Symbolizing kinship

Ryan Schram

ANTH 2654: Forms of Families

27 August 2015

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

• 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