Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
¶ … Kinship in Australian Aborigines
The individuality promoted by American and other Westernized societies makes one often forget the kinship, extended-family-based networks present in most other societies, and especially those in which the main way of life revolves around foraging and horticulture systems. Yet kinship exists, and it is present in many communities, one of which is the Australian Aboriginal community located throughout the continent, but focused mostly in the Northern Territory in Australia. The community has been indigenous to the continent since before its settlement by the Dutch and British, and continues to thrive to this day, mainly due to its distinct way of life. This way includes the concept of kinship, a strategy for keeping families together so that they may better fare during harsh times, be they social, political, or economic. This paper will explore the aboriginal kinship system in detail, and will describe its impact on the culture, as well as see whether there is such a system present in the American society, or whether this is truly a unique phenomenon to this community.
Description of the Kinship System
The aborigines in Australia have very complex systems of kinship,...
Their systems ensure that all aborigines have a sense of belonging, of community, and of rules and norms. In fact, aborigine children are well schooled in understanding this complexity as it promotes structure and understanding of both old and new ways, and gives aborigines an exact guide as to how to behave towards every single person in the community, regardless of age, gender or rank. Understanding kinship is thus a form of showing respect to others. Furthermore, kinship is an integral part of Aboriginal Law, a rigorous structure guarding the old ways of live of the community. According to studies,
"One important aspect of kinship behaviour is that an individual is allowed to approach and talk to some relatives but not to others. These avoidance rules applied to both blood and class relatives. It does not mean that these people dislike each other. The rule exists to maintain respect between certain classes of relatives. If two people who are not permitted to speak wanted to exchange information, they have to find a third person to pass on this information." (Flick, 2012)
As seen from the description above, many kinship rules may seem strange and different…
Works Cited
Flick, A.R. (2012). "Aboriginal Kinship and Families." Indigenous Australia. Retrieved, <http://www.indigenousaustralia.info/social-structure/kinship.html>.
Monroe, M.H. (2012). "Summary: Aboriginal Kinship Systems." Australia: The Land Where Time Began. Retrieved, <http://austhrutime.com/kinship_systems.htm>.
Kinship Systems It is important to note that a kinship system can be taken to be a rather complex feature that determines the role of individuals, their relations to each other as well as their obligations and responsibilities. In this text, I concern myself with the Australian Aborigines' kinship system. I further discuss the impact of the Australian Aborigines' kinship system on the behavior of the culture and lastly give my
Kinship categories are fundamental to the study of anthropology, as they are the basis by which societies and cultures are formed. Family kinship categories are broad and generally universal, as human beings must pass on their genes in the same ways regardless of culture. For example, family kin categories include kin types such as mother, father, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, grandmother, and so forth. Even in modern industrialized cultures in
This, then, essentially generates the same types of behaviors towards the social group, despite thousands of miles of distance and a completely different attitude and perspective on life. Australian Aboriginals do share a complex practice with American societies. They include skin types and names for members of the social group that are not of direct blood relation. Even strangers and foreigners who have spent enough time with a particular
Referring to prominent women in positions of power in derogatory terms, Farmer revealed his prejudicial beliefs that an ideal role for woman is wife or mother, not leader or activist. I concluded that Farmer's generation represented a key transition between patriarchal values and more egalitarian ones. After all, Farmer was born soon after suffrage and women were gradually becoming more visible in the public sphere. Farmer's responses answered the second
Iroquois Kinship System THE IROQUOIS Iroquois kinship system was initially identified by Morgan, 1871, as the system to define family. Iroquois is among the six main kinship systems namely Eskimos, Hawaiian, Sudanese, Crow, Omaha and Iroquois. The horticulture societies are subsistence-based so as the foraging societies. In the foraging society, the foremost component is the composition and existence of the nuclear family. The nuclear family is together irrespective of their shift to
Kinship There are many different models that currently exist of kinship and gender. Traditionally approaches to gender and kinship focused on biological and folk models. Kinship and gender models have gone through profound changes in the last few decades. While biological studies in kinship are important, anthropological and socio-cultural models help provide a more comprehensive model of kinship. These models provide interpretations of universals provided by biology (Parkins, 1997). There is