KINSHIP is both a social phenomenon found in all human societies and one of the most central and contested concepts in anthropology. It is a pervasive symbolic practice of creating socially differentiated categories of people and the relationships among them, especially those relationships that concern the reproduction of people and that constitute human "being." A significant aspect of kinship relationships is that they apply not only to contemporaries, but transcend the living to include predecessors and ancestors as well as descendants and future generations.

Who is a relative and how relations of kinship are defined varies from culture to culture. But the ideas and principles underpinning these different kinships systems are often closely associated with religious ideas, addressing existential questions for all human beings, such as: What makes people humans? How do people come into the world? What constitutes a person? What happens to persons when they die...