ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some basic terms and concepts in the study of kinship that use as a foundation for exploring gender. In all societies, human offspring are a vital concern; in fact, the very survival of any society depends on successful reproduction. One has only to look at some historical transformations in the United States to see how body ideals and manipulations of bodies encode gender. The descent groups are now able to stake territorial and other claims, and to transmit these claims or rights to their descendants. In any society, descent needs to be considered in conjunction with residence patterns, since the physical closeness of people related by descent has a lot to do with the strength of the ties between them. To capture the dynamic nature of domestic groups, Meyer Fortes developed the concept of the domestic cycle. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
