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Kinship Systems and How They Shape Society
- Words:
- 1722
- Submitted:
- Mon Jun 19 2006

... KINSHIP SYSTEMS AND HOW THEY SHAPE SOCIETY Since the beginning of anthropological study the idea of kinship has been defined in many ways. Lucy Mair (1972) classed it "Kinship is the expression of social relationships in a biological idiom" In essence this means that kinship is defined by a society's particular beliefs about biological connections between people. Particularly in small scale societies kinship is an important principle in the organisation of members, which can be based on either marriage or descent. It is this difference that was acknowledged by the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1968) "A kinship system does not exist in the objective ties between individuals: it exists only in human consciousness". Expressed in other terms this simply means that ideas about kinship cannot be grouped together, it is too complex. Kinship can only be studied by looking at the recognition of relationship ties from the perspective of a chosen society.














