Classificatory Kinship

Classificatory kinship, as defined by anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, describes kinship terminology systems that place people into society-wide kinship classes based on abstract relationship rules rather than strict genealogical distance, using the same kinship term for genealogically distinct relatives who fall into the same class. These classes may track genealogical relations at a local level, such as son to father or daughter to mother, but the classes as a whole bear no fixed overall relationship to genetic closeness; if a total stranger marries into the society, for example, they may be placed into the class appropriate to their new spouse's position. The Dravidian kinship-term system, identified as a distinct type in 1964, is treated as an example of classificatory kin-term logic. Morgan attributed the origin of classificatory systems to what he believed was an early promiscuous stage of human social evolution, in which it would have been impossible for a tribe or family to distinguish a father from an uncle, a cousin from a brother, or a son from a nephew, though modern anthropologists no longer accept this evolutionary-stage explanation.