Inequality along the Margins Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Identify contemporary types of migration. Describe the major migrant routes and some of the risks migrants face. Identify and give an example of circular migration. Describe the global impact of refugees. Give an example of a pandemic. Contemporary Types of Migration Because of emerging global forces of all kinds—social, economic, environmental, and political—there has been a recent rise in migration within geographical regions and across countries. Four of the most common types of contemporary migration are listed below. Each derives from different causes and is associated with different push and pull factors (Woldeab 2019). In some situations, these types of migration may overlap, such as in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Labor migration is the movement of people for the purpose of employment and/or economic stability. It may be an internal migration from one town to another within the same country of origin, or it may involve travel across countries in search of opportunities. In 2017, the United Nations International Labour Organization estimated that there were 164 million labor migrants worldwide (Global Migration Data Analysis Centre 2021). Forced migration or displacement , also called involuntary migration , is migration due to persecution, conflict, or violence and involves refugees and those seeking asylum. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimated that as of the end of 2019, there were some 79.5 million forced migrants or displaced persons worldwide. More than two-thirds (68 percent) of those displaced persons came from just five countries: Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Myanmar (UNHCR 2020). One out of every 108 people was displaced in 2018 (UNHCR 2019). Forced labor , human trafficking , and modern slavery are a set of linked terms defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, and/or harboring of persons by means of threat or use of force or coercion for the purpose of exploitation (UN 2020). This includes sexual slavery and forced labor. As of 2016, some 25 million people were involved in forced labor and some 40.3 million in modern slavery worldwide, while an estimated 15.4 million were in forced marriages (https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/index.htm). While a large proportion of the victims are women, human trafficking involves men and children as well. The Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative (https://www.ctdatacollaborative.org/) estimates that nearly 80 percent of international human trafficking journeys pass through airports and other official border control points. Environmental migration is displacement caused by natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or droughts. It can be permanent or temporary and is a rapidly growing area of migration due to global climate change. In 2018, 17.2 million people were displaced due to environmental conditions; by 2019, the number had risen to 24.9 million (https://www.internal-displacement.org/global-report/grid2019/). Anthropologists who study migration are often involved in multi-sited ethnographic research , exploring not only migrant populations but their communities of origin as well. Understanding the social and cultural attributes of communities of origin helps researchers gauge the level and types of adaptation caused by migration. Also, communities of origin typically remain part of migrants’ wider social networks and are vital to their well-being and success. It is not uncommon for relatives and other members of the migrants’ home communities to follow them to their new settlements and reestablish a sense of community and a set of self-help networks there. This process of serial migration from the same community of origin is known as chain migration . Labor Migration and Migrant Routes While migration, in its widest sense, is any movement that reestablishes a household, many migratory patterns are specifically associated with socioeconomic need, mainly shifting employment opportunities. Labor migration can be permanent or circular. Circular migration is a repeated pattern of movement between locations, usually mapped to the availability of work. One type of circular migration is seasonal migration , which is migratory movement that coincides with seasonal labor needs, such as planting, harvesting, service, and construction work. Some seasonal workers migrate, with or without their families, for temporary, often low-paid work. Other seasonal workers have long-term relationships with their employers and legal work permits (also called Employment Authorization Documents, or EADs, in the United States) and will return to the same work sites year after year, sometimes maintaining a joint household with other families at the work site. These individuals will often maintain a family household in their country of origin and send home remittances , or transfers of money from workers to their home countries, usually for their families. Today, one in nine people worldwide depends on remittances from migrants (Global Migration Data Analysis Centre 2021). Many people migrate in search of work and a better life without legal permits or assurance of employment. The migration journey made in search of opportunities can be filled with dangers, hardships, and even death. Some regions of the world have well-established migrant trails , which are the routes of most worldwide migration. The most congested migration routes are: the eastern Mediterranean route, with a flow of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe, crossing through Turkey; the Mediterranean Sea route, with migration from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe, across the Mediterranean Sea; the Southeast Asian route, with migrants primarily moving southward from the Asian mainland into Indonesia and Malaysia; and the Central American route, which brings migrants from South and Central America into North America. These migrant trails have a huge impact on the social, political, and economic life of all of the countries that are a part of the route, bringing both benefits and challenges. Those in the United States are most familiar with the Central American route, which begins as far south as South America and extends as far north as Canada. The most contested part of the “trail,” however, is the portion along the Rio Grande, the river that separates Mexico and the United States. In his remarkable four-field study of undocumented migrants entering the United States across the border with Mexico, The Land of Open Graves (2015), Chicano anthropologist Jason De León reveals a less visible side of undocumented migration. He describes a type of cat-and-mouse game between migrants and those attempting to stop them, resulting in widespread suffering and high human and financial costs. De León conducted a multi-sited ethnography, doing research in various locations in both Mexico and the United States and consulting various groups along the migration route, including illegal migrants and border patrol agents as well as smuggling groups and drug traffickers. Jason De León 1977- Anthropologist Dr. Jason De León (credit: Michael Wells, Undocumented Migration Project) Personal History: Jason De León is a U.S. anthropologist and Mexican-Filipino American who grew up in several cities in the United States, including McAllen, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border; and Long Beach, California, where he graduated from Wilson High School. He earned his bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Pennsylvania State University. His doctoral work focused on ancient tool production and trade in the Valley of Mexico. Area of Anthropology: Although De León’s training includes a specialization in archaeology, his holistic research approach is four-field, combining archaeology with ethnographic research, physical anthropology analyses, and linguistic anthropology. His work is multi-disciplinary in nature and multi-sited, involving not just Mexico and the United States but also numerous other countries of migrant origin. His interests include undocumented migration, photo-ethnography, and human smuggling. He seeks out the stories not only of people, such as migrants and their families, smugglers, and border guards, but also of their material artifacts—the items they bring, wear, and use to survive their dangerous journeys. Accomplishments in the Field: De León is the executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), a nonprofit organization founded in 2009 that focuses on the long-term anthropological study of clandestine movements between Latin America and the United States. UMP sponsors an educational exhibit called Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94), a pop-up participatory art project that displays the handwritten toe tags of some 3,200 migrants who have died while trying to cross the Sonoran Desert in the southwestern United States since the mid-1990s, showing the locations where each of the individuals died along their journey. It is a poignant reminder of the many dangers of migration, both human and environmental. De León received the prestigious five-year MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2017–2022) for his work on undocumented migrants. This award, given for talent, creativity, contribution to one’s field, and potential, allows scholars to focus on future research in an area of great importance. In addition, De León’s 2015 book, The Land of the Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail , has received various awards and commendations. Art on the Mexican side of the wall that divides the city of Heroica Nogales in Mexico from the United States. (credit: “Wall Art in Nogales” by Jonathan McIntosh/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Importance of Their Work: Anthropologists often work in specific places and more geographically bounded settings. The research of Jason De León expands our understanding of the lives of those who migrate and the various ways that movement ties together people, places, and cultures. In his article “On Not Looking Away,” digital and multimedia advisor Arran Skinner (2019) reports on the tragic deaths of Mexican migrants Óscar Martínez Ramírez and Angie Valeria, his 23-month-old daughter, both of whom drowned and washed up on the shores of the Rio Grande. “We are choosing to ignore this evidence [of atrocity], to actively look away,” Skinner writes. But De León is not looking away. Through his research, he is bringing to light the stories of those who migrate in search of hope and better lives. As global movements become more common because of political, economic, and environmental challenges, studies such as De León’s illustrate the growing importance of migration for our species. Since 1994, the US Border Patrol has had a policy of “prevention through deterrence” that attempts to prevent undocumented migrants from reaching the U.S. border. Legal international entryways in cities such as Tucson, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas, were heavily fortified with fencing and additional patrol agents to make undocumented crossing exceptionally difficult. As a result, migrant entry points shifted away from urban areas and into more hostile terrain, such as the Sonoran Desert region of Arizona. While this has not significantly lowered the frequency of these crossings, it has made the journey much more dangerous and far less visible to residential populations and humanitarian groups. In addition to the threat of harsh and rugged landscapes, there are the dangers of extreme weather, dehydration, bandits, and even wild animals. De León concludes, “The Border Patrol has intentionally set the stage so that other actants [agents of deterrence] can do most of the brutal work” (61). During his study, De León and his team located the body of Maricela Zhagüi Puyas , a woman originally from Cuenca, Ecuador. She had left her family, including her children, in Ecuador in order to seek employment in the United States, hoping to send money home to them. She was in debt for more than $10,000, most of it to the trail guide (called a coyote ) who was supposed to guide her on her journey. Such trail guides often extort large sums of money from vulnerable migrants and then leave them to make their way alone. Maricela had made a journey of more than 5,000 miles from Cuenca, Ecuador, all the way to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, when she died of exhaustion and exposure, technically having reached the United States. In the 14-year period between 2000 and 2014, 2,721 migrants were found dead in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, approximately 800 of whom remain unidentified today. In 2020, there were an estimated 227 migrant deaths in the Sonoran graveyard, making it the deadliest year on record for that corridor trail (Snow 2021). De León’s work continues today through a series of pop-up exhibitions and workshops entitled Hostile Terrain 94 . Migrant routes: (left) the U.S.-Mexico border wall at Nogales, Arizona, in February 2019; and (right) an immigrant camp of asylum seekers in Matamoros, Mexico, near Brownsville, Texas, in January 2020. (credit: (left) “Nogales Border Wall and Concertina Wire” by US Customs and Border Protection/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; (right) “Congressional Hispanic Caucus Visit to Matamoros, Mexico 05” by Jimmy Panetta/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) This humanitarian crisis is far from being resolved. In 2020, 400,651 undocumented migrants were apprehended and expelled by the U.S. Border Patrol (U.S. Customs and Border Protection 2020). Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, make up a majority of the farmworkers and meatpacking workforce in the United States today. Once employed, these immigrants, who are frequently separated from their families, face hazardous working conditions, language barriers, long hours, low pay, and substandard housing. Because of their legal status, many also struggle with inadequate access to health care and rising discrimination. Biocultural anthropologist Shedra Snipes and her team (Snipes et al. 2007) conducted focus group interviews among 69 male and female Mexican immigrant farmworkers in the Yakima Valley of Washington State. They were particularly interested in the ways the farmworkers defined and experienced stress. Their interviewees distinguished between physical and mental stressors and cited the most common causes of stress as work, personal illness, lack of work, family illness, and family stress. Snipes et al. noted that many stressors were linked by a common theme of inconsistent work and the injusticia (injustice and unfairness) of low pay and poor working conditions. One farmworker noted, “Sometimes there are many people wanting to work in the field. You complain about something like not having water, or the bathrooms being dirty, [and] they tell you right away, ‘If you don’t like it go find a job somewhere else’” (366). Another common theme was the stress of living in a different culture. Several farmworkers commented that cultural differences, such as language barriers, communication from schools regarding their children, or complaints from neighbors when they had rowdy family get-togethers, contributed to their experience of stress. As this example shows, at the intersection of culture and migration, many factors affect an individual’s ability to adapt to new living conditions. Refugees Beyond the Nation-State Refugees are persons who are forced to cross international boundaries to seek residence. Pushed out of their countries, most commonly because of war, famine, or persecution, they typically arrive under extreme circumstances with little food, clothing, or material possessions. They are frequently separated from their relatives and have little chance of finding employment or reestablishing their household. Because of their status as stateless persons (persons forced to leave their countries) and their inability to procure proper travel documentation, refugees are protected under the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, which derives from Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed in1948. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes an international legal right for people to seek asylum , which is legal protection extended by one country to citizens of another. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees heads the UN Refugee Agency, a global organization that directs troops and aid workers to set up refugee camps and organizes international efforts to ease the suffering of refugees. (left) An aerial view of the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, a camp settlement for Syrian refugees, in 2013; (right) a Syrian refugee family waiting for asylum. (credit: (left) “An Aerial View of the Za’atri Refugee Camp” by US Department of State/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; (right) “Idlib Bekaa Refugees” by Russell Watkins/Department for International Development/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) In her ethnographic study of Congolese refugees in the Ugandan capital city of Kampala, cultural anthropologist Georgina Ramsay (2016) focuses on the ways in which refugees protect themselves, both physically and psychologically, by what they call “avoiding poison.” In 2012, there were approximately 50,000 refugees living in Kampala as a result of ongoing political instability, warfare, and corruption in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Housed initially in a refugee settlement away from urban areas, the group of refugees interviewed by Ramsay opted to move to Kampala for greater opportunities and more security, as the refugee settlements were troubled by crime and violence. As one informant told Ramsay, “There are bad people everywhere in the camp” (115). The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo allowed resettlement in Kampala if the refugees procured a legal permit and a way to make a living independent of government funding or humanitarian aid. Given their displacement from their own ethnic communities and social networks, refugees faced unreliable social communities, in which their relationships were recently formed, as well as fear and the looming threat of having to return to the settlements if they lost their jobs or housing arrangements. Many either relied on or supplemented their wages with remittances from relatives living elsewhere in an effort to create greater security in the urban environment. The “poison” feared by this group of refugees is a symbolic agent administered by “unknown assailants” (113), most often sprinkled into the food they prepare, and capable of making them sick both physically and psychologically. The administering of this poison is not always intended as a personal attack; rather, the refugees believe that their day-to-day life outside of their cultural homelands makes them vulnerable. They believe that they are most vulnerable during cooking and eating. In their home communities, cooking and eating were normally times of social interaction and sharing, but cooking and eating are now highly privatized acts for them. Families eat only with each other, within their own homes, and do not accept any shared food, even when they are hungry. The result is an intentional physical distancing from each other and a strengthening of family-only social bonds. While this approach clearly weakens the refugees’ ability to build a large and sustainable self-help community in Kampala, it does afford them a sense of positive control (agency) over their day-to-day lives. This sense of social agency over the threat of “poison,” giving the refugees an ability to control some aspects of their day-to-day lives, is an example of the adaptive nature of culture under very challenging circumstances. Pandemic as a Global Migration People and goods are not the only things that migrate. Along with human migration, there is a host of secondary movements that can affect the human population globally. Diseases are a prime example. Diseases that may have once been contained in a single region can move, along with their human and animal hosts, into new geographic areas, where they can become even more virulent. When diseases spread more than expected among a given group of people, they are referred to as epidemics . An outbreak of a disease over a very broad area, typically crossing international boundaries, is called a pandemic . Some early pandemics in Europe were the plague of Athens in 430 BCE (possibly typhus or typhoid fever or Ebola), the Antonine plague from 165 to 180 CE (possibly smallpox), and the Black Death from 1347 to 1351 (caused by a bacterium carried by fleas and infected rodents). In the Americas, Mexico and Central America suffered from various documented pandemics, starting with the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico in 1519, which set off a widespread smallpox outbreak that extended into South America. There have been other pandemics, including the cocoliztli epidemic from 1545 to 1548, likely a form of enteric fever, and the so-called Spanish flu, first detected in the United States in 1918 (Alchon 2003; Vågene et al. 2018). The most serious recent pandemic in the United Stated had been the swine flu pandemic of 2009–2010 ... until 2019–2020. In the last few months of 2019, the viral coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, known as COVID-19 , began a global migration from Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, to every continent of the world. Carried between geographically distant locations by human hosts traveling for all sorts of reasons—including work, study, tourism, visitation, and displacement—as well as within towns and communities by people shopping, attending religious services and schools, or even visiting friends and families, COVID-19 quickly became a global emergency. First reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 31, 2019, COVID-19 was officially declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. Throughout 2020, the disease continued to spread rapidly, overwhelming medical facilities, ravaging countries’ economies, and forcing people to alter the structures of most social institutions, including schools, churches, weddings, and even funerals. By October 2021, some 248 million people had been infected, including several world leaders, and more than 5 million people had died from the disease. United States vice president Kamala Harris receives a COVID-19 vaccine in January 2021. (credit: “Kamala Harris Getting Her Second COVID-19 Vaccination” by Lawrence Jackson/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) The COVID-19 virus spreads through airborne transmission when someone inhales droplets expelled by an infected person coughing, sneezing, or even exhaling. As with measles and tuberculosis, the only fully effective form of containment outside of a vaccine and the development of antibodies is quarantine. When the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the most important advice was to limit all unnecessary movements and gatherings, wear masks, and practice physical distancing. But given the global nature of our lives today, it was very difficult to halt either the movement of people or the spread of the disease. On January 20, 2020, the first reported case in the United States was diagnosed in Washington State, in a man in his thirties who had just returned from Wuhan. By that point, the virus had already spread to Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, and South Korea. On January 24, the first European cases were reported in France. The disease continued to quickly spread all over the world, including on international transport, such as cruise and cargo ships. In December 2020, there were several cases reported in Antarctica. Only 14 countries reported no COVID-19 cases as of April 2021, all except two of them island nations or territories in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans with strict travel policies: Tuvalu, Tonga, Tokelau, St. Helena, the Pitcairn Islands, Palau, Niue, Nauru, Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Cook Islands, and American Samoa. (The two non-island nations, North Korea and Turkmenistan, are believed to have unreliable data.) As a result of migration, the disease transformed peoples’ lives everywhere. But migration can also bring relief from pandemics. The same conveyances that led to the initial spread of the disease have also brought relief workers, food, medical supplies, and life-saving vaccines to communities worldwide. In addition, scientists and researchers worked tirelessly in multinational efforts to sequence the COVID-19 genome so that vaccine development could proceed rapidly. Globally, several countries developed lifesaving vaccines and began working together to disperse them to communities in need. As our world becomes increasingly interdependent, it is critical that we understand the important role of migration in so many aspects of our survival. Migration in El Angosto Experience of Marjorie Snipes, chapter author We often think of rural communities as being separate from global forces, but this is not always true. In El Angosto, a small Indigenous community in the northwestern Andes of Argentina, diverse forms of migration, dependent on internal and external factors, are part of people’s day-to-day lives. I conducted fieldwork in El Angosto, Argentina, during the 1990s and early 2000s (Snipes 1996). This small highland community is located at about 11,000 feet above sea level and nestled in a rugged river valley along the Río Grande de San Juan, the international boundary between Argentina and Bolivia. At that time, the community had a population of about 200 people, most practicing agropastoralism, with each family raising corn, wheat, alfalfa, and broad beans and tending herds of goats and sheep. In order to provide ample pastureland and keep animals away from their gardens, they were transhumant, moving their herds to higher altitudes during the spring and summer seasons, away from the primary households with their gardens and accompanied by seasonal shepherds. After the herds moved from their winter corrals, families cleaned them out and used the manure to fertilize the gardens. Through transhumance, families benefit from this dual subsistence system, producing most of their daily food needs. Although not dependent on money for their daily food, Angosteños participate in the global economy in various ways. Historically, the community is part of a vast Andean trade network that connects small highland communities of northern Argentina and southern Bolivia through itinerant trade. Extensive long-distance trade networks have been an integral part of Andean life for centuries (see Alberti and Mayer 1974; Murra 1975). Annually, traders come through El Angosto from the altiplano of Bolivia, a high plains region at an average altitude of 12,000 feet above sea level. Because of the harsh climate at that altitude, the Bolivian communities rely almost exclusively on herding camelids (llamas and alpacas), having little to no ability to raise needed crops. In the springtime each year, Bolivian traders pass through El Angosto with pack animals (usually llamas) loaded with wool ropes, bags, and dried camelid meat that they produce during the winter months, seeking fresh vegetables for trade. Although traders negotiate each transaction based on their particular family’s needs, all parties are well aware of the current market value of their animal and vegetable products, as families listen daily to radio broadcasts on trade. I tried my hand at negotiating with Gumercindo, a young trader from San Antonio de Lipes, Bolivia, for a small, handwoven rope. When I asked him the cost of the rope, he looked at me with kind amusement and asked me what I offered to exchange. “Pesos!” I said (Bolivian money). He told me the rope was worth 10 pesos (approximately $10 at that time) but that he needed corn and wheat and that one arroba (approximately 25 pounds) of grain was worth around $12. In other words, I would have to pay the higher cost because he would need to take the money and try to buy an arroba of grain. Most highlanders are more aware of current trade values than even those living in cities. Other forms of migration affect life in El Angosto. In order to earn cash for manufactured items, many highland families periodically send a family member to work away from the community. The zafra , the annual lowland sugarcane harvest, can usually temporarily absorb anyone willing to work, and young people occasionally seek out urban employment opportunities, such as domestic service in private households. Migration is an enduring part of the fabric of Andean life, binding communities to each other and, ultimately, to each of us. Summary Migration is an important characteristic of human behavior. People migrate for all sorts of reasons, moving from place to place in search of economic opportunities, refuge from political or social oppression, educational opportunities, health resources, fulfillment of family needs, or simply the pleasure of travel itself. From our earliest ancestral beginnings, humans have moved from place to place, sometimes on a seasonal basis and sometimes permanently. The earliest hominins migrated within and out of Africa, settling parts of Europe, Asia, and eventually Australia, adapting to their new environments and diversifying biologically as a species. The last major continental settlement was North and South America. Archaeological evidence shows early human occupations in the Americas as early as 20,000 years before present. These humans may have arrived by several possible routes, including across the Bering land bridge and along the Pacific coastline of North and South America. Historically, global forces have also contributed to migration, including seafaring explorations, colonialism, and the transatlantic slave trade that led to a diaspora (dispersal) of millions of African peoples into the Western Hemisphere. Today, many of these historical forces continue to impact our lives as migrants seek opportunities and better, safer lives. Finance, media, and ideologies increasingly entangle the global world today. Anthropological research has shown the reach of globalization into small communities where peasants and Indigenous peoples, once mistakenly thought to be simple rural farmers or subsistence producers, negotiate the market value of their labor and products, sometimes against large countries or corporations and often facing unfairness and injustice. This disparity typically leads to internal migration from rural areas into urban zones. As with any form of migration, culture change and adaptation have always been a part of the migrant experience. Because of emerging global forces of all kinds, there has been a rise in voluntary and involuntary migration within geographical regions and across countries, leading to inequality along the margins. Contemporary migrations include labor migration, forced migration or displacement, forced labor, human trafficking or modern slavery, and environmental migration, typically caused by global climate change. There are numerous well-trod migrant routes worldwide connecting countries in both formal and informal ways. One of the most violent routes is the Central American route, which connects South America, Central America, and Mexico to the United States. Refugees are among those in greatest need of humanitarian aid today. People and goods are not the only things that migrate. Along with human migration, there are secondary movements that can affect the human population globally. Diseases move along with people. Historically, there have been many epidemics within populations and pandemics across regions and countries. In 2019, COVID-19 began migrating globally, eventually affecting every country and causing deaths, chronic illnesses, and economic devastation. As our world becomes increasingly interdependent, it is critical that we understand the important role of migration in so many aspects of our survival. Critical Thinking Questions Migration Interviews For this fieldwork activity, you will compile three ethnographic accounts of migration. Choose three diverse research participants/key informants to interview about their personal histories of moving, as a child and/or an adult, from one home location to another. Some may have moved from one country to another, from one city to another, or even from one house or family to another. 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Ramsay, Georgina. 2016. “Avoiding Poison: Congolese Refugees Seeking Cosmological Continuity in Urban Asylum.” Social Analysis 60 (3): 112–128. Ramya, Tame. 2017. “From Hills to Foothills: An Anthropological Perspective on Internal Migration of Tribals in Arunachal Pradesh.” Indian Journal of Research in Anthropology 3 (1): 21–27. Redfield, Robert. 1956. Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Skinner, Arran. 2019. “On Not Looking Away.” Nation , July 16, 2019. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/oscar-alberto-martinez-photograph/. Snipes, Marjorie M. 1996. “When the Other Speaks: Animals and Place as Social Space in the Argentine Andes.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison. ProQuest (AAT 9636601). Snipes, Shedra A., Beti Thompson, Kathleen O’Connor, Ruby Godina, and Genoveva Ibarra. 2007. “Anthropological and Psychological Merge: Design of a Stress Measure for Mexican Farmworkers.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 31 (3): 359–388. Snow, Anita. 2021. “Arizona Border Deaths Hit 10-Year High after Record Heat.” AP News. January 6, 2021. https://apnews.com/article/arizona-phoenix-mexico-immigration-tucson-50b462c927f2824e2cb10bc53f3f08af. Tarlach, Gemma. 2018. “The Peopling of the Americas: Evidence for Multiple Models.” Discover , August 8, 2018. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-peopling-of-the-americas-evidence-for-multiple-models. Taylor, Derrick Bryson. 2021. “A Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” New York Times , January 10, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-timeline.html. US Customs and Border Protection. 2020. “Southwest Border Migration FY 2020.” November 19, 2020. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration-fy2020. UNHCR. 2019. “UNHCR Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018.” ReliefWeb. June 19, 2019. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/unhcr-global-trends-forced-displacement-2018-0. UNHCR. 2020. “Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2019.” June 2020. https://www.unhcr.org/flagship-reports/globaltrends/globaltrends2019/. Vågene, Åshild J., Alexander Herbig, Michael G. Campana, Nelly M. Robles García, Christina Warinner, Susanna Sabin, Maria A. Spyrou, Aida Andrades Valtueña, Daniel Huson, Noreen Tuross, Kirsten I. Bos, and Johannes Krause. 2018. “ Salmonella enterica Genomes from Victims of a Major Sixteenth-Century Epidemic in Mexico.” Nature Ecology and Evolution 2 (3): 520–528. Virtanen, Pirjo Kristiina. 2006. “The Urban Manchinery Youth and Social Capital in Western Amazonian Contemporary Rituals.” Anthropos 101 (1): 159–167. Werbner, Pnina. 2001. “The Limits of Cultural Hybridity: On Ritual Monsters, Poetic Licence and Contested Postcolonial Purifications.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7 (1): 133–152. Wilford, John Noble. 2007. “Ruins in Northern Syria Bear the Scars of a City’s Final Battle.” New York Times , January 16, 2007. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/science/16batt.html. Woldeab, Rafael. 2019. “Why Do People Migrate? The 4 Most Common Types of Migration.” PopEd Blog , Population Education. October 30, 2019. https://populationeducation.org/why-do-people-migrate-the-4-most-common-types-of-migration/. Wolf, Eric. 1966. Peasants . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Wooller Matthew J., Émilie Saulnier-Talbot, Ben A. Potter, Soumaya Belmecheri, Nancy Bigelow, Kyungcheol Choy, Les C. Cwynar, Kimberley Davies, Russell W. Graham, Joshua Kurek, Peter Langdon, Andrew Medeiros, Ruth Rawcliffe, Yue Wang, and Williams John W. 2018. “A New Terrestrial Palaeoenvironmental Record from the Bering Land Bridge and Context for Human Dispersal.” Royal Society Open Science 5 (6). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.180145. asylum legal protection extended by one country to citizens of another. chain migration the process of sequential migration from the same community of origin. circular migration repeated pattern of movement between locations, usually associated with work. displacement migration due to persecution, conflict, or violence; involves refugees and those seeking asylum. environmental migration displacement caused by natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or droughts. epidemic a disease that spreads more than expected among a given group of people. forced labor the recruitment, transportation, transfer, and/or harboring of persons by means of threat or use of force or coercion for the purpose of financial exploitation. forced migration migration due to persecution, conflict, or violence; involves refugees and those seeking asylum. human trafficking the recruitment, transportation, transfer, and/or harboring of persons by means of threat or use of force or coercion for the purpose of exploitation. A form of modern slavery. labor migration the movement of people for the purpose of employment and/or economic stability. modern slavery the recruitment, transportation, transfer, and/or harboring of persons by means of threat or use of force or coercion for the purpose of exploitation. pandemic an outbreak of a disease over a broad area. remittances transfers of money from workers back to their home countries, usually for their families.

Social Sciences


Introduction Anthropologists study kinship to understand the various ways that societies are structured. Here, Ben Schmidt poses with his family in Cordell, Oklahoma. (credit: “Ben Schmidt family, Cordell, Oklahoma” by Mennonite Church USA Archives/flickr, Public Domain) Whom do you consider part of your family? How many mothers do you have? Could you or would you marry your cousin? Each of these questions asks us to consider how our societies structure kinship. Families reflect the social and cultural contexts in which they are formed. Through the study of kinship within our own and other societies, we better understand such things as the connections that individuals have across generations; how a cultural group manages procreation and childcare; the ways that material assets, power, and influence are inherited; and the choices an individual has for marriage.

Social Sciences


What Is Kinship? Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Identify kinship and explain how it is a sociocultural construction. Identify the importance of kinship in anthropology. Restate the important early works in the anthropological study of kinship. Distinguish between terms of reference and terms of address. Social scientists commonly refer to social norms and behaviors—for example, as explored in Chapter 1, the ways that individuals are assigned to racial categories and what these categories mean about an individual’s place within that society—as sociocultural constructions . Such norms and behaviors create categories and rules according to social criteria (not biological truths) and thus vary across cultures. Kinship is also a sociocultural construction, one that creates a network of social and biological relationships between individuals. Through kinship systems, humans create meaning by interpreting social and biological relationships. Although kinship, like gender and age, is a universal concept in human societies (meaning that all societies have some means of defining kinship), the specific “rules” about who is related, and how closely, vary widely. Depending on the way kinship is determined, two individuals who would call each other cousins in one cultural group may not even consider themselves to be related in another group. The common assumptions that kinship is static and created by biological relationships reveal the strength of sociocultural constructs in our lives. It is culture—not biology—that defines for us whom our closest relatives are. Biology relies on genetics, but kinship is determined by culture. One interesting and very familiar example of the sociocultural dimension of kinship is the practice of adoption, through which those who have no necessary genetic relationship to one another are considered both legally and culturally to be family. Biological relatedness is determined at the genetic level. This form of knowledge is detected through specialized DNA testing and typically has little meaning in our day-to-day lives except within legal and economic contexts where paternity or maternity may be in question. Otherwise, across history and cultures, including within our own society today, family are those we live with, rely on, and love. These individuals, whether or not they have a specific genetic relationship to us, are those we refer to using family terms of reference—my mother, my son, my aunt. The study of kinship is central to anthropology. It provides deep insights into human relationships and alliances, including those who can and cannot marry, mechanisms that are used to create families, and even the ways social and economic resources are dispersed within a group. One of the earliest studies of kinship was completed by Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), an amateur American anthropologist, in the mid-nineteenth century. Intrigued by the cultural diversity of the Haudenosaunee living in upstate New York, Morgan began to document differences in kinship terminology between cultural groups, based on historical accounts and surveys from missionaries working in other geographic locations. In Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871), he defined three of the primary kinship systems that we still recognize today, identifying each with either descriptive kinship terms, such as “mother’s sister’s son,” or classificatory terms, which group diverse relationships under a single term, such as “cousin.” Although Morgan used different names, today we know these three systems as lineal kinship, bifurcate merging kinship, and generational kinship. The publication of his book marked the beginning of kinship studies in anthropology. (left) Lewis Henry Morgan described the diversity of kinship structures and terms across cultures. (right) Bronislaw Malinowski researched the ways that kinship functions as a social institution. (credit: (left) “Lewis Henry Morgan” by Kelson/Rochester Historical Society/Wikimedia Commons, CC-PD-Mark (right) credit: “Bronislaw Malinowski” by Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) After Morgan’s research, anthropologists began a more methodical examination of kinship. W.H.R. Rivers (1864–1922) introduced the genealogical method in fieldwork in a 1910 article, “The Genealogical Method in Anthropological Query.” Using a series of basic questions about parents, grandparents, and siblings, Rivers approached the study of kinship as a systematic inquiry into the social structure of societies, seeking to understand how different cultures define family and family roles. Although he focused on small-scale societies, he argued that investigating kinship was a good way of establishing rapport with people and opening them up to sharing more detailed information about their lives regardless of the size of the society. Today, ethnographers continue to use a form of the genealogical method, through either face-to-face interviews or surveys, especially when doing fieldwork in small-scale societies. In this way, the ethnographer seeks to understand the sociocultural relationships in society and the ways that family affects those relationships. In the 1920s, British anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955) expanded the understanding of kinship as a social institution by studying the ways that kinship intersected with other institutions in society, such as inheritance, education, politics, and subsistence. Malinowski did fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea, a matrilineal society where descent and inheritance were traced solely through mothers and grandmothers. In his work Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), he examined the functional role of kinship in Trobriand society, exploring how it works with other social institutions to address basic needs. Expanding kinship exploration beyond its early beginnings as a study of linguistic terminology only, Malinowski (1930, 19-20) says, “Kinship terminologies . . . are the most active and the most effective expressions of human relationship, expressions which start in early childhood, which accompany human intercourse throughout life, which embody all the most personal, passionate, and intimate sentiments of a man or woman.” He saw kinship as a driving force connecting individuals to each other by means of enduring bonds. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown also focused on kinship as a social institution in his study The Andaman Islanders (1922), but instead of looking at the function of kinship, Radcliffe-Brown examined the roles and statuses created for an individual by the practice of kinship. Through these early studies in kinship, anthropologists began to better understand the diverse ways that cultural groups think about things like family and community. Kinship relationships determine both rights and obligations to other people. These connections contribute to the way a society functions and resolve problems associated with everyday life. In small-scale societies with low population density, kinship identity plays a significant role in most of the life choices an individual will have, while in larger-scale societies, kinship plays a smaller and more limited role. In all societies, however, kinship provides guidelines on how to interact with certain other individuals and the expectations that are associated with these relationships. Cultures call attention to kinship relationships through the way people speak to and refer to one another. Anthropologists sort this kinship terminology into two categories: terms of reference and terms of address . Terms of reference are the words that are used to describe the relationship between individuals, such as “mother,” “grandfather,” or “father’s brother.” Terms of address are the terms people use to speak directly to their kin, such as “Mom,” “Uncle,” and “Grandpa.” Sometimes the same word is used as reference and address: “This is my father” and “Hello, Father.” These terms are important because they designate relationships between individuals that carry responsibilities and privileges that structure human societies. consanguineal tie a biological (bloodline) connection between individuals that is indicated by a single line on a kinship chart; it is considered to be a permanent tie that cannot be broken. kindred the sum of kinship relationships that is defined through EGO. kinship a web of relationships in which people consider themselves related to each other in a social and biological way. sociocultural construction a concept that is defined according to social criteria (not biological) and varies across cultures. terms of address the terms (words) we use to speak directly to our kin. terms of reference the terms (words) that are used to refer to our kin.

Social Sciences


Defining Family and Household Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define and contrast family and household. Describe how families differ across cultures. Differentiate between consanguineal and affinal ties. Distinguish between different family types. Understand the roles of fictive kin. A family can be defined as two or more people in an adaptable social and economic alliance that involves kinship, whether perceived through blood, marriage, or other permanent or semipermanent arrangement. It frequently, but not always, involves reproduction and the care of offspring and coresidence within the same locale. Families vary greatly across cultures and also adapt to changing social and economic needs. Sometimes families aggregate into larger units for short periods to meet challenging needs, such as eldercare, illness, job loss, transition between college and career, etc. A household is a group of individuals who live within the same residence and share socioeconomic needs associated with production and consumption. A family and a household may be the same unit, but they do not have to be. Sometimes families live within larger households, where there may be two or more families residing; at other times a family may be physically separated as family members migrate to work or study temporarily in other locations. Like the concept of kinship, family is a sociocultural construct. Family is defined and recognized differently across cultures according to differing social norms. Some cultures consider families to be only those people believed to be related to each other, living together, and sharing similar goals, while other cultures define family as a disperse set of individuals with an ancestral history. The definition of family that a cultural group endorses reflects such things as kinship and the social interpretation of biology, cultural traditions and norms, and socioemotional ties. It is commonly scaled from the intimate unit in which children are raised to a larger, more amorphous web of relatives. Many Western societies perceive family to be a nuclear family of parents and their immediate offspring living together in a household. The extended family, on the other hand, is a loose collection of relatives with varying degrees of perceived kinship, from those referred to as blood relatives ( consanguine ) to those who have married into the family ( affine ). Among the Mundurucú in the lowland Amazonia of Brazil, the resident family includes only the mother and her preadolescent offspring, while the father resides in the tribal men’s house. Among the Mosuo of China (also called the Na), women form sexual alliances with men from outside of their families to produce offspring, and then remain with their brothers in their own households to raise their children. The children are considered to be part of the women’s lineage unit and family. The Mosuo of China do not formally recognize a separate fatherhood role. Mosuo girls (left) and Mosuo boys (right) remain with their mother and her extended family, and fathers have no social or economic obligations for their biological offspring, though they often have significant responsibility for their nieces and nephews. (credit: “P8310032” and “P8310036” by Sherry Zhang/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Reading and Using Kinship Charts Anthropologists graphically illustrate relationships between family members with kinship charts (also called kinship diagrams). Anyone who has ever used an online genealogy program like Ancestry.com is already familiar with the ways that family relationships can be depicted. Anthropological charts use EGO as their starting point. The term EGO identifies the person whose chart is depicted. EGO marks the starting point for the kinship chart, and relationships are read as alignments between EGO and other individuals. The sum of kinship relationships identified through EGO is referred to as EGO’s kindred . Serving as a map and model, the kinship chart can be “read” like a text, with its own syntax and grammar identifying each individual within a society by means of their relatedness to each other. Kinship charts depict two types of relationships, consanguineal and affinal. A consanguineal tie between individuals indicates a perceived biological connection (a connection “by blood”) and is indicated by a single line, regardless of whether it is drawn vertically or horizontally. A consanguineal tie is most often considered to be permanent. An affinal tie depicts a contractual relationship by marriage or mutual agreement and is drawn as a double line. Such ties usually can be broken, and if they are, a forward slash will be struck through the double line. There is also a hashed line (----) used for relationships that do not conform completely to type (e.g., to indicate adoption or an honorary family member). Hashed double lines are used to distinguish between a formal marriage and a relationship of cohabitation. The following is the most basic legend of the kinship chart: An anthropological kinship legend. The iconography of kinship denotes such things as gender, relationships of marriage and descent, and individual terms of reference. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Kinship charts can be read both vertically and horizontally. Individuals who share the same horizontal line are considered to be in the same cohort or generation, and individuals above and below EGO are in relationships of descent , meaning they are believed to be connected by blood or enduring kinship bond across generations. Anthropologists use common abbreviations to depict kinship relations across cultures, allowing us to compare families: father (FA), mother (MO), brother (BR), sister (SI or Z), aunt (AU), uncle (UN), son (SO), daughter (DA), and then compound terms, such as mother’s or father’s brother (MoBr, FaBr) or mother’s or father’s sister (MoSi, FaSi). Grandparents are usually designated as GrFa and GrMo. depicts a kinship chart utilizing standard icons and abbreviations. Within this chart, EGO is depicted as a part of two different families: the family of orientation , which is the nuclear family unit in which EGO was reared and nurtured as a child and adolescent, and the family of procreation , which is the family that EGO creates, usually as a result of marriage. Test yourself and see if you can read it. This generic kinship chart shows three generations, with a family of orientation. (credit: “Eskimo Kinship Chart” by Fred the Oyster/Wikimedia Commons, CC0) As you can see in , EGO has multiple ties and embeddedness within the kinship network, leading to a complex web of rights and obligations. These concurrent ties with more than one family involve descent rules (how an individual traces relatedness across generations), residence rules (where an individual will live following marriage), and in some societies, even remarriage rules (how marriage will be reinstated following the death of a spouse). Each of these will be discussed later in the chapter. Family Types across Cultures Although family is difficult to categorize because of its diversity, anthropologists have defined four basic family types that are duplicated across cultures with minor variations. Each of these types is adapted to the social and economic needs of the family unit and is normally associated with particular subsistence strategies. Some families change to address immediate needs, such as when elderly parents can no longer live on their own independently. Regardless of its type, the family unit is a remarkably adaptive cultural mechanism. Nuclear families : Also known as a single-couple family, a nuclear family is composed of one or two parents and their immediate offspring. It is the smallest family structure and is often found in societies where geographic mobility is valued. The nuclear family is common in small-scale foraging societies (bands) and industrial/postindustrial and market societies (states), both settings in which subsistence activities require families to relocate with some regularity. Although the model of the American nuclear family consisting of a two-parent household with one or more children has become less typical over the last several generations, it continues to be a norm. As of the 2016 census, 69 percent of US children under the age of 18 were living in a two-parent household, a decrease from 88 percent in 1960. There are, however, other kinds of nuclear families. In the 2016 US census, 23 percent of children under 18 were living in a female single-headed household (mother), almost triple the number living in female single households in 1960 (8 percent). There was also an increase in children under 18 living in male single households (father), from 1 percent in 1960 to 4 percent in 2016 (United States Census Bureau 2016; Kramer 2019). Another growing nuclear family type is same-sex families. These may or may not include children. In the 2020 census, 14.7 percent of the 1.1 million same-sex couples in the United States had at least one child under 18 in their household ( United States Census Bureau 2020 ). In cases where the alliance between adults is temporary or informal, these families may be nonconjugal nuclear families or cohabitation families. (Note: The above terminology related to sex, gender, and family relationships is consistent with US Census data collection and reporting terminology, and may not reflect the terminology used by readers.) Extended families: The extended family can be very complex. It includes two or more family units functioning as a single integrated family. It may involve three or more generations (e.g., grandparents, parents, and children), polygamous families with multiple spouses and their offspring, or married siblings living together with their children, a type of extended family known as joint families . The extended family can be an effective social and economic unit because it involves multiple adults able to contribute to the household. Extended families have been most commonly associated with agricultural societies, where a high value is typically placed on labor and self-subsistence. In the United States today, we commonly see the emergence of the extended family during times of transition, such as when family members are changing jobs, returning to school, or recovering from economic hardship. Worldwide, the extended family is the most common type of family. An extended family in Pretoria, South Africa, including several generations. A family functions as a combined socioeconomic unit, where family members cooperate and support each other within the same household. (credit: Henry M. Trotter/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) Blended families : Blended families are families in which there is more than one origin point for the members. This typically occurs when one or more divorced and/or widowed adults with children remarry, combining two formerly independent units into a new blended family. Blended families are common in the United States and in societies in which we find serial monogamy. Although the US census does not collect data specifically on stepfamilies, in 2009 Pew Research estimated that 16 percent of all American children lived in blended families. Fictive Kinship Some families also include fictive kin , a kinship tie in which individuals are defined as family regardless of biology. Fictive kinship is based on intentional relationships such as godparenthood or other close social ties. One form of voluntary fictional kinship is a type of godparent relationship called compadrazgo . Originally developed as a social institution within the Catholic Church, the godparents of a Catholic child are named during the ritual of baptism when the child is an infant. These godparents are selected by the child’s parents as role models to encourage their child in religious instruction and living a “godly” life. Godparents are most frequently chosen from among the child’s relatives, thus reinforcing kinship ties . Although godparenthood is not formally practiced in every society, families in all societies do cultivate non-blood relationships and close friendships. The Spanish and Portuguese empires introduced godparenthood into Latin America following the 16th-century conquest. The institution was adapted to meet the particular needs of populations suffering from disease, warfare, and mass casualties. These social disruptions often left children without parents who were able to adequately take care of them. In such a setting, children’s godparents shifted from being chosen from among relatives to being selected from friends and acquaintances. This use of fictive kin relationships served as an extension of family for a child and created new kinship ties between families not previously related. It created a contract (Foster 1961) between the godparents (who referred to the child as ahijado / a ), the child (who referred to their godparents as padrino and madrina ), and the parents (who, along with the godparents, referred to each other as compadre and comadre ), which provided an ever-widening social network. Godparenthood (called compadrazgo in Spanish-speaking societies) is a formal designation and acknowledgement of fictive kin. It is commonly associated with Catholic Church rituals such as baptism. Here, an infant is photographed with baptismal godparents. (credit: “Godparents and Chris” by Brian Smith/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Over time, the practice of compadrazgo adapted to the specific needs of this new cultural setting. A symmetrical form developed in which parents choose friends and coworkers of their same socioeconomic status to serve as godparents for their children. An asymmetrical form also developed, in which parents contract with individuals or couples who are in a higher class or status group to provide opportunities for their child. This form functions very similarly to a social security system. Many members of the upper classes see it as their Christian duty to sponsor a large number of godchildren within their communities or workplaces. In addition, compadrazgo extends beyond religious rituals into secular society, including the practice of naming compadres for such things as a child’s first haircut or the purchase of a new house. In smaller communities, compadrazgo is even practiced as the ritual sponsorship of community buildings or initiatives. In 1980 in Ica, Peru, the installation of a new water tower included the designation of compadres. Those serving as compadres enjoy an enhancement of social status in Latin America. Over a lifetime, individuals typically have a series of new and expanding compadrazgo relationships. People gain new compadres through life changes such as marriage, the birth of children, and sometimes even the acquisition of expensive material items. While these relationships may change over time—for example, when a child has become an adult, the birth compadres may no longer send gifts or offer advice—the relationships themselves endure as (fictive) family connections. The respect and acknowledgement of these relationships remains important to all the individuals involved in the compadrazgo family. Adoption Adoption of children is widespread across cultures, sometimes constituted legally, but more often through informal structures of support and sponsorship. There were an estimated 1.5 million adopted children under 18 in the United States in 2019, about 1 out of every 50 children, and adoption is increasing, especially among same-sex couples. In 2019, 43.3 percent of children of same-sex couples were adopted or stepchildren. Across cultures, informal adoption and foster care have long been practiced to strengthen families and provide opportunities for young people. Anthropological studies in West Africa, Oceania, Latin America, and in minority communities in North America document the prevalence of these practices, as well as their benefits and risks. In general, cultures that see social relationships as open and fluid are able to provide a greater range of opportunities to children. One common form of informal adoption relocates children from rural birth families to relatives living in urban areas, where they have more opportunities for education, employment, and career training. Sometimes informal fostering helps to provide caretaking for shorter periods of time. A family may send an older child to temporarily live with a relative or even a friend who has a new infant or is facing a family crisis. These relationships may be mutually beneficial, allowing older children to meet new people and develop a wider network of friends and relatives. Historically, adoptive ties have played a major role in family security and in creating stronger social ties between families, some of which may provide future educational, work, and career opportunities. affinal tie a contractual relationship by marriage or mutual agreement that is depicted as a double line on the kinship chart. blended families a family in which there is more than one origin family for the members. compadrazgo a form of godparent relationship introduced originally as a social institution within the Catholic Church and later adapted as popular Catholicism in Latin America in which godparents are named for a Catholic child or young person during rituals such as baptism, confirmation, and marriage. descent individuals who are believed to be connected by blood or who have an enduring kinship bond across generations. EGO the starting point for the kinship chart; used to read relationships as alignments between EGO and other individuals. extended family two or more family units functioning as a single integrated family; may involve two or more generations. family two or more people in an adaptable social and economic alliance that involves kinship, whether perceived through blood, marriage, or other permanent or semipermanent arrangement. family of orientation the family unit in which EGO was raised and nurtured as a child and adolescent. family of procreation the family that EGO produces, usually as a result of marriage. fictive kin a kinship tie that is socially interpreted to be by blood or marriage and that is based on intentional relationships, such as adoption, godparenthood, or intimate personal ties. household a group of individuals who live within the same residence and share socioeconomic needs associated with production and consumption. nuclear family a family composed of two parents and their immediate offspring.

Social Sciences


Reckoning Kinship across Cultures Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe the importance of kinship in social structure. Distinguish between different kinship systems. Illustrate three forms of kinship. By defining relationships between individuals, cultural understandings of kinship create kinship systems or structures within society. This is the institutional aspect of kinship, and it is bigger than the family itself. In smaller societies with lower populations, kinship plays a major role in all social institutions. In larger societies with higher populations, kinship places the local and familiar in opposition to a wider, more amorphous society, where relationships have less and less significance. In effect, kinship frames the way the individual and family are viewed in relation to the larger society and embodies social values. Types of Kinship Systems In his early research, Lewis Henry Morgan distinguished three basic forms of kinship structure commonly found across cultures. Today, we refer to these kinship forms as lineal, bifurcate merging, and generational kinship. Each one defines family and relatives a bit differently and so highlights different roles, rights, and responsibilities for these individuals. This means that depending on the kinship structure used by a society, EGO will refer to a different set of individuals as kindred and will have a different relationship with those individuals. Lineal kinship: Lineal kinship (initially referred to as Eskimo kinship ) is a form of kinship reckoning (a way of mapping EGO to other individuals) that highlights the nuclear family. While kindred in a lineal system is traced through both EGO’s mother and father (a practice called bilateral descent), the kinship terminology clearly shows that the rights and responsibilities of the nuclear family far exceed those of other kindred. In effect, lineal kinship, associated frequently with North American and European societies, suggests a very small and nominal family with little power and influence across other social institutions. A lineal kinship diagram. Note the distinction of the nuclear family. (credit: “Eskimo Kinship Chart” by Fred the Oyster/Wikimedia Commons, CC0) On the lineal diagram ( ), note the following: each of the members of the nuclear family have specific kinship terms, but bilateral kin (through both EGO’s mother and father) and collateral kin (EGO’s siblings and their offspring) are lumped together with similar terms. These relationships are not highlighted by individualized terms because there are minimal rights and responsibilities between EGO and kin outside of the nuclear family of orientation and procreation. Bifurcate merging kinship: Bifurcate merging kinship (initially referred to as Iroquois kinship ) highlights a larger family of orientation for EGO by merging EGO’s parents’ same-sex siblings and their offspring into the immediate family (creating parallel cousins) and bifurcating, or cutting off, EGO’s parents’ opposite-sex siblings and their offspring (creating cross cousins). depicts bifurcate merging kinship with unilineal descent (either patrilineal or matrilineal). This means that once descent is introduced into the diagram, EGO’s relationships, with associated rights and responsibilities, will shift toward either the mother’s or father’s side. This form of kinship reckoning, quite common to tribal societies, is found extensively, and it creates a distinction between the family of orientation, which is merged together from various lines, and other relatives, who are bifurcated, or cut away. A bifurcate merging kinship diagram. Note the distinction between parallel and cross cousins. (credit: “Iroquois Kinship Chart” by Fred the Oyster/Wikimedia Commons, CC0) On the bifurcate merging diagram ( ), note that the members of the family of orientation share kinship terms that indicate a close intimacy with EGO. As an example, while EGO knows who his biological mother is (the woman who gave birth to him), his relationship with his biological mother has the same rights and responsibilities as his relationship with his mother’s sister(s), etc. Notice also that the category of individuals lumped together as “cousins” under the lineal diagram are here distinguished depending on EGO’s relationship with their parent. EGO’s mother’s sisters are called “mother” and his father’s brothers are called “father,” which means that any of their offspring would be EGO’s brothers or sisters. Notice, though, that the mothers and fathers highlighted outside of EGO’s biological parents are married to non-kin members; EGO does not refer to his mother’s sister’s husband as father—he is referred to as “mother’s husband.” Mother’s brothers and father’s sisters produce offspring who are bifurcated and lumped as “cousin.” Anthropologists distinguish between parallel cousins (EGO’s brothers and sisters through his parents’ same-sex siblings) and cross cousins (EGO’s cousins through his parents’ opposite-sex siblings). In many tribal societies, EGO would choose his (or her) marriage partner from among his (or her) cross cousins, thereby merging their children back into a primary kinship line. In this way, the family unit (the kindred) maintains a stable and significant presence across generations. Generational kinship: Generational kinship (initially referred to as Hawaiian kinship ) presents a very different case. Widespread in Polynesia, especially during the times of chiefdom societies, generational kinship provides a distinction in kinship terms only along gender and generational lines. Generational kinship has the least complicated kinship terminology of all kinship systems, but the impact of creating a family of orientation this large and powerful is immediately apparent. In reading this chart, it is obvious that the intimate family was as large as could be configured and it would have significant sociopolitical impact within the society. A generational kinship chart. Note the family of orientation, which is now at its maximal size. This graphically indicates the important role family has in all aspects of EGO’s life. (credit: “Hawaiian Kinship Chart” by Fred the Oyster/Wikimedia Commons, CC0) Descent Kinship structure is highly diverse, and there are many different ways to think about it. Descent is the way that families trace their kinship connections and social obligations to each other between generations of ancestors and generations to come. It is a primary factor in the delineation of kinship structures. Through descent, the individual highlights certain particular relationships with kindred and drops or leaves off other possible relationships. Descent ultimately determines such things as inheritance, alliance, and marriage rules. There are two common ways that a cultural group can trace descent across generations: Unilineal descent: Unilineal descent traces an individual’s kinship through a single gendered line, either male or female, as a collective social rule for all families within a society. The patrilineal or matrilineal relatives that connect to and from EGO form EGO’s lineage . This lineage is believed to be a continuous line of descent from an original ancestor. Lineages believed to be close in relationship are gathered into clans , a tribal social division denoting a group of lineages that have a presumed and symbolic kinship, and eventually into moieties (the social division of a tribe into two halves). In patrilineal (or agnatic) descent , the descent of both males and females is traced solely through male ancestors. Females hold the patrilineal descent of their fathers, and males pass on the descent through their children. A chart illustrating patrilineal descent across several generations. Note that all offspring individuals marked in blue are part of their father’s descent, but descent only passes through males. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) In matrilineal (or uterine) descent , the descent of both males and females is traced solely through female ancestors. Males hold the matrilineal descent of their mothers, and females pass on the descent through their children. Cognatic descent: Cognatic descent is a kinship structure that follows descent through both men and women, although it may vary by family. In ambilineal descent , an individual’s kinship is traced through a single gendered line, with each family choosing either the mother’s or the father’s descent line; in societies practicing this type of cognatic descent, some families will trace descent through the mother and others through the father. Usually families will choose their descent type at marriage based on the different opportunities presented by either the mother’s or father’s family, and they will use this for each of their children. While societies practicing ambilineal descent might initially look like those of unilineal descent, they are different. Within these societies, families are diverse and do not follow a single type of descent reckoning. In bilateral descent (also referred to as bilineal descent), an individual’s kinship is traced through both mother’s and father’s lines. This is the most common form of descent practiced in the United States today. A chart illustrating bilateral descent across several generations. Note that all offspring trace their lineage through both mother and father. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Why does descent matter? It structures the way the family will be formed (who counts most in decision-making). It determines the choices individuals have in forming their own families. And it directs how material and symbolic resources (such as power and influence) will be dispersed across a group of people. As the example in the next section shows, descent affects the whole structure of society. A Matrilineal Society in the United States The Navajo are among the most populous of the Indigenous peoples in the United States, exceeding 325,000 members. Roughly half live in the Navajo Nation. Covering some 27,000 square miles, the Navajo Nation is an autonomous jurisdiction that crosses New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Traditionally a matrilineal society, the Navajo trace descent and inheritance through their mothers and grandmothers. Such a descent pattern would normally lead to the establishment of matrilocal households, with daughters bringing their husbands to live with or near their matrilineal kin following marriage. In his study of the contemporary Shonto Navajo, however, William Yewdale Adams (1983), an anthropologist who spent part of his childhood living on the Navajo reservation, found that this wasn’t always the case. While matrilocal residence remained the ideal for Navajo families, it was not followed any more frequently than patrilocal residence (living with or near the groom’s father). Neolocal residence (a separate, independent household) was also practiced across the Navajo Nation. While the ideal Navajo family type endured as part of their identity, the actual everyday practices of families depended on their particular circumstances and might change over the course of their lives. When job opportunities and economic choices necessitated that families live in different areas, they adapted. When families became large and less manageable as a socioeconomic unit, they might splinter into smaller units, some into nuclear families living alone. However, during major life events, such as marriage and childbirth, it is the matrilineal family that will most support the couple by providing resources and any needed labor and help. Matrilineal descent also elevates the role of women in society, not by excluding men, but by recognizing the vital roles that women play in the establishment of both family and society. A contemporary Navajo family (credit: “IMG_1123” by Neeta Lind/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Traditionally, the Navajo constructed houses (called hogans) of timber or stone frames covered with earth (Haile 1942). There are multiple types of hogans, including a male hogan, which is conically shaped and used for more private rituals, and a female hogan , which is circular and large enough to accommodate the whole family. Although today most Navajo live in Western-style homes with electricity and running water, many families still construct one or more hogans for ritual and ceremony. For families that continue traditional Navajo ceremonies, the most common hogan form today is the female hogan. As Adams aptly argues, the Navajo are very much like other societies in regard to kinship—while it defines an ideal within Navajo society, its primary function is to provide “possibilities and boundaries” around which individuals will construct kinship (1983, 412). It adapts to the changing environment and the needs of family. Louise Lamphere 1940- Personal History : Louise Lamphere is a professor emerita of the University of New Mexico, where she held the honorary post of Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. Her scholarly career in anthropology began with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University and a PhD in anthropology from Harvard University. Area of Anthropology : Lamphere’s research in cultural anthropology extends over many areas of the discipline, including gender and feminist anthropology, kinship, social inequality, and medical practices and reform in the United States and across cultures. She has worked extensively with indigenous peoples, including the Navajo, and in urban contexts. She seeks to understand the intersections between sociocultural institutions and individuals. A recent focus is social and economic changes emerging from the deindustrialization of nation-states. Her work has had wide-ranging impact on generations of anthropology students and scholars. Accomplishments in the Field : Lamphere’s research contributions are extensive (and continue). She served as the president of the American Anthropological Association from 1999 to 2001, leading the organization toward public support of policies focused on current themes such as poverty and welfare reform in the United States (see this letter from Lamphere ). She has received numerous awards and commendations for her research and service. In 2013 she was awarded the Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association. This award, which is presented annually, recognizes extraordinary achievements that have served the anthropological profession and the greater community by applying anthropological knowledge to improve lives. In 2017 Lamphere was awarded the Bronislaw Malinowski Award by the Society for Applied Anthropology in recognition of her use of social science to solve the problems of human communities today. Lamphere’s research interests have been important in addressing current needs of human societies, including gender inequalities, socioeconomic challenges, and issues of migration and adaptation. She has also worked to address inequalities and discrimination in her own life. In 1968 she was hired as an assistant professor at Brown University, where she was the only woman on the anthropology faculty. She was denied tenure in 1974, with the university claiming that her scholarship was “weak.” Together with other two other female faculty, Lamphere put forth a case accusing the university of widespread sexual discrimination. In September 1977, then Brown University president Howard Swearer entered into a historic consent decree to ensure that women were more fully represented at the institution and agreed to an affirmative action monitoring committee. This was a landmark settlement for female anthropologists everywhere. For more on the case, see “ Louise Lamphere v. Brown University .” On May 24, 2015, Brown University awarded Dr. Louise Lamphere an honorary doctorate for her courage in standing up for equity and fairness for all. ambilineal descent tracing an individual’s kinship through a single gendered line, with each family choosing either the mother’s or father’s descent line. bifurcate merging kinship a broader chart of EGO family relation that connects kinships by merging EGO’s parents’ same-sex siblings and their offspring into the immediate family (creating parallel cousins) and bifurcating, or cutting off, EGO’s parents’ opposite-sex siblings and their offspring (creating cross cousins); also called Iroquois kinship . bilateral descent tracing an individual’s kinship through both the mother’s and father’s lines. clans a tribal social division in which a group of lineages have a presumed and symbolic kinship. cognatic descent a kinship structure that follows descent through both men and women, although it may vary by family. collateral kin EGO’s siblings and their offspring. cross cousin EGO’s cousins through their parents’ opposite-sex siblings. generational kinship a kinship system in which the terms of reference are for gender and generation only, creating large units of immediate family; also called Hawaiian kinship . lineage a continuous line of descent from an original ancestor. lineal kinship a form of kinship reckoning that highlights the creation of a nuclear family; also called Eskimo kinship . matrilineal (uterine) descent the descent of both males and females traced solely through the female ancestors. moieties the social division of a tribe into two halves. parallel cousin EGO’s brothers and sisters through their parents’ same-sex siblings. patrilineal (agnatic) descent the descent of both males and females traced solely through male ancestors. unilineal descent tracing an individual’s kinship through a single gendered line, either male or female, as a collective social rule for all families within a society.

Social Sciences