Unit 5 Key terms

• Bilateral Kinship:

  • A system in which individuals trace their descent through both parties
• Brideservice:

  • The requirement that when a couple marries, the groom must work for the bride's parents for some specified time.
• Bridewealth:

  • The valuables that a groom or his family are expected or obligated to prescent to the bride's family.
• Clans:

  • Unilineal descent groups whose memebers claim descent from a common ancestor.
• Dowry:

  • The goods and valuables a bride's family supplies to the groom's family or to the couple.
• Endogamy:

  • A rule that requires a person to marry someone inside hir or her own group.
• Ethnographic Present:

  • Use of the present tense to describe a culture, although the description may refer to situations that existed in the past.
• Exogamy:

  • A rule that requires a person to marry someone outside his or her own group.
• Extended Family:

  • A family group based on blood relations of three or more generations.
• Impartible Inheritance:

  • A form of inheritance in which family property is passed undivided to one heir
• Incest taboo:

  • A rule that prohibits sexual relations among kin of certain categories, such as brothers or sisters, parents and children
• Kin term:

  • Culture specific vocabulary to denote family relationships. These terms may or may not correspond to an anthropologist's kin type.
• Kin type:

  • Terms used by anthropologist to denote biological relationships among family members
• Kinship:

  • Refers to the anthropological, cross-cultural study of family composition, marriage and descent patterns.
• Matrilineage:

  • A lineage that is formed by tracing descent in the female line.
• Matrilineal Kinship:

  • A system of descent in which persons are related to their kin through the mother only.
• Nuclear Family:

  • The family group consisting of father, mother, and their biological or adopted children.
• Patrilineage:

  • A lineage that is formed by tracing descent in the male line.
• Partible Inheritance:

  • A form of inheritance which the goods or property of a family is divided among the heirs.
• Patrilineal Kinship:

  • A system of descent in which persons are related to their kin through the father only
• Polyamory:

  • The practice of engaging in consensual intimate relationships with multiple people.
• Polyandry:

  • A form of marriage in which a woman is permitted to have more than one husband
• Polygamy:

  • A form of marriage in which a person is permitted to have more than one spouse
• Polygyny

  • A form of marriage in which a man is permitted to have more than one wife.