In this paper I sketch out how Lewis Henry Morgan’s theoretical distinction between descriptive and classificatory kinship terminologies connects with ethnographic theorizing on forms of social organization. It is Morgan’s monumental book, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, that Thomas Trautmann sees as the beginning of a theoretical anthropology. However, Alfred Kroeber, in his widely quoted 1909 article, incorrectly claimed that Morgan only distinguished whether the kin terms are descriptive or classificatory, not whether the terminology is consistent with a procreatively based form of social organization (descriptive terminologies) or had a form of social organization that could not be reduced to genealogical criteria (classificatory terminologies). I will sketch out the generative logic of kinship terminologies to show that Morgan’s distinction between descriptive and classificatory terminologies depends on whether sibling relations are primary kinship relations, like the lineal relations translated by the ascending kin terms ‘mother’ and ‘father’, or are determined by kin term products such as ‘child’ of ‘parent’. Thus, Morgan’s theoretical distinction between descriptive and classificatory terminologies relates to whether sibling relations are, from an ethnographic perspective, primary or derived kinship relations, with the former the basis for classificatory terminologies and the later the basis for descriptive terminologies. Hence, the kinship theory underlying Morgan’s fundamental distinction between descriptive and classificatory terminologies cannot be isolated from ethnographic theorizing on whether sibling relations are primary or derived social relations.
