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# Symbolizing kinship #

## Symbolizing kinship ##

Ryan Schram 

ANTH 2654: Forms of Families

27 August 2015

Available at http://anthro.rschram.org/2654/5

## Outline ##

* Language is a structure
  - Saussure: langue and parole
  - The sign: Signifier and Signified
  - Language imposes rules - criteria - on what we hear. We listen for the distinctive oppositions.
* Culture is like a language
  - A structuralist approach works very well on kin terms
  - Kin terms can be defined by rules stated in terms of sex, age and consanguinity
  - Culture is a system of symbols, and a set of categories, that people of one society share. Culture is a language, not an organism.
  - A new kind of relativism 
* There is no such thing as kinship.
  - Domestic and public are social facts, not real things.
  - The Nayar, the people with no fathers.
  - Conception beliefs: Trobriand Islands, Huli, America