Yanomamo Case

The chart I’ve created after interviewing a family member to trace relatedness in our family is different from the kinship chart in Yanomamo, N. Chagnon, page 142. For my interview I used my sister as the interviewee to get her perspective of the kinship chart. She is the middle child so in the chart I am first then Ego (my sister) is followed by my youngest sister. Above our generation is our parents who are now divorced. Ego’s father is an only child and her patrilineal grandparents are still married together. Ego’s matrilineal grandparents had two daughter ( Ego’s mother and aunt) and a son who passed away weeks after birth. Ego’s aunt had two kids with her husband, those kids are ego’s cross cousins. Ego’s matrilineal grandparents divorced and her grandfather remarried. He got another divorce when he retired to the Dominican Republic and remarried a younger woman over there, with whom he had a daughter eight years ago. That daughter is Ego’s cross aunt.

In the Yanomamo kin chart on page 142 the general principles or encouragements are to marry a cousin or someone in your village. Ego’s perspective of our Kin and Yanomamo’s are very different because the men do not go for women they are in any way related to. Women did it for protection and relatedness.Patrilineal descent ideal kin chart consists of creating bilateral cross cousin marriages. the Yanomamo society can be divided into two intermarriages on any sides. Half of kin gives women to one side and to balance it the other half receives the women they expect to marry. Unlike Ego’s kin the men are marrying someone related like their “Father’s sister’s daughter” also known as your cousin.