The Cultural Grounding of Kinship

Abstract

Kinship systems are conceptually grounded in culturally formulated idea-systems we refer to as kinship terminologies and through which the boundaries, form and structure of human social systems are culturally constituted. A terminology, contrary to a long-standing assumption in anthropology, is not based on a prior categorization of genealogical relations, as the latter is derived from the structural logic of the kinship terminology. The terminology structure, formally represented as an algebraic structure, can be generated from primary kin terms in accordance with a hypothesized universal theory of kinship terminology structures. Terminologies differ culturally according to the primary terms and equations used for generating them. This requires a paradigm shift from the received view of genealogy as the primary basis for kin relations to a new paradigm in which kinship incorporates both a kin term space expressed through a culturally constituted idea-system we refer to as a kinship terminology and a genealogical space constructed recursively using parent-child relations. Both of these spaces are grounded in a family space composed of parent-child, spouse and sibling positions.

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