Kinship

Role of Kinship

Kinship is a cultural artifact created in every society. As an artifact, it primarily shapes people. As an important social institution, it performs many functions. Some authors have argued that many kinship systems have equalized the role of women and girls in general to that of the male, citing that kinship is a way through which superiority of a particular gender is eliminated. One can do research to defend his thesis, but concerning this, I consider a different opinion. Indeed, women have played a great role as far as kinship is concerned, but still, kinship is forcing them into cultural norms that are disadvantageous to them. The kinship organization, be it local, lineal or archival, has not ensured equality in gender issues.

First, kinship through its different usages, it regulates the behavior of different kin. This is well elaborated in the book “Women of the Forest – 30th Anniversary Education,” where the author does show the disparity between the Mundurucu ideology of male dominance and the real social positions of women and men. According to the Murphy’s’ book, what is most essential about the relationship between the sexes is their independence from one another. In traditional Mundurucu village, men and women work separately, eat separately and even sleep separately. Groups of related women and their children reside in extended family dwellings. Adolescent and adult men live together in men’s house. This prevents abuse of sex by putting a sharp division in the closeness between the two opposite sexes. The pattern of social separation in Mundurucu society is such that men exercise little influence over the activities of women in the course of the daily life. This has an impact on the women’s life socially, in that marriage for a Mundurucu woman means that neither isolation within the nuclear family nor a particularly close bond with an individual man, her life continues to revolve mainly around the women she lives with and works with them. She has limited association with other persons in the society. This is an example of lineal kinship since it involves members of the same family. Indeed the kinship system, in this case, is forcing women into cultural norms and systems that are disadvantageous to women.

Kinship again defines the roles of different sexes in a family and the society as a whole. The female gender performs roles that show inferiority in the society, for example, taking care of children, cooking and other domestic chores, giving birth and sexual satisfaction agents. Women have been tied up with these roles that make them look inferior in the community. In the book “Women of the Forest 30th Anniversary Education,” the male are portrayed as superior. Although this may seem to be true, it isn’t the same as in the case Brenda Childs book, “Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of the Community.” Brenda has shown how Native American Women have played a great role in building their nation. Many Native Communities were organized around women labor, the sanctity of mothers, and the wisdom of female elders (Child, 54). About the economy, Brenda also shows how women have shaped Native American life from the days of early trade with Europeans through the reservation era and beyond. Child shows the life of a woman, Madeleine Cadotte, a character in the book, the way he became a powerful mediator between her people and European fur traders. Another character, Gertrude Buckanaga, her postwar community activism in Minneapolis helped bring many Indian families out of poverty. The type of kinship organization, in this case, is local since it is surrounded by the community.

Additionally, kinship systems maintain solidarity in of relationships, determines the rights and obligations of the family and marriage, system of production and duties of the family but at the expense of despising the female gender. More rights are given to the male including authority over the women. It is the right of the women to listen to and follow the decisions made by a man. As in the case of “Honor the Grandmother: Dakota and Lakota Women Tell Their Story,” Professor Jessie Carroll Grearson and English professor Lauren Smith profile fifteen intercultural couples living in the Midwest (Sarah, 23). This an excellent example of lineal kinship organization. They were both married to men from other nations. The author shows the way they were involved in creating and maintaining cross-cultural households: the organization of their homes, the blending of the adults’ diverse cultural identity and the transmission of culture to their children. Young women and men, including a lesbian couple, just begin their lives together; families are rearing children of blended background, and the story of a Jewish American widow who married her Afghan husband are also depicted in the book to show us how different relationships and marriages.

Finally, kinship to some extent lowers a person’s dignity and more particularly the women. The women are prone to suffer from the male dominance and superiority even to where justice needs to be done. This is clearly seen from the book “Microfinance and its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh.” Lamia Karim has shown how women are governed by rules and obligations that undermine them. Women have a right to participate in a rally, but that is difficult, simply because of their gender. Furthermore, the clergy deemed the fair to be encouraging an erosion of acceptable moral standards for rural women. The NGO failed to perform its duty as required, the task of equitable distribution of food and other commodities and deemed the division of fair through a religious decree as not developmental. In the end, the women were the losers, their lives were disrupted and their dignity highly interfered.

Question 2

Different personalities have distinguished the economic field and the cultural field, arguing that the two should not be associated to elaborate the other. To them, economic change only frees one from economic challenges, while on the other hand social change frees one from human sufferings. Even though they may have evidence to support this, I tend to disagree with them, since economic change mainly frees one from suffering primitive cultural traditions.

Beginning with the book “Women of the Forest – 30th Anniversary Education,” the society is well organized economically regarding their roles and responsibilities. The major subsistence activities are carried out by groups composed of members of the same sex. The men of the village hunt together and the women cooperate in the process of harvesting manioc flour, the most important and time-consuming female task. Furthermore, each village has a shade where much of the work of manioc processing is done (Yolanda, 27-29). Partly, this forms as a social gathering place for women and a counterpart to the men’s house. This is mainly the way women get their living and also support the society as a whole.

Considering the book, “Microfinance and its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh,” women get their living through assistance from the NGOs. Microfinance and its discontents examine the impact of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their microfinance endeavors on the lives and livelihoods of poor rural Bangladeshi women, the archetype of persons living in severe social and economic conditions. The clergy deems the fair to be encouraging an erosion of acceptable moral standards for rural women. The NGO deemed the prohibition of the fair through the fatwa (religious decree) as anti-developmental and repressive in the end, the only losers in this social disaster were the women whose lives are disrupted and their dignity severely impugned. In a series of ethnographic cases, Karim shows how NGOs use social codes of honor and shame to shape the conduct of women and to further an agenda of capitalist expansion (Lamia, 75). These unwritten policies subordinate poor women to several levels of debt that often lead to increased violence at the household and community levels, hence weakening women’s ability to resist the onslaught of market forces. A compelling critique of the relationship between powerful NGOs and the financially strapped women beholden to them for capital.

Child also reveals the role of women in her book “Holding Our World Together.” She begins by explaining the central role women have traditionally played in the tribe’s agriculture and economy. For instance, women have played a great role in the harvesting of wild rice, during which "collectives of women of all ages" organized all aspect of production, processing, and distribution. Child also informs the way Ojibwe women shared resources and decision-making authority in a way that patriarchal European settlers found entirely unacceptable. Indeed Ojibwe women have contributed to a rich urban culture that has honored and transmitted Ojibwe traditions. Even in urban areas, Ojibwe women have become agents of social change that tend to improve tolerance, multiculturalism, strong families and ecology at large.

Finally, as in the case of Sarah Penman and her book “Honor the Grandmother,” women are offering basic education. Dakota and Lakota have a duty of teaching tribal history. The grandmothers who of course are women have a traditional role of cultural carrier, equipping children with respect for the language, medical lore, and spiritual beliefs of the people. In simpler terms, women have an economic duty of educating lifestyle to the young generation.

Work cited

Child, Brenda J. Holding our world together: Ojibwe women and the survival of community. Penguin, 2012.

Karim, Lamia. Microfinance and its discontents: Women in debt in Bangladesh. U of Minnesota Press, 2011.

Murphy, Robert. Women of the Forest. Columbia University Press, 2013.

Penman, Sarah. Honor the grandmothers: Dakota and Lakota women tell their stories. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2000.