The Musuo Of Chin Matrilineal Kinship - 902 Words

The Musuo of China: Matrilineal Kinship The practice of matrilineal kinship is considered a myth by some cultures, but it is indeed very real for the Musuo of China. Matrilineality is the practice of linear descent through the ancestry of females. Many Western civilizations have a misconception of what is considered normal on a global scale, but many practices do, in fact, differ widely between different cultures. To illustrate this, the Musuo’s traditions and values in regards to marriage and family are based solely on matrilineal kinship, while America’s â€Å"melting pot† ideation encourages unilineal descent, in which the ancestry line can be traced to the wife and/or the husband. In the paper I will discuss the cultural nature of the Musuo, and the way that marriage and family norms in Musuo differ from the typical American ideation of family. One indication that Musuo traditions differ from the American culture in terms of marriage is the lack of a formal u nion between wife and husband, as well as the American idea of father and child. According their article â€Å"Land of the Walking Marriage† (2000), Lu Yuan and Sam Mitchell explain that Musuo fathers do not raise their own children, but instead cater to their sister’s children’s needs. American cultural norms include the belief that blood relatives have a biological attachment to each other, which makes this type of kinship unacceptable to many conservative-minded Americans. Moreover, the dynamics of marital behavioral