Classificatory kinship

Classificatory kinship systems, as defined by Lewis Henry Morgan, put people into society-wide kinship classes based on abstract relationship rules. These may have to do with genealogical relations locally (e.g., son to father, daughter to mother, daughter to father), but the classes bear no overall relation to genetic closeness. If a total stranger marries into the society, for example, they may be placed in the appropriate class opposite their spouse. It uses kinship terms that merge or equate genealogically distinct relatives from one another. Here, the same term is used for different kin.

Part of a series on the
Anthropology of kinship
Basic concepts Family Lineage Affinity Consanguinity Marriage Incest taboo Endogamy Exogamy Moiety Monogamy Polygyny Polygamy Concubinage Polyandry Bride price Bride service Dowry Parallel / cross cousins Cousin marriage Levirate Sororate Posthumous marriage Joking relationship Clan Cohabitation Fictive / Milk / Nurture kinship Descent Cognatic / Bilateral Matrilateral Lineal Collateral House society Avunculate Linealities Ambilineality Unilineality Matrilineality Patrilineality Household forms and residence Extended Matrifocal Matrilocal Neolocal Nuclear Patrilocal
Terminology Kinship terminology Classificatory terminologies By group Iroquois Crow Omaha Eskimo (Inuit) Hawaiian Sudanese Dravidian (debated)
Case studies Australian Aboriginal Burmese Chinese Philippine Polyandry in Tibet / in India Feminist Chambri Mosuo Sexuality Coming of Age in Samoa
Major theorists Diane Bell Tom Boellstorff Jack Goody Gilbert Herdt Don Kulick Roger Lancaster Louise Lamphere Eleanor Leacock Claude Lévi-Strauss Bronisław Malinowski Margaret Mead Henrietta Moore Lewis H. Morgan Stephen O. Murray Michelle Rosaldo Gayle Rubin David M. Schneider Marilyn Strathern
Related articles Alliance theory Matrilineal / matrilocal societies Feminist anthropology Sex and Repression in Savage Society Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship "The Traffic in Women"
Social anthropology Cultural anthropology

The Dravidian kinship-term system, discovered in 1964, is an example of a classificatory kin-term logic.

Morgan believed this resulted from a "promiscuous" stage of evolutionary development, where it would have been impossible for tribes or families to tell a father from an uncle, a cousin from a brother and a son from a nephew. However modern anthropologists do not believe in this 'stage'.