BSOE-146:
MARRIAGE, FAMILY AND KINSHIP
BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment Jan 2022 & July 2022
Q 1. Critically examine the descent approach to the study of kinship
ANS: Kinship in our society is used for establishing clear cut corporate social units. Each one of us is a member of such a cooperating and closely bound group of people.
One can depend upon the help and support given by such people. Such cooperating local groups are always larger than elementary families of spouses and their children.
When these groups are recognized or defined on the basis of shared descent, anthropologists call them descent groups.
Formally speaking there are six possible avenues for the transmission of descent group membership, from parents to children.
These are BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Patrilineal: Where descent is traced in the male line from father to son,
Matrilineal: Where descent is traced in the female line from mother to daughter,
Double: Where descent is traced in both the father’s line as well as mother’s line for different attributes such as movable property in one line and immovable in another,
Cognatic (bilateral): Where attributes are transmitted equally through both parents.
Here no unilineal groups can be formed but group structure can be cognatic, that is, the group of kinpersons on the father’s and mother’s side. Membership can be acquired through either the father or the mother,
Parallel descent: A very rare form of descent where descent lines are sex specific. Men transmit to their sons while women to their daughters, and
Cross or alternative type descent: This is also very rare. Here men transmit to their daughters and women to their sons.
Kinship was regarded as the theoretical and methodological core of social anthropology in the early and middle part of the 20th century.
Although comparative studies gradually abandoned an explicit evolutionist agenda, there remained an implicit evolutionary cast to the way in which kinship studies were framed.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Indeed, scholarly interest in the cross-cultural comparison of kinship institutions could be traced back to a set of questions deriving from evolutionists.
The central problem addressed by anthropologists of the early 20th century was directly related to the colonial enterprise and focused on understanding the mechanisms for maintaining political order in stateless societies.
Given that such societies lacked centralized administrative and judicial institutions—the bureaucratic machinery of the state—how were rights, duties, status, and property transınitted from one generation to the next?
Traditional societies accomplished this task by organizing around kinship relations rather than property.
This distinction arose out of the models that had been developed by Maine and Morgan, in which cultural evolution was driven by the transition from status to contract forms of organization and from corporate to individual forms of property ownership.
Prominent British social anthropologists of this period, such as Malinowski, RadcliffeBrown, Evans-Pritchard, and Fortes, generally advocated a functionalist approach to these questions.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
The major premises of functionalism were that every aspect of a culture, no matter how seemingly disparate (e.g., kinship terins, technology, food, mythology, artistic motifs), had a substantive purpose and that within a given culture these diverse structures worked together to maintain the group’s viability.
For instance, these scholars saw the family as a universal social institution that functioned primarily to rear children.
From their perspective this function was to a large degree self-evident and cross-culturally constant.
The wider groupings recruited through kinship, which were the basis of political and economic organization, were much more culturally variable and hence of greater interest.
The distinction between matrilineal and patrilineal systems did not have any obvious implications in terms of women’s political status,
although it is sometimes assumed that a matrilineal kinship system must imply women’s greater political power.
Anthropologists make a clear distinction between matriliny and matriarchy, however: the former denotes a method of reckoning kinship,
while the latter denotes a system in which women have overall political control to the exclusion of men.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Similarly, patriarchy denotes political control by men to the exclusion of women.
Although women may be more highly valued in matrilineal than patrilineal cultures, the anthropological data clearly indicate that hierarchical political systems (whether matrilineal or patrilineal) tend to be dominated by men and that no period of absolute matriarchy has ever existed.
Despite plentiful evidence to the contrary, a notional era of “pure” matriarchy has been invoked as a theme in some very diverse contexts, including not only 19th-century cultural evolutionism but also the more recent discourses of environmentalism (especially ecofeminism), Neo-Paganism, and the so-called Goddess movement.
Q 2. Cultural approach focuses on kinship as cultural ?. Discuss
ANS: In response to the often-deafening debates concerning the marriage equality movement in the US, clandestine polygamous marriages in Italy, transnational adoptions, and expanding global access to medicalized reproduction,
this Curated Collection draws together five recent essays to be published by Cultural Anthropology which critically examine the topic of kinships.
Through an array of methodological, theoretical, and textual approaches, the essays in this issue focus attention on less fainiliar, though equally instructive, practices, and imaginaries of kinship.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
We offer these essays as a challenge to reflect on the perpetual motion of the politics of kinship, as well as an invitiation to explore the rich archive on the topic to be found in Cultural Anthropology
In its 20 year history, Cultural Anthropology has published cutting edge scholarship on topics ranging from incest to genetics.
Despite the penctrating analyses that many of these studies offer, the pages of Cultural Anthropology also reflect the wavering significance of the study of kinship to anthropological scholarship.
For although attention to kinship is evident from the earliest issues of the journal, for example, Sherry Errington’s 1987 article “Incestuous Twins and the House Societies of Insular Southeast Asia”,
the journal was relatively silent on the topic of kinship for nearly a decade after the publication of Errington’s essay until the posthumous publicaiton of David Schneider’s notes on alternative kinship formations.
Schneider’s article, “The Power of Culture: Notes on Some Aspects of Gay and Lesbian Kinship in America Today”, inaugurated a debate that brought ‘homosexual kinship’ into the spotlight and drew comment from Marilyn Strathern, Richard K. Herrell, and Ramon A. Gutierrez.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
The topic of kinship remained unexamined in these pages for another decade with the exception of Susan McKinnon’s article, “Domestic Exceptions: Evans-Pritchard and the Creation of Nuer Patrilineality and Equality”.
McKinnon’s article offers an interrogation of the theoretical underpinnings of the work of one of the most influential anthropologists in the discipline of anthropology: Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard.
McKinnon’s close reading of Evans-Pritchard’s corpus on the Nuer (i.e., Naath) highlights the ‘situatedness and cultural specificity of the theoretical frameworks’ that were in use at the time of its composition.
This approach enables McKinnon to reveal the presence of a tripartite division between the domestic, the political, and the religious spheres undergirding Evans-Pritchard’s depiciton of Nuer everyday life.
Consequently, McKinnon argues that Evans-Pritchard’s presentation of the Nuer as egalitarian and patrilineal not only obsures the existence of alternative models of kinslıip and affiliation amongst the Nuer, but also reinforces his onto-epistemological orienations.
Eight years after McKinnon’s essay, Cultural Anthropology revisited the topic of kinships with the publication of two articles in its November 2008 issue: “We Were Dancing in the Club, Not on the Berlin Wall:BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Black Bodies, Street Bureaucrats, and Exclusionary Incorporation into the New Europe” by Damani James Partridge and “Runaway Stories: The Underground Micromovements of Filipina Oyomesan in Rural Japan” by Lieba Faier.
Not only do these articles share a focus on the manifest diversity in kinship formations, but their authors also both attend to how those formations are inflected by local, transnational, and global forces.
Partridge’s essay isolates a complex that he refers to as “exclusionary incorporation” in the post-Wall moment in Germany whereby “white” female, German citizens exercise judgment and discretion in their relations with their “black” sexual partners, effecting the legal regime of the state at the level of the nightclub encounter.
Partridge argues that deliberations by these women over the possibility of marriage to their “black” partners reflects German immigration and asylum laws, refracted through the lens of desire for the hypersexualized black male body,
reiterating the dynamics of the Nazi genocide and German guilt as well as the celebration of African-American culture in the post-Cold War capitalist moment.
Immigration policies also undergird Faier’s essay where she attends to the experiences of immigrant Filipina women (Oyomesan) married to Japanese men, many of whom initially arrived to Japan as employees in rural hostess bars.
In interviews with these women, Faier detects the frequency of the invocation of a strategic tactic of “running away” from their less than ideal domestic conditions.
Faier understands the practice and imaginary of “running away” as a “micromovement” that enables these women to “negotiatate the disappointing gaps that emerge between their dreams and expectations for their lives abroad and the demands and constraints that they expereince.”BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Consequently, “running away” as both practiced and imagined, provided these women with the prospect of an extradomestic space where the vulnerabilities that Japanese immigration policies in concert with the political economic relations between Japan,
the Phillipines, and the United States could be mitigated.
A renewed interest in the complexities of kinship formations is increasingly evident in more recent issues of Cultural Anthropology.
In the February 2009 issue, “Fathers, Sons, and the State: Discipline and Punishment in a Wolof Hinterland”, Donna Perry reflects on three “breach cases” of intergenerational conflict in rural Senegal whereby elder males enlist the services of state police forces to discipline rebellious youth.
Perry asks: “Why do Wolof farmers seek recourse with the absolute Other (the state) to solve domestic disputes?”
Her analysis suggests that a dichotomization between public (the state police) and private (the rural Senegalese household) are actually in collaboration in the enforcement of a “biased vision of the public good.”
Although this version of the public good is inflected by neoliberal reform and free market fundamentalism, and the household is caught up in a dynamic struggle for control over resources, fathers selectively engage state agents to perpetuate a model of the “good” Wolof family. BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Assignment B
Q 3. How is family different from household?
ANS: Family: ‘Family’ has no particular definition. It could mean all the generations after a common ancestor (an entire family tree) or parents and children living together as a single unit.
In Sociology, we often use the narrower definition while we bring in the rest of the family only when they all live together (as in a joint family).
A family is typically bound by common shared characteristics but in the light of the modern world we live in, this is not a mandatory characteristic for the determination of a unit as a family.
Now comes the question of families out of blood or kinship (marriage).
In reality, families don’t demand relationships through either blood or kinship.
If this was a requirement, a single parent with children (or adopted children) should conventionally not be considered a family but it is.
So are couples without children? The same goes for an unmarried couple with adopted children. So, families don’t require multiple generations under one roof.
Household : BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
A household is typically a group of people who live under one roof, irrespective of their blood or kinship relations. They are mostly families, though.
But a significant lot could be students who are flatmates, people who have moved out of home and are living independently or people living in homes for migrant workers as such.
Family households typically consist of two or more individuals who are related by blood, kinship or adoption.
On the other hand, non-family households are made of people who live alone or share their homes with individuals they are not related to.
Economic and social changes can change the composition of households. Liberal societies could influence many unmarried couples to live together.
An increase in divorce rates could pave the way for an increase in single-person households.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Also, a bad economic crisis could lead to many adults living back with their parents.
The stages: The living arrangements of every individual transition from one stage to another.
A person starts out in a family household (with his parents and leaves this household to live separately or with friends (or unknown people- flatmates).
Eventually, one forms a family household with one’s spouse and consequently children.
In old age, the person might live in a single-person household due to divorce or departure of the spouse.
These are the possible stages in one’s life and not everyone goes through all these phases. People could omit or repeat certain stages.
Taking into account the contemporary world, the two are not always the same.
In this age of numerous migrations, many individuals stay away from their parents or even spouses and children. They pool in resources to live under the same roof.
In conclusion, All families are also households, but not all households are families. The difference between families and households varies from one person to another as well as from one society to another.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Q 4. Explain the caste and gender inter-sectionality in kinship.
ANS: India is perhaps one of the most diverse countries in the world. Not just in terms of its geography but more so in terms of its cultural identity.
Every region in the country has its own nonns, its own understanding of things and its own complexities therein.
These complexities in turn led to development of subsections in societies, subsections that began to be decided by their knowledge of the Vedic texts,
which began deciding the roles these subsections played in the functioning of the society, ultimately leading to the marginalisation of certain sections of the society.
This is the basic understanding of the caste system that was, and in many places continues to be, prevalent in India.
Along with the intersectionality of caste and gender there is another facet of society that I shall look at in this answer. That is the multiple forms of patriarchies that exist in our society.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
The plurality of patriarchies is a facet of social disparity, which is entangled with as well as produces diversity, it has been sustained and partly generated by combinations of legal pluralism, religious pluralism, and the customary domain .
Caste division, division of labour, and the complex articulation of matrilineal and patrilineal systems and of the coexistence of tribal and agrarian modes of production with regional histories, along with the formation of religious sects have played a major role in the crystallisation of multiple patriarchies.
One of the byproducts of caste divisions was that women of all varnas could not be clubbed together under the same patriarchal norms.
Due to this, bralumanisation itself could not afford to universalise patriarchy, which led to the coexistence of different patriarchies granting different degrees of access to the upper and lower castes.
For example, marriage was considered to be sacred for the upper caste but was mostly not sacred for the lower castes.
However, it is important to understand that the vaunted ‘separateness of these patriarchies is partly an ideological effect.
Patriarchies function in three concurent 8 ways- systemic, shared and differential, each cutting across religious lines.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
And the presence of multiple patriarchies can be understood in terms of specific similarities and differences in their production, degree of structuration and content.
Patriarchal arrangements are therefore a historically changing yet systemic product of a complex articulation of factors in which religion and religio-legal systems are significant but not sole or primary determinants.
Patriarchies are relational, subject to wider political 9 economy, occupy different configurations, and are formulated continuously.
Hence, it becomes imperative to not challenge patriarchy alone but all that it is shaped by and embedded in and work towards a thorough removal of all forms of inequality.
Q 5. Write a note on the feminist contributions to kinship studies
ANS: From the 1960s onward the feminist movement and the scholarship it inspired have had a very obvious impact on kinship studies.
This resulted first in a number of important works that documented the lives of women, which had previously been omitted from ethnographic accounts.
Women’s involvement in households and domestic arrangements, trade, exchange, labour, religion, and economic life was rendered in detail, making the gaps in previous cross-cultural studies all too visible.
By the end of the 1970s, attention had begun to shift from women to the symbolization of gender itself.
This shift can be connected to a broader questioning of gender roles outside (and within) the academy and was marked by the analytical separation of the terms gender and sex, among other things.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Studies of women had made it eminently clear that there were very few characteristics that could be attributed both exclusively and universally to one sex or the other;
whether one was expected to be strong or weak, aggressive or passive, serious or humorous, disciplinarian or nurturing, and so on depended on cultural expectations, not on biology.
To clarify this difference, scholars came to use sex to refer to biological characteristics, the most obvious of which are the genitalia (e.g., male, female, or hermaphroditic).
In characteristics that could be attributed both exclusively and universally to one sex or the other; whether one was expected to be strong or weak, aggressive or passive, serious or humorous, disciplinarian or nurturing, and so on depended on cultural expectations, not on biology.
To clarify this difference, scholars came to use sex to refer to biological characteristics, the most obvious of which are the genitalia (e.g., male, female, or hermaphroditic).
In contrast, gender referred to a social category comprising the roles and expectations a culture had for men, women, and (in some cases) additional genders, such as the berdache (men who live as women and women who live as men, found in some traditional American Indian cultures) or the hijra (men who live as women, found in some parts of India).
Studies of gender as a symbolic system focused on the roles that men and women played, on ideas about what constituted a proper man or woman in a particular culture, and on how differences between men and women were perceived in that culture.
They sought to avoid prior assumptions about what these differences were.
Anthropology seemed uniquely well-placed to examine cross-cultural variation in gender ascriptions.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Feminists in the West were questioning the assumptions on which the patriarchal nuclear family was based and looked to anthropology for examples of alternative arrangements from contemporary non-Western societies.
Households, domestic arrangements, marriage, procreation, childbirth, and other aspects of what had previously been defined as kinship were of course central to the study of gender.
As a result, one issue that soon cmerged was the extent to which kinship and gender could be considered as separate analytic domains.
How did they articulate with each other? Did kinship define gender relations, did gender exist prior to kinship, or were these domains “mutually constituted”?
The anthropological study of gender very quickly placed in question both the analytic viability of kinship as a field of study and its centrality within the discipline.
Feminists also argued that institutions such as the family and the household, relations between men and women, and the meaning of being a man or a woman were understood quite differently in different cultures.
Rather than accept Western definitions of such concepts, anthropologists and sociologists began to subject them to analytic scrutiny.
How was it that these institutions appeared to be “natural” and “given” when they were actually culturally variable? Of particular interest were the ways in which political hierarchies emerged from these seemingly natural categories or distinctions.
What kinds of cultural processes were involved in the production of such hierarchies, and how had they achieved the illusory appearance of being natural or given?
Assignment C
Q 6. Descent
ANS: it refers to the socially existing recognized biological relationships between people in society BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Every society looks at the fact that all offspring and children descend from their parents and usually it is said biological relationship exists between parents and children.
Therefore descent is used to traces an individual’s ancestry.
Descent and lineage are often used interchangeably as well in conjunction to mean similar things for discussing kinship.
Descent is the principle whereby a person is socially affiliated with the group of his or her parents, grandparents and so on.
The individual belongs simultaneously to several descent groups – those of two parents, the four grand parents, the eight great grandparents and so on.
If this chain is not limited, decent principle will virtually connect everyone in this world into a single descent group.
However in reality some restrictions are placed to limit the size of the descent groups.
Sometimes a common known ancestor can be the cut off and sometimes it can be in form of some other symbol.Descent can also be traced to some mythological figure as well.
It is a method of limiting the recognition of kin group on the basis of common identity and in different societies ,different principles might be used.
The possible ways of transmission of descent group membership from parents to children.
Q 7. Cross-cousin marriage
ANS: Cross-cousin marriage divides members of the same generation into two approximately equal groups, those of cross-cousins and siblings” that include real siblings and parallel cousins.
Consequently, cross-cousin marriage can be a normal form of marriage in a society, but the other systems above can only be privileged forms. This makes cross-cousin marriage exceptionally important.
In discussing consanguineal kinship in anthropology, a parallel cousin or ortho-cousin is a cousin from a parent’s same-sex sibling, while a cross-cousin is from a parent’s opposite-sex sibling.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Thus, a parallel cousin is the child of the father’s brother or of the mother’s sister, while a cross-cousin is the child of the mother’s brother or of the father’s sister.
Where there are unilineal descent groups in a society, one’s parallel cousins on one or both sides will belong to one’s own descent group, while cross-cousins will not.
Q 8. Live-in relationship
ANS: The idea of live in relationship evolves from the broadened mindset of the people who started to crave for a relationship with no-strings-attached.
A living relationship couple are the ones who cohabit, with no expectations being the bottom line. However, there is no legal definition to describe the concept in Indian law.
It is more of a westernised theory with very less relevance with the Indian tradition.
So the Supreme Court, at various instances taken the liberty to elaborate on the concept through their judgements.
It is different from a marriage. (Marriage or wedlock or matrimony, is a socially/ritually acknowledgeable union of a couple). Live in relationship partners don’t force on obligations.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
When asked if a live-in relationship is good or bad, there is no proper explanation on if it is good or bad.
It merely depends on the person and one’s personality on looking from a different perspective.
People ought to believe that when living together, they can understand each other better and also for many other reasons, which cannot be denied.
In a typical marriage, the partners are given certain rights and duties to be performed by either of them.
There are several personal laws such as the Hindu laws, Muslim laws, Christian Laws, etc that govem and protect the marital bond of a recognized couple.
Live-in relationships, being an alien concept to the Indian legislature does not have any legal implications for the couples who live together without marriage involved in the relationship.
Since living relationships also support pre-marital sex, there are high chances of a child being bom.
These children, unlike the successors born out of wedlock, do not have any rights over the inheritance.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
Besides this, society treats them as illegitimate children, which is unacceptable. However, the Hon’ble Supreme Court cleared them of this ill-fated.
And granted them the status of a legitimate child along with the right to property.
Live-in relationships were legally considered void-ab-initio. But in a judgement in 1978, such relationships are valid for the first time because of the Supreme Court.
If the requisites of a marriage such as mental soundness, the fulfilment of the legal age of marriage, consent, etc. are all satisfied, the couple is considered to be in a legal live-in relationship.
The couple is also regarded as married if they live together for a considerably long period until proven otherwise,
Q 9. NRT
ANS : Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is a medically approved way to treat people with tobacco use disorder by taking nicotine by means other than tobacco.
It is used to help with quitting smoking or stopping chewing tobacco.
It increases the chance of quitting tobacco smoking by about 55%. Often it is used along with other behavioral techniques. NRT has also been used to treat ulcerative colitis.
Types of NRT include the adhesive patch, chewing gum, lozenges, nose spray, and inhaler.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
NRT is a medication that provides you with a low level of nicotine, without the tar, carbon monoxide and other poisonous chemicals present in tobacco smoke It can help reduce unpleasant withdrawal effects, such as bad moods and cravings, which may occur when you stop smoking.
Q 10. Family of choice”
ANS: Family of choice has a goal of promoting values that allow resiliency to develop. Resiliency is also sometimes born out of necessity; modeling the skills that create resiliency is one means by which it can be taug the .
Offering opportunity to rise above impoverished communities and conditions is another start line for promoting resiliency.
Validating another human being and confirming they are worth-while plants the seed for resiliency to grow.
Offering support and a creative guiding environment can open the door to resiliency. Acceptance, forgiveness, and love are the keys to over-coming feelings of abandonment.
Family of Choice illuminates the path so that the individual does not feel alone, and forced by fear.BSOE 146 Solved Free Assignment
In resolving abandonment issues, emotional space is created to align and choose healthier core values.
Life’s journey can handle a change in course and a new path can be chosen.
Creativity comes in many directions and is a powerful energy and motivating force. Creative expression may allow the individual to resolve loss, trauma, and hurt.
It can assist in restoring personal integrity and authenticity. Being the unique individual we were put on this earth to be is our greatest gift in life.
At times, losses, hurt, and trauma prevent true expression from surfacing. Family of Choice serves to life the individual out of the darkness and into the light so they may shine to their fullest potential.
Realizing our fullest potential in life empowers us to pursue with confidence that which we were put on this carth to achieve.
Regardless of color, ethnicity, or socio-economic status connecting to our core-identity gives us the freedom to choose without fear.
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