A Field Guide to the Kinship Diagrams of Fox
(Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective)
(page 1 of 7)
(next page)Ch. 1. Diagram 1; p. 36. Conjugal family.
Note that in his stylized schematics, Fox makes things orderly
by always depicting one male and one female offspring. The real
world is of course not so orderly. Imagine that the circle is
any reasonable number of females (0 to n); the triangle
any number of males, within reason for a family.
Ch. 1. Diagram 4; p. 42. A matrilineage.
The members of the matrilineage are both shaded and enclosed in the dashed box. Ascending and descending generations trace links through females (mothers & daughters).
Fox uses a solid box in this chapter to represent the matrilineage; I have used a dashed line to be consistent with his usage in later chapters.
Fox also shows the marriage relationship with a dashed line. This is his symbol to indicate a socially sanctioned, ongoing sexual relationship, which is not necessarily a co-residential, spousal relationship (think of it as a 'weak' marriage).
Diagram 5 (p. 43; not shown here) is a real instance of such a matrilineage, showing desceased ancestors (circles and triangles with strike-throughs) and the actual number of male & female offspring born to a couple. Because males in this arrangement only inseminate the females 'on behalf of the women's brothers,' the husbands of the women in the matrilineage, those linked by a dashed line in Diagram 4, are not shown in diagram 5. This can be misleading (no immaculate conceptions in kinship studies) but it does simplify.
