Kinship among South Indian Communities Literature review

Kinship among South Indian Communities - Literature review Example Kinship among South Indian communities has been indispensable and the main form of social organization (caste system). The caste system was a closed hereditary group to which a person belonged strictly by birth. At one point, there were relationships based on endogamous marriage between two people from the same caste. Kinship is also concerned about the productive anxiety of relations of distinction and sameness, the main aspects being the ties that separate or bind. In a fishing village, ‘the Marianad’ what matters is the relations between siblings. The children of the same father and mother, siblings are similar apart from their gender. The strongest differentiation is made between siblings of different gender, a difference that has a great effect in the following generation (Busby 2000; 1995). Therefore, among the â€Å"Marianads† sisters are viewed to be identical in a manner that brother and sister cannot be. Sisters in this tribe, live closely, they are spot ted with each other baby either carrying or feeding it. Contrary, brothers are different in that they move to their wife’s houses in distinct villages, although they view their brother’s children as their own, and they often refer to them as their daughters or sons. The word Dravidian refers to a family dialect mainly spoken in South India. The Dravidian family is different in both origin and structure from the Anglo-Aryan family located in North India. People from South India classify kin based on the difference in sex, the difference in age, the difference in generation, and difference of kin identical with union relationship. This system exemplifies a sociological theory of marriage, and it justifies the issue of someone marrying a cross-cousin (Clark-Deces 2011; Bourdieu 1997). The Marianad people do not have the separate terminologies for the younger and elder sibling, uncles, and aunts. They also do not differentiate between kin identified to ego’s parents via same-sex association (parallel kin) and kin identified to ego’s parents via opposite se-associations. Writers such as Dumont try to suggest the differentiation between the cross and parallel kin in comprehending marriage choices and decisions in South India (Dumont 2006). The children of parents’ same or similar sex siblings (the fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law) are absorbed to the position of elder or young siblings, with whom sexual intimacy, marriage and sexual activities are prohibited. On the other hand, the children of parents’ cross-sex siblings (fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law) are absorbed to the position of spouses or wives with whom marriage is accepted or permitted in that in some castes in south India, it is preferred and prescribed. It is significant to note that these terms recommend separation between relatives (in-laws) and kin, which is not the same as our cultural differentiation between relatives by marriage and blood relatives.