Page 79 - DSOC402_SOCIOLOGY_OF_KINSHIP_ENGLISH

Unit 11: Changes in Land and Lineage Structure

parts of South Asia and Africa. Lineages do not develop, as people have many ancestors, Notes
and so the social structure is based on nuclear families related through ties of marriage.
(c) In a few societies in West and Central Africa and parts of South Asia, property was tradi-
tionally passed on through mother-child links, even though it is still controlled by men.
This means that usually a man inherits property from his brother mother’s brother rather
than his father -- whose property will go to his own sister’s sons. This kind of system is
usually called “matrilineal”. There are other problems -- i.e. should women live with their
brothers or husbands, and should children live with their fathers or their mothers’ broth-
ers? Often residential structures are unstable and both women and children move around
between houses frequently. Many of these systems have broken down into cognatic sys-
tems as parents and children have increasingly lived together, and as fathers have passed
on their property to their own children. A good example is the Nyar of southern India,
among whom brothers and sisters used to live together: the Nyar were a military caste, so
many of the young men moved backwards and forwards on military service. The result was
that women underwent a symbolic marriage ceremony when young, and then had children
by lovers. Under these circumstances matrilineal kinship worked quite well, but the system
broke down when the military structure changed. Another good example are the Ashanti of
Ghana, where, even today in the rural areas brothers and sisters live together, with a man’s
wives coming to stay with him in rotation. Children inherit houses and land from their
mother’s brothers. But nearer the towns, it has long been more common for men and their
wives to live together permanently with their children.

11.4 Continuity and Change: The Institution of Kinship
The kinship pattern in Indian society is generally viewed in the context of Hindu joint family
and therefore has not received much attention. However, like the studies of family in the urban
contact, this area of kinship again suffers from the same dichotomous assertions of opposition
between the rural and the urban. But ever since the ‘break up’ theories of joint family in urban
communities have been proved incorrect a few interesting studies on urban kinship in India
have reported elaborate network of kinship in Indian cities. Gandhi, R. (1983 : 25) in his study
of family, kin group and sub-caste as the realms of primary inter actions of the Indian urbanite
found that as many as 36.7 percent of the women of the Das Bania sub-caste had their parental
or natal kin (parents, brothers, their wives, sisters, their husbands) living in the same city, simi-
larly, the largest proportion, about 55 percent of the respondents were found to interact most
frequently with their natal kin, these findings have further implications, according to Gandhi,
when we compare them with Vatuk’s study of the north Indian city of Meerut.
Vatuk (1972: 140-41) believed that because of the patrilateral emphasis in the north Indian kin-
ship system, a wife is expected to interact most frequently and intensively with her affines,
agnates of her husband and their wives. However, in Meerut, she found that the significant
number of married women who live near their natal kin (i.e. their own parents) interact more
frequently with them than with the affinal kin. It is true that under such circumstances, the
bonds between the women and her natal kin could be stronger as such interactions are face to
face, primary and reciprocal and they tend to maintain the continuity and solidarity with her
natal kin unit.
However, Vatuk assumes that there was a strong patrilateral emphasis in Meerut prior to ur-
banization. Gandhi believes that traditionally the cities of India have always manifested strong
ties with both the natal and the affinal kin of women as it has been possible for them to marry
within the city where their parents (i.e. natal unit) lived unlike the situation in the north Indian
villages where village exogamy separa ted the woman from her natal village after marriage.
Vatuk, however, arrives at the conclusion that so far as changes in the kinship system are con-
cerned there is an increasing tendency toward neolocal residence in the city. However the weak-
ness of this interpretation is that she presumes that the neolocal residence for a married couple

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 73