"I am," she said, and then she drew a fine distinction that any scholar of kinship structures would appreciate.
The meaning of an element (avunculate) exists only in relation to a kinship structure.
Now, in "Perfect Recall," she's still writing about the shifting kinship structures of late-20th-century America, but in a richer, more expansive, even elegiac register.
Anthropologist R. L. Smith (2002) refers to matrifocality as the kinship structure of a social system where the mothers assume structural prominence.
Accordingly, he grouped all possible kinship systems into a scheme containing three basic kinship structures constructed out of two types of exchange.
His insights about the significance and details of kinship structure in Native American societies influenced much following anthropological and ethnological research.
Cultural values espousing individual autonomy and self-reliance within a strong kinship structure are related to Scotch-Irish quilting techniques.
The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures.
Furthermore, the dissertation, focused on the development of new elite families in the community and the transformation of its kinship structures over the one hundred years.
Many indigenous communities also have a very complex kinship structure and in some places strict rules about marriage.