5. Persons of the same patrilineage are obliged to hold certain economic and religious responsibilities toward one another. They share unique ties of kinship which bind them together in ways which are not found among non-kin. Thus, Fortes has called kinship the"axiom of mity. "(Similar to Frosts"Hired Hand: "Home is a place, where when you go there, they have to take you in. Matrilineal Descent In matrilineal societies, a child belongs to the clan of his or her mother and not that of the father This kind of descent and inheritance is found among the Asante of West Africa, the Trobrianders of Melanesia, and the Navajo Indians of N.A. Among the Trobrianders, the continuity of the clan is not through a man's own children but through those of his sister. When descent is traced through the mother's lineage, or matriliny, the men nevertheless monopolize all the positions of power; a man's closest relative is his sister and his most immediate heir and successor is her son In such systems, therefore, the maternal uncle serves as more of an authority figure than does a childs own father. Even marriages are considered weaker or less important than the perpetuation of the ties of the matrilineage. Within such marriages, men posses few rights, beyond general sexual access to their wives; and within such families, men own few obligations to their wives and their own children. In Asante, marriage is even regarded as somewhat of a necessary inconvenience; and in-laws are considered to be somewhat of a menace. Traditional Asante households, at least during the first years of marriage, have the wife and her brother(s) under one roof. The woman's husband maintains his own household nearby. He visits his children from time to time and gives them minor gifts. But his real allegiance is to his sisters hildren.They will inherit from him. After a few years, if the marriage survives, the husband and wife will eventually co-habit under one roof. By then the identity of the children is firmly established within the matrilineage. Needless to say, Asante marriages are hardly stable and do not often last long Marriage and Forms of Alliance Assuming that unions between the closest kin are excluded by incest prohibitions, there are basically three possibilities 1. One can marry whom one likes 2. One must marry outside one's own immediate group 3. One must marry inside ones own immediate group How the group is defined and constructed varies from society to society. The second approach (out-marriage or exogamy) is common when the members of a group are already strongly united and feel little need for further social integration. Lineages and clans are often, though not always, fiercely exogamous, taking brides from those considered to be non-kin, and even enemies. Where this is the case, in-marriage is discouraged by a definition of incest that precludes marriage within the group. Incest is regarded with an almost universe disgust and