Anthropology › Section K · Kinship and family › Topic K.3
Reckoning kinship and descent across cultures
Societies differ in how they name relatives and in which ancestors define a person's group. Those two choices, kinship terminology and descent, decide whom people call brother, whom they may marry, and who inherits land, names and titles.
In this topic
- Two questions of reckoning
- Lineal terminology
- Bifurcate merging terminology
- Generational and other systems
- Worked example: cousins, genes and categories
- Unilineal descent and descent groups
- Matrilineal societies
- Cognatic descent
- Segmentary lineages
- Worked example: who inherits?
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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