Cultural Anthropology

Kinship in industrial societies becomes less important as new structures and organizations take over the primary functions of kinship groupings.

The two major types of families found throughout the world are the extended family and the nuclear family.

Rules of endogamy in Hawaiian chiefdoms actually resulted in sibling marriages.

The dominance of males over females was common in many chiefdom societies.

Iroquois tribal society was organized around matrilineal descent groups, the members of which lived together in a longhouse, had collective rights over land and tools, and were influential in decision-making processes.

Since social class in the United States is an achieved status, factors such as family background, the economy, and ethnic background do not have any influence on social mobility.

Chiefdoms are hierarchically ranked societies.

A major factor leading to the diminishing importance of the extended family in industrial societies was the high rate of geographic mobility.

A cross-cousin is the offspring of one's father's sister or one's mother's brother.

Since statuses are fixed in industrial states, individuals in these societies are unable to move into different social classes from the one in which they were born.

Cross-cultural research has shown that societies engaged in external warfare (warfare at long distances from home) develop matrilocal residence rules.

Because of both the strict marriage rules and postmarital residence rules found in hunter-gatherer societies, it is very difficult to obtain a divorce.

In agricultural states, marriages among the elite were usually exogamous, while those among the peasantry were usually endogamous in nature.

If a tribal society has norms that prescribe cross-cousin or parallel-cousin marriage and an individual does not have a cousin in the particular category, that individual must remain single for the rest of his or her life since no mates fit the norm.

Small-scale societies tend to have more social stratification than large-scale societies because there are fewer people to occupy the statuses and play the roles.

Polygyny was rare in chiefdom societies because it diluted the power of a single ruling lineage.

Brideservice occurs when an eligible woman offers her domestic services to her future or potential husband's family in exchange for allowing her to marry their son.

Polygyny appears to be an ecologically and economically adaptive strategy for many tribal societies.

Most cultures with matrilineal social organizations are found in matriarchal states where females have political and economic power.

Age is a universal principle used in prescribing social status within a sociocultural system.