Approaches to kinship descent theory
Historically, there was a clear division between those who saw kinship as based upon *descent links between parents and children, and those who concentrated on *alliance relationships created by marriage. Radcliffe-Brown was foremost among those who saw kinship primarily in terms of descent (1950:4). Along with other descent theorists like fFortes and fJack Goody, he drew a clear distinction between kin, relatives by descent, and faffines, relatives through marriage; hence his frequent use of the phrase 'kinship and marriage', implying that the latter was somehow external to the former. He further distinguished fagnates, persons descended from a common *ancestor through males only, from *cognates, descendants of a common ancestor or ancestress counting descent through both males and females.
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