KINSHIP STRUCTURE

Sociologyindex, Bilineal Descent, Matrilineal Descent, Patrilineal Descent, Kinship Structure, Sociology Books 2011, Unilineal Descent

Kinship Structure refers to the way social relationships between individuals related by blood, affinal ties (pertaining to marriage) or socially defined (fictive) connection are organized and normatively regulated.

Kinship is the central organizational principle of many traditional societies, since it is through the kinship structure that social placement, cultural transmission and many functional necessities for life will be met.

Extent of relevant kinship connection differs greatly from society to society. Kinship bonds are generally defined more broadly and extensively in traditional societies than in modern capitalist societies.

Changing Kinship Structure and its Implications for Old-Age Support in Urban and Rural China, Jiang L.
Abstract: This study explores the ramifications of China's imminent population ageing at the family and kinship level - by simulating China's evolving family and kinship structure. Results from such simulations suggest that the burden of supporting old parents is likely to increase tremendously, quadrupling for urban families and doubling for rural families by the year 2030, when China's baby-boomers will enter their old age. Increases of such magnitudes suggest that family alone is unlikely to be able to meet the demands of the rapidly increasing elderly population. Public assistance, especially to rural families, is urgently needed to ensure that the family will not be overstrained by the burden of old age support. The results of this study also point out the potential of tapping the resources among the elderly population to compensate for the loss in support from children. Given their improved health status, the young elderly could provide substantial assistance in caring for the older and more frail elderly.

The Family in an Aging Society - A Matrix of Latent Relationships 
MATILDA WHITE RILEY, National Institute on Aging and Bowdoin College 
Because of unprecedented increases in longevity, the kinship structure has been transformed. Linkages among family members have been prolonged, and the surviving generations in a family have increased in number and complexity. Today's kinship structure (which has no parallel in history) can be viewed in a new way: as a latent web of continually shifting linkages that provide the potential for activating and intensifying close family relationships. These relationships are no longer prescribed as strict obligations, but must be earned—created and recreated by family members over their lives. Such changes in the structure and dynamics of family relationships raise many questions and issues for students of the family including the development of special research approaches needed to understand the complexity of these relationships and the nature of older people's family relationships in the future.

On Kinship Structure, Female Autonomy, and Demographic Behavior in India - Tim Dyson, Mick Moore
Population and Development Review, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Mar., 1983), pp. 35-60 - doi:10.2307/1972894
Abstract: The main states of India are broadly grouped into two demographic regimes. In contrast to states in the north, southern states are characterized by lower marital fertility, later age at marriage, lower infant and child mortality, and comparatively low ratios of female to male infant and child mortality. The division between the two regimes broadly coincides with the division between areas of northern kinship/low female autonomy and southern kinship/high female autonomy. The analysis suggests that female social status is probably the most important element in comprehending India's demographic situation. Women in the south tend to be more active in the labor force, are more likely to take innovative action in adopting fertility control, and are more apt to utilize health services for themselves and their children. - jstor.org

Kinship: Structure and Process (SA0027)
The first part of the course contrasts the 'descent theory' and 'alliance theory' paradigms which dominated anthropological approaches to kinship from the 1940s until the 1970s. This split is shown to exemplify broader differences in theoretical approach towards the study of anthropology more generally. The second part of the course examines some of the ways in which people in different societies conceptualise and live out relatedness. It shows how notions about relatedness are linked to concepts of the person, notions about gender, and theories of procreation which may be radically different from our own (which are themselves changing under the impact of New Reproductive Technologies). Kinship has long been regarded as the core of the anthropological discipline, although the extent to which this is still the case is questionable. The course traces the history of kinship studies, looking at some central debates in the subject and assessing their implications for anthropological theory. - drps.ed.ac.uk/05-06/course.php?code=SA0027

Seminar on Kinship and Demographic Behavior
Salt Lake City, Utah - iussp.org
Scholars from several disciplines have focused on the role of kinship structure and its effects on population dynamics. Historians of population have demonstrated the importance of the kinship network to understand demographic and social processes. Historical demographers have closely examined kinship networks in historical societies where kinship is thought to have been a major organizing principle of social groupings. Anthropologists and behavioral scientists have a tradition of studying the cultural bases and consequences of kinship systems and ties. More recently, interest has grown with respect to biological processes and theories and their fundamental linkages with kinship. This trend has, in large part, been motivated by the fact that demography addresses phenomena central to biology (fertility, mortality, and nuptiality). There are a number of inquiries that are using concepts that draw upon these various approaches. For example, kinship structure or early family events have been studied in terms of their effects on outcomes including health, fertility, and mortality. These studies of kinship have stimulated new analytical approaches and have produced findings that are among the most innovative and productive lines of inquiry in population history and social history. 
Longitudinal databases derived from family registries, family reconstitutions, population and events registers, and genealogies have become a valuable resource for studies of the social and demographic consequences of familial and kinship networks in the past and are being used to expand the scope of understanding demographic processes. Inclusion of morbidity and mortality information is an important new development because these data enable researchers to address novel questions such as the presence of disease aggregation in families and the association of consanguinity and health outcomes. The addition of information on socio-economic status, such as occupation or landholdings, has further enhanced the richness of such analyses. Indeed, the expanding availability and increasing quality and informational depth of such databases is creating a growing body of research synergies and discoveries between genetic epidemiologists and historical demographers.
The aim of this seminar was to bring together international scholars to exchange ideas and perspectives. The impetus for this symposium comes from two sources. The first occurred 30 years ago with the development of the Utah Population Database (or Mormon Historical Demography Project as it was known then); this resource has been used for numerous studies in the area of human genetic and population research. The second theme occurred in the fall of 2004 when an interdisciplinary group of researchers met in Paris for an International Seminar on “New History of Kinship” organized by IUSSP-INED-EHESS. That seminar emphasized how the historical demographic study of kinship has changed over the last fifteen years. 

Dagestan in Russia is relatively peaceful because there is a tradition in which political structures trump kinship structures, such as clans. Now an ethnic group is a kinship structure, just as a clan. So when Dagestan’s thirty-plus ethnic groups were organized within the Russian empire, within the Republic of Dagestan, within the Soviet Union, and within the Russian Federation, all of these larger political structures were, from a Dagestani perspective, essentially the djamaat writ large. Since they were accustomed to settling kinship disputes within overarching political structures, it was relatively easy for them to resolved their numerous inter-ethnic disputes politically, and therefore peacefully, within the political structures of the Republic of Dagestan, the Russian Federation, etc.  

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