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Sociology 2270 Class Notes
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Jan 8th/19● Transnational Family life: shifting behavior between certain culture, ex: headscarves
● Political Polarization
● Violence
Jan.17th/19
Kinship
2 trends:
● A trend in kinship has been non-kin living in the household (maids, house care workers,
etc)
● Young people to be living in natal family household much longer than thought
Biological Relations
● Do not create kinship
● Can have kinship without
● Human biology: despite the great variety, does human biology set some limits to the
possibilities of variety in kinship?
● Thinking about human beings as an animal and their contrast to other animals
What are some aspects of human biology would shake family life? Limitations?
How are other animals comparative to humans?
● Who’s obligated to share food? Patterns of eating together show about family structure?
Ex: sunday dinner, ceremonial foods
● Nursing: females always have the responsibility of feeding the child, there's a
relationship between women and children always
● Humans usually have 1-2 children and order of usually one at a time, meanwhile, a cat
has “litters” and multiple offspring at one
● Language, human kinship is symbolic and animals don’t talk
● Prolonged dependancy of the human being as an infant
● Differences in male and female fertility: animals are fertile until they die and human
females are not
● Human life span: at its best in the 80’s, biological limit of how long you’re here
● Fertility is hidden: no mating season
● Distance relationships
What is the advantage of human beings female fertility stopping far before the end of life?
● Survival advantage to their child
● More birth defects
,Shared Parenting (Aloe Parenting)
● Survival of children of having more than one provider
Definition of kin is not defined biologically
● Adoption
● Girl is too young, mom raises the baby
Ghost Marriage: get yourself a daughter-in-law, marry her to the ghost of your son if he dies, if
she has children they’re yours
Levirate: younger brother can be considered dead sons son, continue the life of the deceased
son
Kin relations are not just naturally there, they’re claimed or rejected by others, look for:
● How humans make relatives
● Make claims and evidence for claims
● How they’re rejected/unmade
Humans have sexual reproduction
● Some animals don’t need this
● Humans are very dependant on care
One function of a human family is to make fun of people who can’t take care of themselves
● In Nisa, they are taking care of children for a long time
● Sometimes people take care of their parents for a long time
● Prolonged dependancy on humans
Humans nurse babies only put some limits to the degree of variety you can have in a kin group
● No human group in a society where males have the prime responsibility to nurse a baby
● Nursing period is very long
● We take for granted the variation in human families, there’s a birth order
Striking that human females can have a whole second life where they’re not reproducing
● Usually, after you stop reproducing, some animals die
In a monogamous society, you may not notice because everything is normal and people may get
divorced or something like that and have kids
● In something like a polygamous society, you see a lot of old men marrying younger
women and many wives
A human female can give birth more frequently than other big primates
Ex: chimps give birth every 6 years, gorillaz every 9 years
, Alloparenting
● Aloe means other
● For women to give birth and keep a baby alive, she needs help
● Regardless of who, she needs to have help
Biological Limits to Human Lifespan
● Even under the best of circumstances, there are limits of generations to come
● Biology alone never defines kinship
● Symbolic dimension to human kinship
-no animals have godparents
Fictive Kin
● People have ways of making people apart of your family even though they aren’t actually
apart of your family
Most important is to look at the way human beings construct kin, and make kin relations with
other people
● Different in all cultures, ex: in Nisa if you have the same name you’re related
● Some peoples claims to kin are rejected and denied and not accepted
● Ex: assuming you’re invited to a wedding because you’re family
● Affirming your relationships with things like gifts and offers of service, help, and human
exchanges
● Babies, before they can even talk, will offer stuff to people, they don’t need to be taught
to be generous
● Sometimes the people you ask for money that are kin you feel obligated to give it to
them, some not so much ex: neighbors maybe not so much, but maybe more so from
your sister
● Some cultures make things of a biological relationship that others ignore
● When it comes to biology, it’s interesting to see what people believe
When looking at kin relations, we are looking at relations that are enduring
The family has been reduced in its functions in our society
● Emotional and physical support
● Much of human history kinship was code for human beings entire lives
● Ex: who you worked with, who you went to war with, etc
● Supposed to hate who your family hates as well
Spiritual Life
● Peoples notions of the afterlife
● The imagery of heaven in western society: being with people you were once close to
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