UPSC MAINS SOCIOLOGY SYLLABUS
Paper 1 – Systems of Kinship:
(a) Family, household, marriage.
(b) Types and forms of family.
(c) Lineage and descent
(d) Patriarchy and sexual division of labour
(e) Contemporary trends
Paper 2 – (v) Systems of Kinship in India:
(a) Lineage and descent in India.
(b) Types of kinship systems.
(c) Family and marriage in India.
(d) Household dimensions of the family.
(e) Patriarchy, entitlements and sexual division of labour.
INTRODUCTION
From Morgan to Schneider, Durkheim to Levis-Strauss, W.H.R. Rivers to Malinowski and from Radcliffe-Brown to Fortes, all had taken up the study of kinship relations. Fortes work on The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi based on structural-functional approach takes into account kinship in relation to social structure, which according to Fortes is the fundamental principle of Tallensi kinship relations as they enter into the organisation of collective life. Levis-Strauss in Elementary Structures in Kinship had made an analysis of the systems of kinship and marriage among many aboriginal societies.
MATRIARCHY OR PATRIARCHY
L.H. Morgan as early as in 1851 and 1877 had indicated the early society to be matriarchal in nature. J.J. Bachofen in 1861 had advocated mother right as the predecessor of father right in his work Das Mutterrecht (Mother Right). Bachofen in his work based on three fictitious societies had argued that in the initial stages of civilisation there was complete anarchy or no order. A stage that was associated with free sex or sexual promiscuity with no social taboos or concepts of family, marriage etc., thus, leading to the serious questions of child rearing, sexual access and social authority. At this stage woman as the mother of the child took control and a society based on woman rule or matriarchy (mother right) came up.
Whereas, in Ancient Law Kinship and Gender, Sir Henry Maine had stated that patriarchy was the first form of family. He based his work on the study of ancient legal systems of ancient Rome, Islamic law and the Brahmanical laws as encoded by Manu. While, McLennan’s work Primitive Marriage, which studied marriage systems also reflected Bachofen’s view on mother right. The debate of matriarchy versus patriarchy still continues as we come upon matrilineal societies which are not necessarily based on matriarchy.
KINSHIP AND GENDER – CASE STUDY
Leela Dube’s Women and Kinship: Comparative Perspectives on Gender in South and South-East Asia (1997), which is one of the pioneering works in this field, is being taken up in this section. The comparison is between the two regions of Asia—South Asia predominantly patrilineal and South-East Asia predominantly bilateral, with a presence of matriliny in both.
Dube’s work takes into account the various aspects of kinship i.e., marriage, conjugal relations, implications of residence, rights over space and children, family structures and kin networks, work, female sexuality, and limits set by bodily processes in a comparative study. The study depicted a striking difference in the two regions. South-East Asian women showed extraordinary level of independence in economic and social life and social equality between the sexes was also seen due to the exposure of education. This contrasted majorly with the situation in South Asia, characterised by strong patrileany, patrilocal family structure, women lacks knowledge in terms of their rights, and concerns about female sexuality.
Catholic influences have reflected in constrains on the women folk in Filipino, though in legal matters in Philipines and Thailand, women enjoyed equal rights in terms of inheritance and other resources. The law allows equitable division of conjugal property and in terms of custody of children; a mother’s status is always strong.
GENDER IN CURRENT KINSHIP STUDIES
Marilyn Strathern’s After Nature, explores kinship relations after the coming of the new age reproductive technologies. Herein, Strathern argues that the new technologies have brought a new meaning ‘nature’ which was earlier taken for granted. Technological developments have opened up avenues which were earlier not available to the consumer resulting in destabilisation of earlier notion of nature. The effects of new technologies such as sperm banks, in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and surrogate motherhood which allow one to choose rather than nature take its course leads to question in kinship relations.
Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship by Kath Weston (1991) is yet another work in the field of contemporary anthropology in gender and kinship studies. This work looks at the construction of identity in the domain of kinship not based on blood or marriage but by choice- ties between gay men and lesbian. Weston’s work opened up a relatively unexplored avenue for social anthropologists to study the gay and lesbian relationships where people create ties as families and friendships based on the idea of commitment.
CONCLUSION
The study of gender and kinship basically did away with the notion that kinship is simply biology but brought into focus the fact that it is more a human creation factored by culture. We have seen how the biological creation of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ have been interpreted as ‘male’ and ‘female’ in different societies. The construction varies in relation to a patrilineal or a matrilineal society. With the passage of time the focus has also shifted from the mere study of kinship relations to the study of kinship based on the changing patterns of relationships like the live-in, lesbian-gay, single parent etc.
