Human skeletal remains where DNA can be collected is the best way to identify biological relationships, however, DNA is not always extractable. Historical records are another way to identify social relationships, but not all prehistoric societies left written records behind. The distribution of artifacts is also used to reconstruct social groups. For instance, at Jomon sites in prehistoric Japan, pottery types generally come in two types, one type found on one side of the village and the other type on the other side of the village. This pattern was also found at San José Motgote, Oaxaca, Mexico, a pre-Columbian Zapotec site. Archaeologists interpret this pattern to be evidence of a moiety or dual kinship lines. Ethnographic data informs us that moieties functioned for both governmental and ceremonial purposes. Historically, Athabaskan moieties organize funeral services for one another while Creek moieties are organized into war and peace groups.
These are only a few ways that humans have developed to organize themselves socially. Through archaeological and ethnographic data, anthropologists can examine why the various forms might have developed and why they changed over time. In this chapter, we are going to look at kinship and family, two important ways that humans organize themselves, based primarily on biological relationships, but not always. We will also look at how marriage is connected to these social groups.
Family
We will start our exploration of social groups with families. All human cultures have a defined group called the family, the smallest group of connected individuals. It is the group responsible for childcare and enculturation (the process of learning the culture we are born into). It is the group that helps us meet our basic needs and ascribes our initial status within our society. A status is “any culturally-designated position a person occupies in a particular setting” (Gilliland 2019, 183). Families are also where are first social roles, a set of expected behaviors, are established, that of child or sibling. Families usually, but not always, live together in households. A household may contain only one family, but in some cultures, households contain multiple families that are related. Of course, there are exceptions (as is common among human groups) where households are comprised of non-related people who consider themselves family (Gilliland 2019).
Anthropologists distinguish between the family of orientation and the family of procreation. Everyone has a family of orientation, the family in which one is born and raised. Adopted children have multiple families of orientation. The family of procreation forms when children are born.
Nuclear families are comprised of parents and their dependent children. When the nuclear family has two parents joined in a socially recognized relationship, then it is a conjugal nuclear family. When the nuclear family has a single parent, then it is a non-conjugal nuclear family. While the nuclear family proliferated with the rise of the Industrial Revolution, archaeologists identified evidence of the nuclear family dating to 4.6 kya in Neolithic Europe. DNA from burials at Eulau, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, confirm that the four individuals in the grave, an adult female, adult male and two male children under 10 years old, were related (Haak et.al 2008).
An extended family has at least three generations living within the household. If the extended family consists of an older couple with one of their adult offspring and their children, then it is a stem family. Joint families are a specialized form of the extended family where a large number of people in multiple generations inhabit the same household. This large family is not to be confused with a polygamous family, which may also be large, but in this case one individual has multiple spouses and may have offspring with all the spouses. Polygamous families may live in one household or in a compound with multiple households. It is also possible that they do not live close to one another (Gilliland 2019).
Blended families emerged in societies where divorce is common. In this family type, divorced individuals marry. They may or may not have offspring with previous partners. If children are brought into the new marriage, then they are often referred to as stepfamilies.
Arising out of the LGBTQ community in the 20th century, the family of choice was created to identify families comprised of individuals who operated as a family but were not in a socially-recognized relationship. In more recent decades, the term has been adopted by unmarried adults, especially in highly mobile, industrial societies, who have close relationships with friends (Heaphy 2016). There is debate among academics as to the efficacy of the concept and thus is often left out of discussions of the family.
Some cultures may recognize only one type of family group as “normal,” but other cultures may recognize many different types of family. Anthropologists will identify the family type that is considered the norm but discuss other types of family found within the culture. For instance, in the United States, the most common form of family is the nuclear family; however, extended families are not uncommon and are often related to socioeconomic conditions. A 2018 study found that 35% of American children experienced living in an extended family. When broken out into ethnicities, 57% of African American and 35% of Hispanic children lived in extended families compared to 20% of White children (Cross 2018).
Kinship and Descent
Kinship is the term anthropologists use to “describe culturally recognized ties between members of a family… [and] includes the terms, or social statuses, used to define family members and the roles or expected behaviors…associated with these statuses” (Gilliland 2019, 184). Kinship provides a kind of perpetual organization for societies as it continues over generations. Kinship bonds are consanguineal (blood connection) or affinal (marriage connection); however, there are fictive kinship bonds such as adoption and godparents. Fictive bonds can be as strong as consanguineal and affinal bonds. These kinship bonds create descent groups. From an adaptive standpoint, descent groups create a group of people that individuals that share resources and can be turned to for help when needed. Additionally, descent groups can impact inheritance, status, and even who one can marry.
There are two basic types of descent systems: cognatic and corporate. Cognatic descent, also referred to as non-unilineal descent, means that people from both parents’ sides of the family are kin. There are two forms of cognatic descent. Bilateral descent means that children are equally descended from both parents. This is the form of descent most commonly practiced in the United States. The other form of cognatic descent is ambilineal descent, where offspring can choose one parent’s line as their descent line or, in some cases like that of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth from the west coast of Vancouver Island, choose both lines. Anthropological research suggests that this form of descent arose in groups that had limited resources, such as land. Resources appear to be a critical factor in the choice of descent line but personal relationships as well as political alliances are also factors.
Cognatic descent can result in large kindreds. A kindred is composed of all relatives on both sides of the family. It is common in industrial societies where the nuclear family proliferates and mobility is high, e.g., industrial societies. A kindred can be unstable, with ties being broken when the unifying individual dies.
Corporate descent are lineal forms of descent, where offspring are considered descended from only one parent’s line. This does not mean that the other parent’s family are not recognized as having some type of connection, but for inheritance, economic, and social reasons, only one parent’s line is “kin.” If descent is reckoned along the father’s line, then it is patrilineal descent, which is the most common form of descent pattern. Patrilineal descent is prevalent among pastoral or herding peoples like the Bessari of Persia (Iran). Matrilineal descent, descent reckoned along the mother’s line, is the least common descent pattern. The Saramaka of Suriname are one example.
A key characteristic of lineages is that they use demonstrated descent in their reckoning. Many contemporary genealogists use oral histories along with documents such as birth and baptismal certificates to establish demonstrated descent; however, many indigenous groups rely on long standing memorized oral traditions that recall ancestral relationships. This can be a bit confusing when we consider the clan descent group that rely on stipulated descent which means that the members claim ancestry to what is called an apical ancestor (the person at the top of the common genealogy) without tracing the actual genealogical links. A descent group may have members through demonstrated descent and remote ancestors through stipulated descent, which holds particularly for clans whose apical ancestor is an animal or plant (a totem).
Clans may organize into larger units. If two clans claim a relationship, anthropologists call it a moiety. If there are three or more clans then it is called a phratry. The northern Sel’kup clans are organized in a moiety with one moiety’s apical ancestor being Vanuita and the other’ apical ancestor being Kharutsi (Mayfield et.al. 1955). The Sel’kup are part of the coastal Samoyed peoples living at the edges of the Barents and Kara Seas in Russia. The Tiwi, an Australian aboriginal group, have sibs or clans that are organized into phratries, the number of which fluctuates (Goodale 1971).
Kinship Terminology Systems
To keep track of these kin relations, groups have developed kinship terminology systems. Even though there are thousands of different languages across the globe, there are a few different kinship terminology systems. This does not mean that the same words are used, but that the systems only identify certain relationships.
Kinship terminology systems are built on several factors that may include any of the following:
- Paternal vs. maternal kin
- Generations
- Differences in the age of relatives
- Sex
- Consanguineal vs. affinal ties
- Descent line
- Person’s descent line vs. linked line
- Sex of linking relative
Note: Early anthropologists developed the kinship terminology system using the names of indigenous peoples. There is debate in anthropology about the ethics of the continued use of the names and whether this classification system captures the reality of kinship terminologies. In this section, you are presented with both the traditional terminology system (in italics) and a more recent proposal for new labels for the classification of kinship terms (in bold).
The simplest system, meaning it uses the fewest terms the generational kinship terminology system (traditionally called the Hawai’ian terminology system), which is most common where nuclear families are dependent on other kin and emphasizes the cohesion of the extended family. Its key distinctions are generation and gender, e.g., all males of the biological father’s generation are called father while all the females are called mother. This system is common among groups that practice ambilineal descent.
Anthropologists visually represent kinship systems using kinship diagrams such as the one above demonstrating the generational kinship terminology system. Kinship diagrams use symbols to represent individuals and varying lines to represent relationships. Circles represent people identifying as female, while triangles represent individuals identifying as male. Squares are used to represent individuals who identify as neither male or female or both. If a line is drawn through one of these symbols, then that individual is deceased. Horizontal lines represent sibling relationships while vertical lines represent descent. The presence of an equal sign (=) between symbols represents a socially recognized marriage. If there is a tilde (~) that represents a mating, but the individuals may not be in a socially recognized marriage and do not cohabitate. If unmarried individuals do cohabitate then the approximately symbol () is used. A not equal symbol () represents a divorce. Other symbols can be used to represent whatever the researcher needs to be represented as long as a key is provided with the kinship diagram. Colors are often used to represent social relationships, such as clan. In biological anthropology colors are used to trace the presence of inherited diseases among other things. In biological anthropology, squares are used to represent males and triangles represent those who do not identify as either sex or both sexes.
In the simplified, hypothetical diagram above, Ego represents the informant, or the person from whom the researcher received the information. Because of the sibling line, we can see that Ego, who is female, has one biological sister and one biological brother. The vertical line from the equal sign indicates that the sibling’s parents were married. Their mother had one biological brother and one biological sister, as did their father. Each of their siblings had two children, one biological male and one biological female. In this diagram, colors are used to represent generational kinship terms. All the males in the parental generation are called father. All the females in the parental generation are called mother. In Ego’s generation, all the females are called sister and all the males brother.
Next we have the bifurcate collateral terminology system, formerly the Sudanese system. This is the most complex kinship terminology system with separate terms for six kin types in the parental generation: mother, father, mother’s sister, mother’s brother, father’s brother, father’s sister. It is not a common system, found in some North African cultural groups; however, it is an emerging trend in families with parents of different ethnicity. For instance, a child with one Latinx parent and one Anglo parent, might call their Anglo parent’s siblings ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’ while calling their Latinx parent’s siblings ‘tia’ or ‘tio’ (Kottak 2017, 382).
In bifurcate merging terminology systems, which used to be called the Iroquis system, the parents’ lines are split and on the non-descent line, generations are merged into a single term, e.g., “one’s mother and mother’s sister are lumped together or merged under the same term, while one’s father and father’s brother also are merged—into a common term. There are different terms for mother’s brother and father’s sister” (Kottak 2017, 380-381). This system was identified only in matrilineal societies where mother and mother’s sisters were called mother and brothers of the father were also called father. Brothers of the mother are called uncle and sisters of the father called aunt. Offspring on the mother’s sister or father’s brother are considered siblings, while children of the parents’ siblings of the opposite sex are called cousin.
The final kinship terminology system we will discuss is the lineal terminology system or Eskimo system. Common in the United States, this system emphasizes the nuclear family, with relatives outside the nuclear family distinguished by gender. The terms mother, father, sister, and brother are reserved for the nuclear family while grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, and cousin are used for both sides of the family. Mother, father, and grandparents (and all the great-grandparents) are lineal relatives. Siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews are collateral relatives. Any in-laws are affinals.
Marriage
Arguably, Shakespeare has influenced the modern’s world concept of love and marriage more than any other writer. Anthropological research demonstrates that marriage is not universal, although most cultures have a form of marriage, nor is love always one of the primary considerations in finding a marriage partner (although recent research suggests that with the spread of western media the idea of marriage for romantic love is becoming a primary reason for marriage (Kottak 2017)). Marriage, defined as a socially approved union uniting two or more individuals as spouses, does, however, have several important functions within society.
One function is to regulate sexual behavior, helping to reduce sexual competition and any negative effects associated with that competition. Ideally, it functions to help control population growth; however, people do not always ascribe to the ideal. Some religions sanction marriage as the only approved way to have children; however, some religions also sanction having large families, as biologically reproducing the group is the best way to ensure its survival. So, control of population growth is not the only function. Marriage also serves to fulfill the economic needs of marriage partners. It provides the framework within which people’s needs are met and clearly defines for whom people are responsible. Marriage perpetuates kin groups and provides the means for the care and the enculturation of children.
Marriage Rules
All cultures have rules about with whom you can and cannot partner or marry. Some cultures stipulate the need to partner within a specific cultural group. This is the practice of endogamy, which keeps resources within specific groups and perpetuates social statuses. Many religious groups, such as the Amish, expect their members to marry within the religion. Ethnicity and social class may also be the defining factor of who a person is expected to marry.
In years past, royalty was expected to marry other royalty such as the case of Queen Victoria of England and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. While Queen Victoria did get to choose who she wanted to marry, she was presented with a pool of suitors only of royal blood. In recent decades, this rule has relaxed in some royal houses as seen in the marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton. Another example of endogamy is the Indian caste system. Perhaps 3,000 years old, the hierarchical caste system was established to provide structure to Hindu society. Each of the four main castes are subdivided into further castes and subcastes based on occupation. The Dalits, also called achhoots or untouchables, were outside of the caste system and considered the lowest members of society. This system was made illegal by the Indian government in 1950 who established a system of quotas for government and academic jobs to help the lower castes to gain a more equal footing (“What Is India’s Caste System?” 2019).
Arranged marriage was often practiced by endogamous cultures, ensuring that the “right” person was married into the family. Mates were usually chosen by elder relatives or a matchmaker who considered such things as social class, economic status, heritage, etc. when choosing potential marriage partners. In the past, children often had no say in who they married. Today in many cultures that practice arranged marriage, the potential spouses have an opportunity to meet and make the final decision for themselves.
Exogamy is the practice of partnering with people outside of a defined group. This practice helps to establish personal and political alliances between unrelated peoples (Kottak 2017, 386). Incest taboos are an example of an exogamous rule that prohibits sexual relations with relatives; however, since who is a relative is culturally defined, what constitutes incest varies from culture to culture. In the United States, it is illegal to have sexual relations between children and parents, siblings, grandparents, and grandchildren. Some states further prohibit relations between aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins, and some have restrictions for step- and adopted relatives as well. All states except Rhode Island and New Jersey prohibit intimate relationships between related adults, although neither of these states allow related adults to marry (“Incest Laws by State 2022” n.d.).
Among the Yanomami of Venezuela and Brazil the rules differ for parallel cousins and cross cousins. Parallel cousins refer to the children of either brothers or sisters. In this case, your mother’s sister’s children and your father’s brother’s children would be your parallel cousins. Cross cousins refer to children of a brother or sister so that your father’s sister’s children and your mother’s brother’s children would be your cross cousins. For the Yanomami, it is acceptable to marry or have intimate relations with cross cousins because they belong to a different lineage, but not parallel cousins who belong to the same lineage. So, incest depends on how cultures define who is a relative. “When unilineal descent is very strongly developed, the parent who belongs to a different descent group than your own isn’t considered a relative. Thus, with strict patrilineality, the mother is not a relative but a kind of in-law who has married a member of your own group—your father. With strict matrilineality, the father isn’t a relative because he belongs to a different descent group” (Kottak 2017, 387).
Why incest taboos arose in human societies is not known; however, anthropological research suggests that they are an adaptive mechanism. Endogamy tends to isolate groups from their neighbors and resources. If a population is small enough, over generations genetic variation among the population is reduced, which can lead to problems for the group. Exogamy does the opposite—it expands access to neighbors and resources and introduces genetic variation to the population (Kottak 2017). From an evolutionary perspective, variation is necessary for survival as you learned in chapter 3.
Marriage Types
Marriage type depends on the number of spouses. Some cultures allow partners to be the same sex, others do not (see Carroll 2016 for report on sexual orientation laws). In fact, only twenty-two countries allow same-sex marriage (Wilson 2019).
Seventeen percent of cultures practice strict monogamy (Chapais 2013), where there are only two spouses. Where monogamy is practiced, serial monogamy is generally acceptable. This is where an individual may have multiple spouses over their lifetime either due to divorce or death of spouse, but they only have one spouse at a time. Most societies have a mixed system of monogamy and polygamy, or multiple spouses. There are two forms of polygamy. Polygyny, the most common form, is a union of one male and multiple females. The other form, polyandry, is rare and consists of one female and multiple males. Polyandry often comes in the form of fraternal polyandry where a group of brothers marries the same woman. This diffused tension between co-husbands and kept land from being divided into small parcels, especially important where the availability of arable land is limited. Polyandry has been documented in cultures where land is scare and there is a shortage of women. Polygyny has multiple benefits: the number of spouses supported increased the social status of the male while the women could share the responsibilities of the household, including child rearing and domestic chores. Polygyny is generally found in cultures where rapid population growth is beneficial to the group or where the ratio of women to men is high (Bonvillain 2020). In general, the benefits of polygamy seem to be:
- Increased social status
- A new set of affines
- A larger labor force
- Division of work among spouses
- Better provision for children.
Anthropologists have identified some rarer forms of marriage: group marriage, symbolic marriage, and fixed-term marriage. Group marriage is only known from the anthropological literature as no living group has been documented practicing it. This form of marriage, once practiced by the Toda of the Tamil Nadu state in India, involved multiple males married to multiple females. Symbolic marriage is one that does not establish economic or social ties, such as when a Catholic nun marries Jesus Christ. A fixed-term marriage is a temporary marriage entered into for a set period. Fixed-term marriages legitimize intimate relations in cultures where sex outside of marriage is taboo. It provides a socially acceptable way for unmarried men, specifically, to engage in a sexual relationship while away from their cultures such as in times of war or when attending school in another country. While the female may receive monetary compensation upon the dissolution of the marriage, there are no lasting social ties between the parties.
Some cultures have developed marriage rules for special circumstances. The levirate obliges a deceased man’s family to provide a new spouse for his widow, usually a brother. The sororate requires a deceased woman’s family to provide a new wife for the widower, usually a younger sister. The Amahuaca of Peru and Brazil and the Kurds of Iran practice both the levirate and the sororate. Both practices provide support for the widowed spouse and helps to support and maintain kin ties with children from the marriage. The Nuer from the Sudan practice ghost marriage, which occurs when a man dies with no male heir. A close male relative is chosen to marry “to his name” and any children resulting from the union are considered the children of the deceased man. This meant that the man’s name would continue. If a ghost marriage occurs, it sets off a chain of ghost marriages as the man chosen for the ghost marriage is not allowed to marry another woman to have children to his name. When he dies without a male heir, the process begins again (Monger 2013).
Economic Aspects of Marriage
As mentioned above, marriage is the primary social institution developed to ensure the economic needs of both parties are met. Some of the economic benefits begin before the marriage takes place in some type of exchange between the families of the soon to be spouses. Among the Kazaks of western Mongolia, grooms are expected to transfer herd animals to the bride’s family. One or two are given before the marriage takes place, with another three or four following after the couple have a yurt of their own (Finke 1999). This is an example of bridewealth or bride price. Anthropological research suggests the practice arose to compensate the bride’s family for losing a productive member of the family. Bride service is a practice whereby the groom provides some type of service to the bride’s family. Mi’kmaq grooms living in the Atlantic provinces of Canada are expected to work and hunt under the guidance of an elder male in the bride’s family for two or more years. In this time, the groom demonstrates his ability as a provider (Bock 1978).
Woman exchange is a much rarer practice that consists of two families each providing a wife for one of the sons in the other family. No gifts are exchanged, and each family maintains the number of productive individuals in the family. The Bambara of Mali practice a form of woman exchange. When a man is looking to get married, he has a greater chance of finding a wife if he has sisters or daughters who can be promised to the other family. There is no explicit exchange of women, but each family understands that if a union is arranged, then there is an expectation that unmarried women in the family could be available for future unions (Toulmin 1992).
The practice of the bride’s family providing a dowry for daughters seems to have developed in cultures where women’s roles were less valued. The goods or money given from the bride’s family to the groom’s family is viewed as compensation for taking on the support of the bride. It is common in pastoral or agricultural societies where the market system dominates. Dowries have been used to increase the social status of the woman and any subsequent children; a situation referred to as hypergamy. This was quite common among 19th-century American industrialists who arranged large dowries for daughters in an effort to entice European royalty into marriage.
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