Anthropology › Section K · Kinship and family › Topic K.1
What is kinship?
Every society has ways of deciding who counts as a relative, and those decisions shape where people live, whom they marry, what they inherit and whom they must help. Kinship was anthropology's first great comparative subject, and it remains one of its most revealing.
In this topic
- Who counts as family?
- Kinship is cultural, not just biological
- Morgan and the comparison of terms
- The genealogical method
- Kinship as a social institution
- Terms of reference and terms of address
- Worked example: sorting kin words
- Rethinking kinship: relatedness
- Worked example: how many mothers?
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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