all question categories

adults
advertising
birth
children
clothing and ornamentation
conflict management
cultural adaptation
death and burial
decision-making
economic system
festivities
food
gathering
gender roles
geography
gifts and reciprocity
God
heart issues
humour
leadership
learning
legal/justice system
life cycle
marriage
music
names
old people
performing arts
politics
pregnancy
property
punishment
relatives
religion
religious system/organizations
sexual relations
sin
social control/punishment
social demography
social organization
soul
spirit world
stories
taboo
toilet training
universe
visual arts
war
weaning
witchcraft
working
youth

blog 18

blog subject:

Describe the social system of your people group.

reading:

Hiebert and Meneses

 

resource questions for blog research:

social organization

What trade routes or economic ties exist between this people and neighbouring people or urban centres or neighbouring countries?
What is the relationship between this people and the larger national/regional population?
Beyond the mother-tongue-and Culture, do the other cultural systems come from: near neighbouring peoples; early foreign colonizers/immigrants who helped form the nation; recent foreign colonizers/traders?
What boundaries exist between people in this city or people group? What is their significance for church planting?
What subgroups exist within your people group?
To what degree does the group(s) you have identified see itself as distinct within society?
To what degree does the group restrict interaction with members of other groups?
What are the patterns of social gathering for everyone: men, women, and children?
Are significant parts of these people required to function customarily in terms of two (or more) cultural systems?
What is the most important group(s) a person belongs to?
How does a person relate to the members of their ingroup(s)?
To what degree do group members see themselves as being connected together through influential relationships?
How does a person relate to members of their people group who are not in their ingroup?
How is the world of relationships organized?
What kind of boundaries are there between groups? How rigid or fuzzy are these boundaries?
How do they people identify themselves? With what specific traits would they identify someone who is a _______________ (member of their group)? How do their near neighbours identify them--i.e. with what specific traits?
How important are family relationships? What are the outer boundaries of the extended family group?
What various networks tie members of this people to other people outside the group? What are the strongest of these ties?
How many different ranks of status are recognized?
How does a person mark the transition from one rank of status to the next?
Are there any voluntary associations? Are they graded in status?
What is the status of widows? Widowers? Who looks after them?
What kind of relatives are recognized? From mother’s side? From father’s side?
How many generations are distinguished in kinship?
What is the responsibility of the mother? Father? Grandfather? Grandmother? Paternal uncle? Maternal uncle? Paternal aunt? Maternal aunt?
Are orphans recognised?
Who is responsible for orphans?
How is the family related to other structures in society: to the neighbourhood? to kin? to community organizations?
Do old people have any special organisation?
How important is the child’s peer group in socializing the child?
Which individuals are excluded from marriage because of blood relationship?
Are the relatives on the mother’s side considered blood relatives?
How do they feel about their identity and ethnicity?
Is their ethnic identity maintained more because of a sense of satisfaction in their primordial roots, or because their ethnic identity gives them economic/political advantage?
For what purposes is the family important? Marriage? Festivity? Soul power? Status?
Does a person need a sponsor from above to move up in status? Does he need supernatural sponsorship?