ANT 201 Anthropology of Marriage and the Family

1. Identify and analyse the various social, cultural, and biological factors that shape different marriage, kinship, and family systems.
2. Develop a clear understanding of the main developments in anthropological theory regarding human families, marriage, and kinship systems.
3. Develop a familiarity with anthropological terminology regarding human family, and kinship systems such as common kinds of descent, marriage (single or plural), post-marital residence and alliance (matrilineal or cognatic descent, cross-cousin marriage etc.).
4. Recognize that links of relatedness (through marriage or kinship) in different cultures may follow very different cultural logics from our own and give examples of such alternative constructions.
5. Develop a critical awareness that ‘kinship’, ‘family’, and ‘marriage’ are culturally-loaded and contested terms that anthropology (among many other social sciences) contributes to these debates.
6. Form an understanding of how recent and emerging forms of reproductive technologies, forms of political reorganization, and ethnic conflicts impact how people conceive of kinship, marriage, and the family.
7. Recognize connections between the ethnographic and theoretical work on marriage, kinship and the family, as well as with parallel work in other areas of social life and anthropology, particularly political, economic and medical anthropology and the anthropology of gender.
8. Critically reflect on American marriage, kinship, and family customs and values through cross-cultural and historical comparisons.