1 / 7

Understanding Social Organization: Family, Kin, Marriage, and Politics in Native Cultures

This lecture explores the intricacies of social organization within native cultures, focusing on the distinctions between family and kinship, types of descent (unilineal and bilateral), and various marriage practices, including polygamy and monogamy. It examines the role of social status, age, and gender in societies, as well as political structures, from bands and tribes to chiefdoms and states. Additionally, the lecture delves into economic systems like reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange, highlighting how these elements shape community dynamics and relationships.

keitha
Télécharger la présentation

Understanding Social Organization: Family, Kin, Marriage, and Politics in Native Cultures

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Native Culture Outline Lecture II

  2. Social Organization • Family vs. Kin • Family: relation by • Blood (consanguineous) • Marriage (affinal or conjugal) • Fiat (fictive) • Comes in nuclear or extended varieties • Kin: socially recognized descent relationship • Bilateral (down both sides) • Unilineal descent (one side of the tree only) • Matrilineal • Patrilineal

  3. Social Organization, cont. • Descent Group • Group of people who claim descent from a common ancestor • Lineage – demonstrable descent from a named individual • Clan – group of related lineages who claim descent from a common (usually legendary or mythical) ancestor • Moiety – group of related clans claiming further distant ancestral relation. No more than two moieties in a society.

  4. Marriage • A socially recognized contract between one or more men and one or more women establishing rights and responsibilities of household work, legitimacy of children, and ties between families • Love versus Economics • Bridewealth/brideprice • Dowry • Polygamy or Monogamy? • Polygyny versus Polyandry • Levirate or Sororate • Endogamy or exogamy? (in or out) • Residence patterns • Matrliocal/Patrilocal/Avuncolocal

  5. Social Status & Control • All societies have status by age and sex • Many were generally egalitarian though • With social complexity comes stratification • Associations or sodalities • Age Grades and sets • Sex • Common Interest • Medicine Societies

  6. Politics • A system for distribution of power in a society • Bands • No central leader • Decisions by consensus • Small group size, autonomous from other groups • Associated with foragers • Tribes • No central leader (council) or leadership by a headman • Autonomous local groups tied together into larger entity • Larger populations (hunters, pastoralists or horticulturists) • Heavy use of sodalities to tie groups together, still egalitarian • Chiefdoms • Hereditary leadership • Stratified society • Large groups of horticulturists or agriculturists • States

  7. Economics • System for the production (or collection), distribution, and consumption of resources in a society • Reciprocity • Exchange of goods/services without money • General (no set time or amount of return) • Balanced (set time and/or amount of return) • Negative (attempt to get something for nothing) • Redistribution • Collection of goods by central power for later disbursement • Prestige Economics • Giving away wealth in exchange for status (Potlatching) • Often acts as a leveling mechanism in society • Market Exchange

More Related