KINSHIP – DEFINITION, TYPES, USAGE AND IMPORTANCE AND REGIONAL VARIATIONS
Man does not live alone in society. From birth till death he is surrounded by a number of people. Some of these people are his relatives, some are friends, and some are neighbours while all others are strangers and unknown to him. He is bound to all these people who are related to him either on the basis of blood or marriage. The relations based on blood or marriage may be close or distant. The bond of blood or marriage which binds people together in groups is called kinship. According to the Dictionary of Anthropology, the kinship system includes society recognized relationships based on supposed as well actual genealogical ties. These relationships are the result of social interaction and are recognized by society.
The kinship system represents one of the basic social institutions. Kinship is universal and in most societies plays a significant role in the socialization of individuals and the maintenance of group solidarity, It is supremely important in primitive societies and extends its influence on almost all their activities - social, economic, political, religious, etc.
DEFINITION
Robin Fox, “Kinship is simply the relations between ‘kin’ that is persons related by real, putative or fictive consanguinity.”
Aberchrombie and others, “The social relationships deriving from blood ties (real and supposed) and marriage are collectively referred to as kinship.
A.R. Radcliffe Brown, Kinship is “a system of dynamic relations between person and person in a community, the behavior of any two persons in any of these relations being regulated in some way, and to a greater or less extent by social usage.”
TYPES OF KINSHIP
Kinship is of two types:
Affinal Kinship: The bond of marriage is called affinal kinship. When a person marries, he establishes a relationship not only with the girl whom he marries but also with a number of other people in the girl’s family. Moreover, it is not only the person marrying who gets bound to the family members of the girl but his family members also get bound to the family members of the girl. Thus, a host of relations are created as soon as a marriage takes place. For example, after marriage, a person becomes not only a husband but also becomes brother-in-law and son-in-law.
Consanguineous Kinship: The bond of blood is called consanguineous kinship. The consanguineous kin is related through blood whereas the affinal kin is related through marriage. The bond between parents and their children and that between siblings is consanguineous kinship. In this connection, it may be actual as well as supposed. Among polyandrous tribes the actual father of a child is unknown. An adopted child is treated as if it was one’s own biologically produced child. Thus, blood relationships may be established not only on a biological basis but also on the basis of social recognition.
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TYPES OF KINSHIP
Kinship is of two types:
Affinal Kinship: The bond of marriage is called affinal kinship. When a person marries, he establishes a relationship not only with the girl whom he marries but also with a number of other people in the girl’s family. Moreover, it is not only the person marrying who gets bound to the family members of the girl but his family members also get bound to the family members of the girl. Thus, a host of relations are created as soon as a marriage takes place. For example, after marriage a person becomes not only a husband but also becomes brother-in-law and son-in-law. Here it may be noted that in the English language a number of relations created by marriage are referred to by the same term. Thus, the same term brother-in-law is used for bahnoi sala, jija and saddhu. On marriage a person also becomes foofa, nandoi and mausa. Likewise, a girl in marriage becomes not only a wife but also becomes daughter-in-law; she also becomes chachi, bhabhi, devrani, jethani, mami etc. Thus marriage creates a host of relationships which are called affinal kin.
Consanguineous Kinship: The bond of blood is called consanguineous kinship. The consanguineous kin is related through blood whereas the affinal kin is related through marriage. The bond between parents and their children and that between parents and their children and that between parents and their children and that between siblings is consanguineous kinship. Siblings are the children of the same parents. Thus, son, brother, sister, uncle (chacha), elder uncle (tau) nephew and cousin are consanguineous kin, i.e., related through blood. In this connection, it may be pointed out that blood relationship may be actual father of a child is unknown. An adopted child is treated as if it were one’s own biologically produced child. Thus, blood relationships may be established not only on biological basis but also on the basis of social recognition.
KINSHIP USAGES
Kinship usages refer to definite and comparatively stable patterns of behaviour of different members of a kin group. Every relationship involves a particular type of behaviour. The behaviour of a son towards his father is one of respect while the behaviour of husband towards wife is one of love. The behaviour of a brother towards his sister is one of affection. There are some usages that regulate the behaviour of different kin. These usages are called kinship usages. Some of these usages are the following:
AVOIDANCE
In all societies, avoidance of one kind or another is observed in the relations between a daughter-in-law and her parents-in-law or a son-in-law with his parents-in-law. For example, older Navaho Women traditionally wore tiny bells known as ‘mother-in-law bells’ that were designed to warn son-in-law of their approach so the men might absent themselves.
According to Tylor, avoidance is particularly due to matriarchal system. In some tribes, for example, Zuni and Hopi, after marriage, the bridegroom stays in the family of the wife. Since he has no definite status in the family, he is avoided. After procreation, his status becomes somewhat more definite and better.
According to James Frazer, avoidance is due to sexual reasons. He based his theory particularly upon the brother-sister avoidance in Vedda of Ceylone and the inhabitants of Trobriand island. Among Vedda people, the brother and sister cannot live under the same roof nor can they eat together. This avoidance is for checking sexual relationships among heterosexual people.
Sigmund Freud explained avoidance with psycho-analytical theory which refers to sex relationships. According to him sex motivation is normal among persons of opposite sex. The avoidance of the mother-in-law and son-in-law relationship is due to the possibility that the mother may be reluctant to hand over her daughter to a stranger and feels displaced in the affections and loyalty. Since the daughter lives with the mother for so many years, she has natural attachment to her. This made the mother-in-law’s incestuous feelings towards her sons-in-law.
According to Lowie, both in-laws have different cultural and social values. It is possible that the mores of wife’s side may be different from the mores of the son-in-law’s side. In matriarchal family, the bridegroom is different from other members of the family since he comes from the other family. Hence he is avoided. Similarly, in a patriarchal family, the daughter-in-law is avoided.
Turner High has explained avoidance in terms of conflicts. According to him, it is the best method to achieve harmonious relationships. In a family the status of the daughter-in-law is peculiar. She has to serve the in-laws in the family. Therefore she cannot understand proper relationships leading to conflict with the in-laws. Avoidance is an attempt to solve the problem of this conflict.
According to Radcliffe Brown, the main cause of avoidance is social. Love and hate are natural among members of two different families. Hatred is harmful for the organization of the family. Avoidance is a cure for this conflict.
In all societies, the usages of avoidance are observed in one form or another. It means that the two kins should remain away from each other. Thus, a father-in-law or mother-in-law should avoid daughter-in-law or son-in-law.
JOKING RELATIONSHIP
The reverse of the avoidance relationship is an extreme degree of familiarity expressed through joking relationships. Such joking may amount to exchange of abuse and banter, obscene and vulgar references to sex, damage of each other’s property, ridicule and so on. Joking relationship may be indicative of equality and mutual reciprocity. They may also be indicative of potential sexual relationship. A joking relationship with one’s maternal uncle’s wife may be indicative of the practice of inheriting all the property of one’s maternal uncle, including his wife. It may be indicative of a joking relationship with the maternal uncle himself, expressed through sexual intimacy with his wife. Such usages have been reported from the matrilineal Hopi and Trobriand Islanders.
Among many primitive folks like Oraon and the Baiga joking relationship has been found to prevail between grandparents and grandchildren. S.C. Roy has reported an instance of a grandfather marrying his granddaughter among the Oraon. Verrier Elwin has reported a similar instance from the Baiga where a grandson married his own grandmother. Radcliffe Brown regards the joking relationship as having a symbolic meaning that joking relations may be a kind of friendliness expressed by a show of hostility. Chapple and Coon regard this usage as the way to stimulate a higher interaction rate between various people which it may not be possible to do otherwise.
Thus, a joking relationship may not be essentially reciprocal and so it can be used as a mechanism of social control.
COUVADES
Couvade is a kinship usage reported from among primitive tribes like the Khasi and the Toda. The practice consists in making a husband lead the life of an invalid along with his wife whenever she gives birth to a child. He refrains from active life, goes on a sick diet and observes certain taboos.
This kinship usage involving wife and husband has been variously explained. Some authorities have seen in it a survival of the traditional stage of the maternal-paternal complex. In the maternal-paternal stage, where residents may be matrilocal, but inheritance patrilineal, or conversely, some conventional methods of ascertaining paternity are needed-keeping the father confined in a room or the customary bow and arrow ceremony of the Toda. Malinowski believed couvades to be a cementing bond of married life and a social mechanism designed to secure paternal affection. Raglan regards it as an irrational belief which may be prior to marriage and even a contributory cause of the emergence of marriage as an institution.
Some writers have sought to give a psycho-analytical explanation. They have attributed this usage to the husband’s desire to lighten the wife’s discomforts by a process of participation through identification.
TEKNONYMY
Teknonymy refers to the usage, all over rural people of India and some tribal groups like the Khasi as well and also elsewhere among the primitive societies of some parts of the world, a person referred to as father or the mother of his/her child, i.e., teknonymously. Tylor regarded this kinship usage also as a relic of the former supremacy of women, who never accepted the son-in-law as one of them in their residence and recognized a secondary relationship with him through the children he helped to bring to life. Through extension, a mother may likewise be referred to teknonymously.
AVUNCULATE
There are some matrilineal societies where the maternal uncle of a child takes the most important authoritative place in his life, in most occasions he becomes the main guardian even out weighing his father. Such position of the maternal uncle is the convention which is known as ‘avunculate’. In such case, the maternal uncle enjoys a pre-eminent place in the life of the child, he bears some special obligations towards his sister’s children, he enjoys a prior right over their loyalties and he is even obliged to transmit his property to his nephew. This kind of authority enjoyed by the maternal uncle is designated as avuncupotestiality. If the maternal uncle takes the responsibility of rearing up the children of his sister, keeping them in his residence, the condition is referred to as avunculocal residence.
AMITATE
A type of kinship usage relates father’s sister too closely with the children that are known as ‘amitate’. Here father’s sister becomes prominent in matters of rights and authority. She acts almost as the head of the household and exercises her supreme authority over her brother’s children’s. Radcliffe Brown and I. Schapera considered this person as ‘female-father’. Amitate may be easily explicable in a patrilineal society; it has to be explained in the context of the matrilineal culture-complex of the Trobriand Islander. It would seem that whereas avunculate in a matrilineal society and amitate in a patrilineal society may be the outcome of an obvious emphasis on one particular group of relatives, such emphasis expressed through avunculate in patrilineal society and amitate in a matrilineal society may be the social mechanism for preventing certain kinship bonds from falling into neglect. Or, to borrow once again the phraseology of Chapple and Coon, these usages are the way to keep up the rate of interaction between such kin among whom it may fall low due to their belonging to such groups which are not taken into account while reckoning descent.
IMPORTANCE OF KINSHIP SYSTEM
Kinship is a universal system organized around the universal processes of mating and reproduction. In most societies kinship plays a significant role in the socialization of individuals and the maintenance of group solidarity. In pre-industrial, simple societies kinship relations may be so extensive and significant that in effect they constitute the social system. In more complex societies kinship normally forms a fairly small part of the totality of social relations which make up the social system.
Simple societies do not have, like modern complex societies, highly organized and relatively autonomous institutions such as the state, industrial enterprises, the army, schools and religious organizations like churches, sporting and recreational associations, trade unions, and political parties. As a consequence, many activities which we in a complex society would call political, economic, educational or religious are in those societies subsumed under and carried out in the performance of kinship roles. In other words, kinship in such societies constitutes the framework within which the individual is assigned economic and political functions, acquires rights and obligations, receives community aid, etc. Evans-Pritchard in his study of The Nuer of the Southern Sudan describes how the lineage system performs the function of maintenance of law and order. This is not to imply that people’s behaviour is determined or narrowly prescribed by their kinship roles. Most individuals occupy more than one kinship role, so that there may be dilemmas and choices in the performance of a role in a particular situation, and there are often conflicts between roles; clans and lineage may fight over land. Faced with choice and conflicts, people may use their kinship roles; in small-scale societies, it is their kinship they use to gain their ends since in the absence of other well-articulated institutions it is all they have.
The kinship of today is being influenced very much by the occupational system. A villager running his business in a city will try to establish himself in the city and like to develop kins in the cities, which can help him in the promotion of his business. We may conclude by saying that “such an occupational system virtually requires the pattern of establishing or changing household according to the occupational opportunities of the husband.”
KINSHIP VARIATION IN INDIA
Iravati Karve uses a comparative analysis to look out the four cultural zones with an idea to conclude on a regional pattern of social behaviour in society. The different regions may show different local patterns. There are different types of caste due to the hierarchy and caste division and separation. Karve looks after all the processes of accommodation and acculturation in the field of kinship.
To understand the pattern of kinship in India Karve explains the configuration of the linguistic areas, caste institution and organization of family as the most essential. She breakdown the whole nation into central, northern, southern and eastern keeping in mind the languages used, caste and organization of the family.
North Indian kinship systems
In north India, there are (a) terms for blood relations, and (b) terms for affinal relations. There are primary terms for three generations of immediate relations and the terms for one generation are not exchangeable for those of another generation. All the other terms are derived from the primary terms.
The northern zone consists of the areas of the Sindhi, Punjabi, Hindi (and Pahari), Bihari, Bengali, Assami and Nepali. In these areas, caste endogamy, clan exogamy and incest taboos regarding sexual relations between primary kins are strictly observed.
The rules of marriage are highly exhaustive because a large body of people is excluded from alliance relationships. a person must not marry in his patri-family and must avoid marriage with sapindra kin. Gotras in the old Brahmanic sense of the word are exogamous units. Sometimes a caste is also divided into endogamous gotras or exogamous gotras as also gotras which do not seem to have any function in marriage regulations.
South India kinship systems
There are five regions in the southern zone consisting of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the regions of mixed languages and people. The southern zone presents a very complicated pattern of kinship system and family organisation. Here, patrilineal and patrilocal systems dominate. However, some sections have matrilineal and matrilocal systems, and they possess features of both types of kinship organisation. Some castes allow polygamy, whereas some have both polygyny and polyandry. In Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and among some castes of Malabar, patrilineal and patrilocal joint families dominate as in the northern zone.
In southern India kinship systems, no distinction is made between patrilineal or matrilineal, therefore father’s brother is equated with mother’s sister’s husband and both their children being parallel cousins so no marriage is allowed between them. To its contrast father’s sister’s group is equated with mother’s brother’s group, hence mother’s brother is equivalent to father’s sister’s husband.
Central India kinship systems
The central zone comprises the linguistic regions of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh (now Chhattisgarh also), Gujarat and Kathiawad, Maharashtra and Orissa with their respective languages, namely, Rajasthani, Hindi, Gujarati and Kathiawadi, Marathi and Oriya. All these languages are of Sanskritic origin, and therefore, they have an affinity to the northern zone. But there are pockets of Dravidian languages in this zone. There is also some impact on the eastern zone. Tribal people have their unique and somewhat different situations compared to other people in the region.
In regard to the central zone the following points may be noted:
Cross-cousin marriages are prevalent which are not witnessed in the north zone. Cross-cousins are children of siblings of the opposite sex, parallel cousins are children of the siblings of the same sex.
Many castes are divided into exogamous clans like the north zone.
In some castes, exogamous clans are arranged in a hypergamous hierarchy.
Eastern India kinship systems
The eastern zone is not compact and geographically it is not contiguous like other zones. Besides northern languages, Mundari and Monkhmer languages are also spoken. The main communities are Korku, Assamese, Saka, Semang and Khasi. The other languages are Mon, Khmer and Chain. The area consists of a number of Austro-Asiatic tribes.
People with Mundari linguistic backgrounds have the patrilocal or patrilineal system. Ho and Santhal practice cross-cousin marriage but only the time till when the father’s sister or the mother’s brother is alive, marriage with the daughter is not allowed. Therefore cross-cousin marriage is rare to be seen. For example, Bondo people do not follow cross-cousin marriages.
Hence, kinship is a complex component existing in society and the most fundamental principle of society. Different regions in India follow different types of kinship systems and there are many factors that have brought changes in kinship such as migration, education, and mobility etc.
DIFFERENCES
The negative and positive marriage rules
In North India, a marriage alliance links one family with an entirely new family and in fact one village with another village. One’s affines generally live in other villages and do not participate in one’s day-to-day affairs. This results in co-activity taking place among only the lineage members.
In South India, most marriage alliances occur within a small kin group and the emphasis is laid on relationships on both the father’s and mother’s sides. Further, there is almost no territorial exogamy. This results in co-activity among the affines.
Composition of kinship groups the kinship terminology
North India reflects the separation of kin related by blood from those related by marriage. While in South India, the kinship terminology emphasizes the symmetry of relationships between the affines.
The South Indian or Dravidian terminology is structured on the principle of classificatory kin relationships and divides a generation into parallel and cross relatives. This distinction is crucial in South India which is irrelevant for the purpose of marriage alliances in North India.
Principle of Hypergamy:
This means that the bride-givers are distinctly inferior to the bride-takers. In South India, marriage is with one’s matrilateral and sometimes patrilateral cross-cousin and sometimes intergeneration. This situation makes it difficult to brand the bride-takers as superior to the bride-givers. Already related kin cannot be treated as lower or higher after a marriage.
It is easier to treat bride-givers as lower in North India because marital alliances are mostly made between unrelated and relatively unknown family groups.
Status Of Women
In North India, a girl enters the family of total strangers when she gets married and leaves her natal home. Her behaviour in her father’s house is quite different from how she is expected to behave in her father-in-law’s house.
In South India, from the woman’s point of view, there is little difference between her family of birth and the family of marriage. She is not a stranger in her husband’s house.
SIMILARITIES
The link between caste and kinship:
In both North and South India, caste and kinship are inextricably intertwined. The all India system of hierarchy and social stratification permeates the kinship system as well. The notions of purity and pollution are found influencing the kinship systems in terms of protecting the purity of one’s blood.
Unilineality of The Two Kinship Systems:
In both North and South India, the application of one principle of descent either matrilineal or patrilineal, the kinship systems in both regions emphasize the role of affinity in social relationships and networks. This means that relationships established through marriages are important in both systems. The distinction between bride-givers and bride-takers is recognized in both North and South India. The degree of emphasis on affinity does highlight the essential difference between the two systems.
Dumont has tried to discover the underlying similarities between the kinship systems in North and South India. According to him, the very recognition of the distinction between bride-givers and bride-takers across North and South India shows the basic similarity in the kinship system.
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