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The societal organization that has been in existence from the start of human history is kinship. Kinship revolves around the family structure, and is of extreme importance on several levels. To begin with, there is the basic relationship of the family, where contact with the members of the immediate family is important for survival reasons. This was especially vital in earlier times when the ability to live from year to year often depended on the support given by family members to one another. Although modern society has, to a large extent, negated the need for survival support, kinship still plays a very large role in how families function over the generations.
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Kinship relationships can be based on other factors than biological ones, however. Kinship can also have a foundation in historical ties and cultural ones. Most of kinship relations are based on blood ties however, and these are the ones that are generally held to be the most important. Blood ties are considered to be those that can be followed by descent from one generation to another. It should be noted that kinship ties by marriage are equally important, as these ties connect a family into another set of kinship relations.
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Several systems have been devised for tracing kinship relationships. The first is Patrilineal Descent. This will trace the history of a family’s kinship through the male members of that family – grandfather to father, father to son, etc. The tracing of kinship through the female members of a family group is called Matrilineal Descent. Sometimes descent will be traced without regard to either the sex of the ancestor, either or both will be used, and this is referred to as Cognatic Descent.
Kinship relationships were, of course, of the utmost importance as regarded heredity in former times. Lines of descent were carefully monitored by the upper classes, especially, in order to take the best advantage of opportunities of wealth and position. In the lower classes, such distinctions were not considered to be that important, at least as far as accumulation of money was concerned. In these classes, kinship would be checked to make sure that a couple intending to marry were not related too closely. This would be very important in a smaller society, especially in a village or farming community, where there might not very often be an influx of new blood .
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Our basis for kinship in Western society is what is called Eskimo Kinship. This system included the mother, father, son, daughter, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, and cousins. Cousins are considered to be people who share the same set of grandparents. Most of our knowledge of kinship is based on these family members, and it is rare for most people to be able to trace their kinship back more than a generation or two. It is only through genealogical research that the broader aspects of kinship can be explored.
We also have what is called ‘-in-law’ kinship relationships. People are often referred to as being a mother-in-law or father-in-law. Fictive kinship is when people will call a close friend ‘brother’ or ‘sister’, even when no blood relation exists. Many classes of people will use these designations not only in regards to a close friend, but to show affinity to a cultural group. Native Americans will often refer, with respect, to any older member of their group as ‘uncle’ or ‘aunt’.
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