ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that sibling-based kinship's minimalist assumptions make it a fundamental structure of lower-class life and the culture of poverty. The social structure of sibling-based descent groups, their mode of integration, and the organizational challenges to which they correspond faithfully reflect the centrifugal tendencies of lower-class kinship in a way that uxoricentric kinship never can. The formation of lower-class descent groups along lines of sibling solidarity is a defensive activity. Sibling-based descent groups begin with few material resources to protect or expend, and with little more than mutual affection upon which to draw. The sibling-based descent group is thus not chaos, but a rational response to chaos. It is the heroic response that individuals like Mary Graham make when in a halting and piecemeal fashion they fabricate an effective kindred from the sparse and bitter leavings of a collapsed family life.
