Kinship System

What is Kinship? a social relationship based....interpersonal relations between.....

No society can exist without having institutions of kinship, marriage and family. Despite varying modes of relations based on these institutions, there are certain universal elements emanating from the fact that there is no ‘kinshipless society’ and no ‘kinlessman’. Both from normative and structural points of view, kinship, marriage and family become the central foci of all societies irrespective of their socio-economic and political development. Normatively, kinship and marriage refer to rules and regulations regarding hierarchy, avoidance and inheritance of property. Structurally, nature and type of family, kin groups, clans, castes, etc., can be explained as collectivities and groupings in terms of their interconnections and interdependence.

Kinship can be defined as a social relationship based upon family relatedness. A kin group may be explained as a group united by ties of blood or marriage. Other than the family most of the kin groups are consanguineal. Kinship system may be considered as the customary system of statuses and roles that governs the behavior of people who are related to each other through marriage or descent from a common ancestor. It may also be described as a structured system of relationship in which kin are bound to one another by complex inter-locking ties.

Kinship systems are not subject to cumulative evolution as the evolution of technology is. Kinship systems cannot be ranked as better or worse, higher or lower. They simply represent alternative ways of doing things, namely, in terms of acknowledged rules and regulations regarding succession, inheritance and marriage.

Kinship Tree

Emphasis on interpersonal relations between individuals and groups is found in the study of kinship by Meyer Fortes. The total society is at the network of the relationships that bind individuals to each other in the ‘web’ of kinship. Kinship systems are also seen as methods of organizing marriage relations between groups. Levi-Strauss observes that through marriage members are recruited to kinship groups. A female is recruited as a wife, as a daughter-in-law and so on through her marriage to another group; and a male through his marriage is recruited as husband, son-in-law of his wife’s parents. Thus, kinship group alliances are transacted through marriage.

Robin Fox writes: “the study of kinship is the study of what he does and why he does it, and the consequences of the adoption of one alternative rather than another”. Fox further says: “the study of kinship is the study of what man does with these basic facts of life such as mating, gestation, parenthood, socialization siblingship, etc.” four basic principles outlined by Fox regarding kinship are as follows:

1. The women have children;
2. The men impregnate the women;
3. The men usually exercise control;
4. Primary kins do not mate with each other.

In its commonest definition, kinship is simply the relations between ‘kin’, that is, persons related by real, putative or fictive consanguinity as stated by Fox. However, it is difficult to define and find the ‘real’ consanguinity. Generally, we remember people up to two to three generations. Thus, a consanguine is one who is defined by the society as a person related by real or supposed blood ties. However, blood relationship in a genetic sense has not necessarily anything to do with it. A distinction is always drawn in between ‘Pater’ or legal father and the ‘Genitor’ or actual biological father. In case of adoption also a child is treated as consanguine. A female becomes a consanguine after her marriage as soon as she bears a child. Consanguinity is thus a socially defined quality. Affines are married to consanguines in the case of levirate can be taken as example.

John Beattie provides as adequate explanation of kinship. According to him, the basic categories of biological relationship are available as a means of identifying and ordering social relations. Kinship provides categories for distinguishing between the people. Hence, kinship categories are more social than jural or economic. The categories of kinship are used to define social relationships – distinct types of social behavior and particular patterns of expectations, beliefs and values. 

These social relations may be of authority and subordination, of economic exchange, of domestic cooperation, of ritual or ceremonial nature, and they may be enacted in many different ways. In this way, kinship refers to the ways and means by which social ordering takes place. But kinship is also a principle of succession, inheritance of property, bifurcation and divisions. A couple of studies have revealed that ‘factions’ in Indian villages are found corresponding to castes, sub-castes, clans and even lineages. Kinship encompasses, therefore, a whole way of life. 

It is necessary to know language, values and behavior of people in a given society to understand its kinship system. Kinship provides a guide to a very great many of the social relationships in which a person is involved in his life. It provides a way of transmitting status and property from one generation to the next. This is true about all societies irrespective of the levels of their technological and industrial advancement. Based on kinship we also find effective social groups even in modern democratic societies. Thus, realizing kinship as a complex and elaborate system, Malinowski referred it as ‘kinship algebra’.

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To know more you can visit these significant topics:
The Development of Literacy and Schooling, Commensality, Indian State, State, Indian Society, Religion, Marriage, Social Institution, Types of Marriage, Family, Community, Indology, Social Movement, Bride Wealth (Price), Nation State

Reference:

• Sharma, K. L. Indian Social Structure and Change;
• Various 

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