Need a question concerning this week‘s material And respond to question below.
Why is the male/female dichotomy problematic?
KINSHIP AND GENDER
CHAPTER 16
FAMILIES, MARRIAGE, KINSHIP, AND GENDER VARY WIDELY AROUND
THE WORLD
What are families, and how are they structured in different societies?
Why do people get married?
In what ways are males and females different, or are they?
What does it mean to be neither male nor female?
WHAT ARE FAMILIES, AND HOW ARE THEY STRUCTURED IN
DIFFERENT SOCIETIES?
Families fulfill similar functions in most societies:
Comfort and belonging for members, sense of identity, shared values and ideals, economic cooperation, and nurturance of
children
Although the functions above are common, the patterns of achieving them are constructed in culturally specific
and dynamic systems of kinship:
Kinship is the social system that organizes people in families based on descent and marriage.
KINSHIP CHART
A visual representation of family
relationships.
These charts are useful for diagramming
biological relationships, if not the cultural
meanings associated with these
relationships.
Here the chart shows members of the
extended family from a husband/father’s
perspective. Of course, the chart could be
drawn from the wife/mother’s perspective as
well.
THE SIX BASIC SYSTEMS OF
KINSHIP
Anthropologists have identified six different basic
kinship systems. The differences can be understood
by how people refer to the different cousins.
FAMILIES ARE DYNAMIC
Families are not permanent entities, since
members come and go. Individuals may be
members of multiple families in the course
of a lifetime, beginning with a natal family:
The family into which a person is
born and (usually) raised.
In other words, families are dynamic.
WHAT IS THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY?
The realities of life in any given society often create a gap between its real and idealized family types.
Politicians and religious leaders in the United States often argue for “traditional” marriages, families, and
values—
rarely bothering to specify which traditions they’re referring to.
THE SITCOM “TRADITIONAL” FAMILY
Working father, stay-at-home mother, dependent children → nuclear
family
A recent and short-lived phenomenon in the United States
Low birth rates during Depression and WWII
Unprecedented economic growth, family stability, and a lot of babies in the
1950s
Spurred the development and spread of suburban housing
Began to change in the late 1960s in many interconnected ways:
More women in the workforce
More two0income households
Fewer children (one or two, rather than three or four)
More divorces
More blended families
THE NUCLEAR FAMILY
Still, the United States and many other nations in the world view the nuclear family as an ideal form.
Nuclear family: the family formed by a married couple and their children.
The most basic unit if kinship.
FAMILY COOPERATION
Families function as corporate groups: groups of real people who
work together toward common ends much like a corporation
does
Extended families were common in 19th century America
Households shared by nuclear relatives, grandparents, unmarried aunts
or uncles, etc. A larger group of relatives often living in the same
household
In hard economic times, extended-family households provide a larger
number of potential wage earners to contribute to the family’s needs
(Photo Courtesy of Robert L. Welsch)
TYPE OF EXTENDED FAMILIES: DESCENT GROUPS
Clan
A group of relatives who claim to be descended
from a single ancestor
Ancestor may be an animal or supernatural entity
Most often exogamous
Lineage
A group composed of relatives who are directly
descended from known ancestors
Usually a literal human ancestor
Types of Clans and Lineages
Type Definition Features Examples
Patrilineal Membership based on descent
from common male ancestor
Inheritance of property rights, rights, names, and
titles comes through father.
Omaha Indians, Nuer of South
Sudan, most Americans inherit
names patrilineally.
Matrilineal Membership based on descent
from common female ancestor
Every man or women is a member of his or her
mother’s clan. Not about political power but
identity and group membership.
Trobriand Islanders.
Cognatic Descent through both mother
and father
Membership in multiple clans is possible and typical. Samoans of Central Polynesia.
UNILINEAL DESCENT
Patrilineal: reckoning descent through males from the
same ancestors.
Most clans and lineages in nonindustrial societies are
patrilineal.
Matrilineal: reckoning descent through women, who are
descended from an ancestral woman.
Everyone is a member of his or her mother’s clan
A person’s strongest identity is with his or her relatives
in a mother’s clan and lineage.
HOW FAMILIES CONTROL POWER AND WEALTH
One cross-cultural function of families is managing their members’ wealth. In this sense, wealth is broader than just
currency, including resources, the work and reproductive capacity of family members, and inheritance rights when a
member dies.
Anthropologists studying nonindustrial societies in early to mid-twentieth-century realized that women’s labor in
the fields and gardens in horticultural, agricultural, and pastoral communities was extremely important to the
family.
Bride price – exchange of gifts or money to compensate another clan or family for the loss of one of its women along with
her productive and reproductive abilities in marriage (Example: Cattle, pigs, shell, labor)
Childprice – intended to buy rights of a woman’s children, compensation to women’s family for a child who now belongs
to a different clan.
Dowry – gifts or money given to a daughter to ensure her well-being in husband’s family.
Rules of Inheritance – an orderly process and keep wealth and property in the family.
RULES OF INHERITANCE
Families also control wealth, property, and power through
inheritance rules
Create an orderly process and keep wealth and property in the family
Inheritance rules have been codified as law in Western countries for
centuries
Nonindustrial societies, even those without legal codes, also have
inheritance rules.
WHY DO PEOPLE GET MARRIED?
Many forms and purposes; has not “always” been one way
Marrying for love is a recent development
In most countries, marriage is about creating economic and
political alliances between families.
Marrying for romantic love seen as risky
Marriage creates formally recognized ties between families
Any children resulting from the union are considered
“legitimate.”
FORMS OF MARRIAGE
Polygamy: any form of plural marriage. Previously far
more common in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the
Pacific than it is today.
Polygyny: When a man is simultaneously married to
more than one woman
Polyandry: When a woman has two or more
husbands at one time.
MARRIAGE RULES
All cultures have rules regarding sex and marriage.
In arranged marriages, parents may select partners from specific
socioeconomic, religious, educational, or ethnic backgrounds
Incest taboo: the prohibition on sexual relations between close family
members
Some cultures prohibit marriage between cousins (or, at least, specific types of
cousins), while others do not
WHY IS THERE AN INCEST TABOO?
The prohibition against sexual relations between specified individuals,
usually parent-child and sibling relations at a minimum.
What constitutes a relative, and therefore incest, varies widely from
culture to culture.
Evolutionary explanations:
an adaptive measure to avoid birth defects associated with incest
“Westermarck effect”: natural selection causes us to lack sexual attraction
toward people in and around our natal families.
Cultural explanations: taboos can be explained socially
IN WHAT WAYS ARE MALES AND FEMALES DIFFERENT?
Differences are reinforced by powerful, ongoing messages that tend to
stereotype roles.
These stereotypes have become topics of intense debate:
Why are women excluded from certain kinds of jobs?
Why are men dominant in certain professions?
What is gender?
Gender is defined as the expectations of how male and females should behave
WHY DOES OUR CULTURE CONSTRUCT GENDER DIFFERENCES IN
THESE SPECIFIC WAYS?
Primary explanation in our culture: males and females are “hardwired”
differently
Differences in sex, the reproductive forms and functions of the body, are
often thought to produce differences in attitudes, temperaments,
intelligences, aptitudes, and even achievements between males and females
Male-female differences are shaped by a mix of biology, environmental
conditions, and sociocultural processes
Useless dichotomies?
Biology or culture
Sex or gender
WHAT ARE COMMON GENDER STEREOTYPES?
Women are supposed to have “clean jobs” such as secretaries, teachers,
and librarians
Women are nurses, not doctors
Women are not as strong as men
Women are supposed to make less money than men
Women don’t need to go to college
Women are not politicians
Women are quieter than men and not meant to speak out
Women are supposed to be submissive and do as they are told
Women are supposed to cook and do housework
Women are responsible for raising children
Women do not have technical skills and are not good at “hands on”
projects such as car repairs
Women are supposed to look pretty and be looked at
Women love to sing and dance
Women do not play video games
All men enjoy working on cars
Men are not nurses, they are doctors
Men do “dirty jobs” such as construction and mechanics; they are not
secretaries, teachers, or cosmetologists
Men do not do housework and they are not responsible for taking care
of children
Men play video games
Men play sports
Men enjoy outdoor activities such as camping, fishing, and hiking
Men are in charge; they are always at the top
As husbands, men tell their wives what to do
Men are lazy and/or messy
Men are good at math
It is always men who work in science, engineering, and other technical
fields
Men do not cook, sew, or do crafts
GENDER STEREOTYPES
Simply put, gender stereotypes are generalizations about the roles of each
gender. Gender roles are generally neither positive nor negative; they are
simply inaccurate generalizations of the male and female attributes.
Gender stereotypes begin the second a baby’s gender is found out. As
soon as we find out it’s a girl, we immediately begin decorating a pink
nursery filled with soft décor and butterflies and flowers. We assume that
our daughter will be very “girly” and fill her closet with frilly dresses and
her toy box with tea sets and dolls.
Stereotyping is no different when it’s found out that a boy is on the way.
The nursery is decked out in blue, his closet is filled with tiny jeans, polo
shirts, and boots, and the theme is usually something like jungle animals or
dinosaurs; something tough. Boys’ toys consist of trucks, dinosaurs, action
figures, and video games.
Are you surprised to hear that most parents admit that they do not teach
their sons how to do chores such as washing dishes or folding laundry?
Instead, they teach them to take out the trash and mow the lawn; from
the get-go boys are made to think that certain household chores are
“women’s work.”
BEYOND “EITHER/OR”
The dichotomy between males and females breaks down as variations in
chromosomes. Starting with the basics, human females possess two X
chromosomes on their 23rd pair of chromosomes, while males possess an XY
on their 23rd pair. This minor variation is what differentiates males from females
on a genetic level, which gives rise to all of the biological differences.
Some individuals diverge from the male-female norm and are called intersex,
exhibiting sexual organs and functions somewhere between, or including, male
and female elements.
One estimate puts the frequency of intersex in the United States at 1.7% of all
live births, but the rates of intersex vary between populations.
Different societies deal with intersex differently: some do not make anatomical
features the dominant factors in constructing gender/sex identities, and some
cultures recognize biological sex as a continuum.
MORE THAN TWO
Some people diverge from male-female norm, called intersex
Societies deal with intersex differently:
Some do not make anatomy the dominant factor in constructing
gender/sex identities
Some cultures recognize biological sex as a continuum
North American and European societies – which construct sex as either
male or female based on genitalia – have considered intersexuality
abnormal, sometimes even immoral
In the US most intersex children are treated shortly after birth with “sex-
assignment surgery”, where genitalia is constructed based on cultural
assumptions
“Human Rights for Hermaphrodites, Too!” (hermaphrodite was previously the
common term for intersex) (Photo: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images)
GENDER VARIANCE
Male/female dichotomy is constructed
Many gender/sex systems around the world are less
rigid or constraining than our own
Example: the Navajo recognize five genders (Male,
Female, Nadleeche [intersex], Nadleeche [masculine
female], Nadleeche [feminine male]. In India three
genders are now recognized
In many societies, some people live their lives as
neither male nor female
Have a culturally accepted, often prestigious, symbolic
niche and social pathway
THIRD GENDER SYSTEMS IN OTHER SOCIETIES
Third gender often entangled in debates about
sexuality
Gender/sex identities are established not by sexual
practices but through social performance
Example: The Navajo Nádleehé (one who is constantly
changing) are individuals that combine male and female
roles and characteristics and are highly respected,
participating in religious ceremonies and acting as
spiritual healers and go-betweens in arranging
marriages and mediating conflicts.
IS HUMAN SEXUALITY JUST A MATTER OF BEING STRAIGHT OR
QUEER?
Sexuality is usually seen as binary: heterosexual or homosexual,
but in reality, human sexuality is complex and subtle and exists
along a continuum
Continuum from asexual (non-sexuality) to polyamorous (love of
many).
Major difficulty in studying sexuality in other societies is the
problem of adequately naming it
Concepts of same-sex sexuality also vary widely across the globe.
Societies place limits on sexuality by making rules about who can
sleep with whom
Modern governments have asserted unprecedented levels of control
over sexuality, implementing and enforcing laws that limit the kinds of
sexual relations their citizens can have
CONCLUSION
The concept of sexuality—who can sleep with whom and the sexual relationships and practices in which people
engage– is a key dimension of the larger theses of kinship and gender
These concepts are intertwined in complex ways, shaping the ideas and social patterns a society uses to organize
and control males and females, as well as those who do not fit these categories.
Its important to remember that the ways in which we think of these matters, are not as universal as we may
assume and these constructs are not as “stable” as we think. Rather they feel stable in our everyday experiences
because they are powerful cultural constructions reproduced and upheld in our everyday lives and most
important social institutions
RELIGION: RITUAL
AND BELIEF
Chapter 17
Questions to Ponder
■ Why do people believe things so readily when there is no
empirical evidence, and when they seem preposterous
to others?
– No clear answer yet…
– Change what they do before changing what they
believe
– Causal relationships between environmental,
political, economic factors and religious forms?
■ Today,
religion
is a cultural universal. 5.8 billion people
from 230 countries practice.
– 2.2 billion Christians
– 1.6 billion Muslims
– 1 billion Hindus
– 500 million Buddhists
– 14 million Jews
– 400 million practice traditional religious
• Religion? Spirituality?
Supernatural Beliefs?
Rituals?
• Identifying features?
• Functions?
• Different forms?
• Why do people believe
things that others
consider wrong?
How Should We Understand Religion
and Religious Beliefs?
■ Anthropologists study religion to understand people.
■ The range of religious belief encountered by 19th-century scholars made people
seem inexplicable.
■ Anthropologists studied societies with relatively simple lifeways and technology,
assumed that local religious beliefs were also simple
■ Deeper investigation gradually revealed the complexity and diversity of beliefs held
throughout the world—and the difficulty of cross-culturally defining religion.
Version 1.0: Tylor, Animism, and
Evolution
■ Edward Tylor (1871) introduced animism:
an early theory that primitive peoples
believed that inanimate objects such as
trees, rocks, cliffs, hills, and rivers were
animated by spiritual forces or beings.
■ Tylor proposed that religion evolved in
stages from animism to polytheism to
monotheism.
■ “dreams misinterpreted”, fundamental
error in thinking
■ *doesn’t explain religion as a worldview
Version 2.0: Wallace and the Supernatural
■ Religion: “beliefs and rituals concerned with
supernatural beings, powers, and forces”
■ For Wallace, the characteristic that ties all
religious belief together is the supernatural
■ But he recognized the many different forms
of supernatural belief, from animism to gods
and spirits to more amorphous supernatural
forces like the mana of native Hawaiians: a
belief that sacred power inheres in certain
high-ranking people, sacred spaces, and
objects
■ *failed to explain why peoples beliefs were
held so passionately
Version 3.0: Geertz and Symbols
“Religion is…
1. A system of symbols which act to
2. establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and
motivations in men by
3. formulating conceptions of a general order of existence
and
4. clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality
that
5. the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (1966,
p. 4).
■ Religious symbols are a central part of a worldview
■ This definition emphasizes symbols that seem intensely
real and factual to believers. What, to outsiders, appear
to be mythological parables are, to insiders, historical
fact.
■ Assumes a need for meaning
Version 4.0: Religion as a Social
Phenomenon
■ Beliefs get power from being socially
enacted repeatedly through rituals and
social action.
■ By acting together, the community of
believers begins to accept the group’s
symbolic interpretations of the world as if
they were tangible, authentic, and real
rather than merely interpretation
■ Provides a world-view
So What Is Religion?
■ Religion: a symbolic system that is socially enacted through
rituals and other aspects of social life, including these four
elements:
1. The existence of things more powerful than humans
2. Beliefs and behaviors that surround, support, and promote the
acceptance that those things more powerful than humans
actually exist.
3. Symbols that make these beliefs and behaviors seem both
intense and genuine.
4. Social settings, usually involving important rituals, that people
share while experiencing the power of these symbols of belief.
Worldview
■ Religious symbols are a central part of a
worldview: a general approach to or set of
shared unquestioned assumptions about the
world and how it works.
– Symbols describe a ‘model of’ how the world
is and a ‘model for’ how the world should
be.
Religious Worldview or Myth
■ Myths are religious narratives or stories
that provide the framework for religious
beliefs and practices
■ Tell of the origins and history of the world
and creation of human beings
■ Prescribe the rules of proper conduct
■ Articulate the ethical and moral principals
of
society
■ Exist as texts or oral narratives in
nonliterate societies
Rituals are the Myths in Action
■ Ritual is often based on myth
■ The myth provides the elements for the
development of the ritual
■ Ritual activities symbolize the particular
beliefs and values of that community
■ A ritual is the vehicle by which basic ideas,
such as the definition of good and evil and
the proper nature of social relationships,
are imparted to the group
■ Participation in the ritual signals a public
acceptance of the basic tenets of the
religion
What Forms Does Religion Take?
■ Today, anthropologists don’t rank people or religions on an evolutionary scale of
complexity.
■ But there are clear correlations between political organization, mode of subsistence,
and religious practices.
Animism
Polytheism
Monotheism
Totenism
■ A system of thought that associates
particular social groups with specific
animal or plant species called
“totems” as an emblem.
Shamans and Trances
■ Shaman: a religious leader who communicates the needs
of the living with the spirit world
– Usually through some form of ritual trance or other
altered state of consciousness
■ Trance: a semiconscious state typically brought on by
hypnosis, ritual drumming and singing, or hallucinogenic
drugs like mescaline or peyote.
■ In many cultures, altered states of consciousness (by
various means) is a way to communicate with the spiritual
world
– Yanomamo shaman attempts to heal ailing
individuals by ingesting hallucinogenic snuff made
from a local plant.
■ Shaman is supernaturally assisted by a spirit familiar
– In the peyote religion of the Huichol Indians, the hunt
for and use of peyote provides social
order.
– Pentecostal and charismatic Christian traditions
engage in rituals like snake handling and speaking in
tongues
Shared Identity and Social Hierarchies
■ In Benin, the Oba was considered divine and symbolized
by a leopard.
– The Oba’s palace was an architectural model of the
cosmos.
– Leopard imagery in the palace, arts, and festivals
depicted and maintained the social order.
■ Egyptian pharaohs were viewed as earthly manifestations
of the gods, along with many others in their polytheistic
system.
– Each god had to be appeased in its own way to
maintain the environmental conditions necessary
for agriculture.
Monotheistic World Religions
■ The ancient Hebrews diverged from the polytheistic norm
– Proclaiming Yahweh the one true God, prompting a long-term shift toward monotheism
■ The monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all became state religions
■ These three “Abrahamic religions” effectively share the same deity
– Each views itself as having the correct prophet.
Hinduism and Buddhism
■ Hinduism shares many traits with the polytheistic systems of the Middle East:
– Religious specialists and political leaders maintaining cosmic and social order by
seeking the intervention of local deities
■ Siddhartha Gautama challenged orthodox Hinduism.
– Taking the name Buddha (meaning “awakened one”), he taught a path of
compassion and selflessness
Non-Theists, Atheists, Agnostics, and
Nonbelievers
■ These categories lack the “supernatural beliefs” of
most definitions of religion
■ People who identify with them could be considered
nonreligious.
■ However, they derive meaning and purpose from
natural symbols through a worldview, much like those
who practice religious ritual.
How Do Religious Rituals Work?
■ Magic is key.
■ Magic usually conjures up images of magicians, however,
here we refer to that as in illusion.
■ Illusionists manipulation human perceptions, and not the
supernatural.
■ From an anthropological perspective, magic refers to
rituals used to compel behavior from supernatural
sources.
■ In anthropology, magic refers to: an explanatory system of
causation that does not follow naturalistic explanations,
often working at a distance without direct physical
contact.
– Magic: an explanatory system of causation that does
not follow naturalistic explanations, often working at
a distance without direct physical contact
■ Whether anthropologists believe in magic is irrelevant.
– We seek an emic understanding of magic and its
role in our informants’ lives
Frazer and Sympathetic Magic
■ Two principles, Law of similarity
and Law of contagion
– Frazer’s law of similarity
(imitative magic)
encompasses things like
voodoo dolls
– Harming a representative
object “contaminated” by a
person is believed to harm the
person via the law of
contagion
– Catholic communion
combines these with its
symbolic wafer and wine
James G. Frazer (Photo: NPG x37001
Sir James George Frazer © National
Portrait Gallery, London)
Sympathetic magic: any magical rite that relies on the
supernatural to produce its outcome without working through
some supernatural being such as a spirit, demon, or deity.
Rites of Passage
■ Any life cycle rite that marks a person’s or
group’s transition from one social state to
another. These rituals are probably evident in
many of the events students have
experienced.
■ Rites of separation: remove individual from
society
■ Rites of transition: isolation after separation
■ Rites of incorporation: new status
Rites of Passage
Apache Puberty Ritual
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1Cx_9YDQEc
Ritual Symbols
■ Objects (wafer and wine)
■ Colors (white = purity or grief, depending
on context)
■ Actions (moving like an emu totem)
■ Events (rituals that reenact mythic
events)
■ Words (any number of ritual recitations
of sacred texts)
How Is Religion Linked to Political and
Social Action?
■ Religious affiliation has remained stable and even
risen in some categories since 1966
■ Why is a secular worldview relatively rare in the U.S.?
– One factor is that science and reason have not
replaced religious belief, as Time speculated
they might.
Fundamentalism
■ The post-1960s rise in Christian fundamentalists in the United States was paralleled
by increasing Jewish and Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East.
■ The term “fundamentalism” is sometimes used pejoratively to imply, at best,
scientific illiteracy and, at worst, violent extremism.
■ Here, we use fundamentalism to mean conservative religious movements that
advocate a return to fundamental or traditional principles.
The Fundamentalism Project (1990s)
■ Threatened by secularization
■ Perceive themselves as fighting to return to “proper” gender roles, sexuality,
education.
■ Derive meaning and purpose from political and military efforts to defend their
beliefs
■ Define themselves in relation to what they are not: outsiders, modernizers,
moderates.
■ They are zealous, committed, and convinced that they have been chosen to carry out
the will of a deity.
Religion and the Social Order
■ Fundamentalism differs from religious expression in smaller communities.
– In small-scale societies, religion often supports the existing social order.
– Fundamentalism in larger societies sets itself up in opposition to the social
order.
■ The process of belonging and the social action associated with group membership
are bolstered by important symbols.