ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the normative structure of kinship, not with the actual kinship structure of respondents. It describes how numerous kin types vary in the level and intensity of obligation they evoke, as well as how much consensus is shown in these kin norms. Social norms are a chief concern of sociologists and the family is a primary context for the acquisition and application of norms. Norms as evaluative rules are statements about how social objects are to be evaluated, ordering them into hierarchies of preferment. The measurement practices that have dominated the fields of sociology and social psychology seem designed to avoid finding empirical evidence for norms, beliefs about which there is some large degree of popular consensus. A major feature of the kinship obligation vignettes was that they permitted differentiating among some types of obligation, ranging in the degree of commitment asked of the respondent.
