Bilocal residence

The residence pattern in which a newly married couple has the choice of living with or near the groom's or the bride's family. Common in cultures where cooperation of large groups is needed, but resources are limited in some way. The family will live where resources look best, or where labour is most needed. Common in foraging culture.

Stock

A bilateral kinship group based on bilateral descent from recognized ancestors. Relatively rare.

Bride wealth

Progeny price

Compensation the groom or his family pays to the bride's family on marriage. A common form of exchange. It is a sign of respect for the bride and her parents, and compensation for the family for the loss of the bride's economic services. Validates the groom's rights to future offspring. Usually happens in polygynous, small-scale, patrilineal societies, in patrilocal groups where the bride becomes a member of the husband's household. Often the money is used for presents for the bride or on wedding celebrations. Sometimes it must be refunded if the couple separates. Disputes over these transfers of wealth are common and can result in divorce, injury, or death.

Sib

A non-corporate descent group of a large number of lineages, whose members claim descent from a common ancestor without actually knowing the genealogical links to that ancestor. Results from fission of descent groups. Often lacks residential unity, and usually does not hold tangible property corporately. It is a unit for ceremonial matters and for aid in times of great need. Often has exogamy. May be represented by a totem. Members may be scattered throughout a wide territory. Incldue moieties.

Blood family

A famliy unit consisting of a woman, her dependent offspring, and the woman's brothers. Men and women marry but do not live together as members of one household, and instead they live in the household they grew up in. Economic cooperation between men and women occurs between siblings rather than married couples.

Blood relatives

Relatives by birth.

Double unilineal descent

A system tracing descent matrilineally for some purposes and patrilineally for others. Very rare.

Lineal system

A system of kinship terminology that emphasizes the nuclear family by specifically distinguishing mother, father, brother, and sister, while lumping together all other relatives into broad categories such as uncle, aunt, and cousin. Used by Euro-Canadians and Anglo-Americans as well as North American foraging peoples and the Ju/'hoansi.

Hunter and gatherers

People who do not have any domesticated plants or animals. Obtain food by foraging wild plants and hunting wild animals. Often live in small mobile groups, in more or less isolated, egalitarian, band-level societies.

Deity

A powerful supernatural being with an individual identity and recognizable attributes. Like a spirit, but more powerful. Can effectively alter all of nature and human fortunes. Commonly worshipped and requests may be made of them in times of need.

Sympathetic magic

Magic based on the principle that like produces like. Early cave art depicting animals with arrows in them may be interpreted as imitative magic; by drawing such images, they will become true. Whatever happens to an image of someone will also happen to them.

"Family breeds contempt"

An explanation for the universality of incest taboo. Suggests that long-term association with family members discourages sexual incest. May substitute result for the cause.

Creationism

A disbelief in the theory of evolution. The standard argument is that living creatures are too complex to have come about by chance.

Kinship nomenclature

The branch of study of kinship which has to do with how people classify various relatives. Only makes sense from the point of view of ego. Almost every language has a slightly different system. Common variations include distinctions between affinal and consanguineal, male or female, younger or older, and the side of the family relatives are on. Each system of kinship terminology is likely to be associated with certain forms of descent and post-marital residence patterns.

Matrifocused family

A nuclear family in which there is no continuing adult male functioning as husband and father. This man is missing usually due to death, divorce, or abandonment, or no marriage having taken place. In such families, the mother raises the children more or less alone and subsequently has the major role in their socialization. The children of teenage or young adult daughters may also be included in the family household.

Uterine kin

Relatives traced exclusively through females from a founding female ancestor.

"Half"

Each group that results from a division of a society into two halves on the basis of descent. Members believe they share a common ancestor but cannot prove it. Often has exogamy. The moieties are interdependent, which maintains the integrity of the society.

New Stone Age

The era of stone tool technology and the domestication of plants and animals. Population growth and climate change transformed the way people made their livelihood, allowing the emergence of large-scale state-level societies.

Agnatic descent

Male descent

Unilineal descent traced exclusively through one's father's grandfather's line, to establish group membership. With this pattern, people are related if they can trace descent through male lines to the same male ancestor. Both males and females inherit a patrilineal family membership but only males can pass it on to their descendants. It is more common than matrilineal descent. Occurs in 60% of societies.

Agnatic kin

Relatives traced exclusively through males from a founding male ancestor.

Discrimination

Stereotypes

Most apparent in societies with ethnic or racial stratification. People in most societies find it hard to accept or understand how other people can be so different, and tend to assume that their own way of life is the best, or most "natural". Stereotypes can be a sign of ethnocentrism.

Reciprocal exchange

A relationship between people that involves a mutual exchange of gifts of goods, services, or favours. There is an obligation to return a gift in a culturally appropriate manner. Failure to do so likely ends the reciprocal relationship. Reciprocity requires adequacy of response but not necessarily mathematical equality. A common way of creating and continuing bonds between people.

Restorative law

Emphasizes dispute resolution, and damage restitution.

Medicine person

A part-time religious specialist who has unique power acquired through their initiative. Thought to possess exceptional abilities for dealing with supernatural beings and powers. Acquire religious power individually, usually during times of great solitude and isolation, receiving special gifts such as healing or divination. Usually undergo an apprenticeship under an older shaman, with difficult stages. Not part of an organized religion, and is in direct contact with the spirit world, usually through a trance state. Spirits may help at their command to carry out curing, divining, and bewitching.

Swidden cultivation

The horticultural practice of shifting from one field to another when crop production drops due to the inevitable depletion of soil nutrients.

Cultural construction

Social construction of reality

Something which is real or exists only by virtue of the fact that people believe in it, or the fact that people give it a name or a label. Emphasizes the arbitrary nature of something which is considered to be inevitable or permanent. People are usually not aware of the arbitrary nature and artificial nature of the system of categorization used to create it. Race, ethnic groups, social groups, and all other social phenomena are socially constructed. Used in social sciences and humanities, and comes from constructivism. 

"Peace in the family"

An explanation for the universality of incest taboo. Suggested by Bronislaw Malinowski. Suggests that competition over mates would interfere with normal family functions.

Norms

The conceptions of appropriate and expected behaviour that are held by most members of the society. The socially expected behaviour pattenrs or rules for behaviour within a society. Differ from culture to culture.

Social hierarchy

Institutionalized inequality resulting in some groups recieving differential access to power, wealth, and prestige. A system whereby some members of a society are ranked higher or lower relative to other members. A common and powerful phenomenon found in most world cultures. Commonly based on age, gender, class, ethnicity, or race. Can take many forms. It has emic and etic distinctions: social scientists may identify and categorize a form of social stratification, and people may see themselves or classify forms of social inequality differently.

Enculturation

The process by which people learn the appropriate rules of their society, including acceptable behaviours, attitudes, and values. Begins at birth, and is internalized by individuals through family, language, education, and the community. Includes learning about gender roles. Children learn the language of their culture as well as roles they are to play in life. They learn and usually adopt their culture's norms.

Subsistence pattern

The main source of food used by a society.

Descriptive system

The system of kinship terminology where a father, father's brother, and mother's brother are distinguished from one another, as are a mother, mother's sister, and father's sister. Cross and parallel cousins are distinguished from one another as well as from siblings. Each and every kindred member has a separate term. More precise than other systems, and more rare. Found in peoples of southern Sudan.

Cross dressing

A person who wears the clothes and bodily adornment normally associated with the other gender. Not necessarily connected with homosexuality.

Berdache

A term used to refer to North American Indian homosexual men of the Great Plains and elsewhere in the West. In the past, led their lives as transvestites and were given respected social statuses within their societies. Formed sexual and emotional relations with men, and could marry them, usually as a second wife. Filled important social, religious, and economic roles. They could take on gender roles of women. Today, some Native American lesbians also refer to themselves with this term.

Unilateral descent

Descent that establishes group membership exclusively through either the mother's or the father's line. Either matrilineal or patrilineal descent. Twice as common as cognatic systems.

Dalit

Hariian

A caste in India. The "impure" caste. Perform tasks such as leatherworking. Some may only come out at night: "Unseeables". Their shadow is not allowed to fall upon a Brahmin.

Blood money

Weregild

Wergeld

"Man gold"

In the ancient Franks, a payment made to a murdered man's family, paid by the guilty party's kin on a sliding scale in relation to kinship degree. Compensation for the crime. Once it has been paid, the crime is essentially expunged and there is no other punishment. In small-scale societies, all crimes are considered to be torts and weregeld is viewed as an appropriate resolution. It is still an important legal principle for murder cases in some conservative Muslim nations. Survival of this legal concept can be seen in financial settlements for civil suits in the USA and other western nations.