Kinship
This article reflects the long-standing use of the term
kinship in anthropology, which refers to the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of most humans in most societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox states that "the study of kinship is the study of what man does with these basic facts of life - mating, gestation, parenthood, socialization, siblingship etc." Human society is unique, he argues, in that we "are working with the same raw material as exists in the animal world, but can conceptualize and categorize it to serve social ends." These social ends include the socialization of children, and the formation of basic economic, political, and religious groups. Within anthropology,
kinship can refer both to
the patterns of social relationships themselves, or it can refer to
the study of the patterns of social relationships in one or more human cultures.