Descent group

A descent group is a set of people who trace kinship through a socially recognized line of ancestry. It may organize identity, inheritance, marriage, and obligations.

Kinship: A system of social relationships grounded in ancestry, marriage, adoption, or other recognized ties. Descent groups formalize kinship through shared ancestry.
Matrilineal descent: A descent rule in which group membership is transmitted through the mother's line. Matrilineal groups pass affiliation from mothers to their children.
Cognatic descent: A descent system that recognizes connections through both male and female lines, with rules varying across societies. It contrasts with groups that restrict membership to a single parental line.
Nuer: A Nilotic people of South Sudan and neighboring regions whose social organization has been studied extensively by anthropologists. Nuer segmentary lineages are a classic case of descent groups organizing political relations.
Unilineal descent: A rule of affiliation that traces descent through one parental line, either maternal or paternal. It supplies the single-line ancestry rule used by many descent groups.
Patrilineal descent: A descent rule in which group membership is transmitted through the father's line. Patrilineal groups pass affiliation from fathers to their children.
Kindred: A person's network of relatives traced through both maternal and paternal sides. Unlike a descent group, a kindred is centered on an individual and overlaps with other people's networks.
Trobriand Islands: An island group in Papua New Guinea known for ethnographic studies of matrilineal social organization. Trobriand society illustrates matrilineal descent groups and the importance of maternal ancestry.
Bilateral descent: A system that recognizes kinship through both the mother's and the father's lines. It contrasts with descent groups organized around only one line of ancestry.
Inheritance: The transfer of property, rights, or obligations after a person's death or under established succession rules. Descent-group membership can determine who inherits property or rights.

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