Exam 10: Kinship, Family, and Marriage

Families and kinship networks have the power to provide support and to nurture. What else do kinship networks do in a society?

Marriage is often seen as a way to build an alliance and create new relationships between different groups. Sometimes this outcome is coincidental, but in many cases, it is accomplished intentionally through what kind of marriage?

Although many are close with the families into which they are born, others are marginalized or stigmatized in ways that create deep, lasting alienation between them and their birth families. What do many people alienated from their birth families seek to create?

Which country "sends" the most adoptees to the United States?

What do anthropologists call descent groups based on a claim to a founding ancestor but lacking genealogical documentation?

What do we call the U.S. practice of marriage to an individual outside of a particular group of people, either by force of law or by power of tradition?

What do we call the process by which an individual whose marriage has ended due to divorce or death then remarries another individual?

Worldwide, what is the most prevalent strategy in use today to track kin group membership?

Dowries are an integral part of the marriage process in many countries, whether explicit or implicit. If deemed insufficient, the result might lead to what?

Susan Kahn's research in Israel examined the deep interconnectedness of reproduction kinship, Jewishness, religion, and the state itself. Israel strongly promotes the birth of new children and even subsidizes reproductive technologies in an effort to increase the birth rate. What are two of the challenges in the use of reproductive technologies in this instance? How is the state's so-called stake in the child changed with the use of reproductive technologies?

Based on early accounts, many early anthropologists assumed descent groups would be key to understanding how cultures outside of Europe and North America were organized. Why might this have been the case?

The statement issued in 2004 by the American Anthropological Association noted that a "vast array of family types" all contributed to "stable and humane societies." Why did the organization issue this statement?