For centuries, Kinship has indeed been difficult for researchers to define and create functioning genealogies. Kinship may have anything to do with the way language and grammar are used, say some academics. On the other hand, many anthropologists see Kinship as a long-term relationship between individuals and organizations. Thus, it is challenging to classify Kinship in terms of distinct groupings or even infer that the concept of Kinship is flexible, symbolic, and unrelated to the criteria that are reportedly used to define a person’s relationship with another. Kinship categories are crucial to anthropology since they serve as the foundation upon which communities and cultures are built. According to Morgan and McLennan Theories, despite thousands of miles of separation and a different attitude and outlook on life, they elicit the same behaviors towards the social group.
Schneider defines Kinship primarily in symbolic relationships, particularly indoctrination and biological notions, rather than physical concepts themselves. As an anthropologist, he believes that Kinship is more than just a pre-constructed system that connects biological and social relations (Schneider, 2021). There are various familial relationships and kinship links that do not come under the definition of Kinship as defined by conventional anthropology, such as adoption. Schneider accurately pointed out that Kinship, like other more prominent institutions such as politics, economics, and rubrics, must be projected to different cultures to achieve ethnographic rebuilding and other larger institutions such as religion. The problem is that they only result in predictions rather than actual findings of the complexity of kinship organizations in many settings and across a wide range of cultural backgrounds.
There is a great deal of disagreement over the naturalness and universal application of Kinship and its role in the emergence of other social systems. The concept of naturalness is used to link the idea of Kinship to sexual reproduction and the relationships that people have with one another that are related to reproduction. This is because sexual and biological processes are essential for Kinship, though they can also be applied to relationships that are not based on Kinship. Schneider takes issue with the definition of Kinship as a matter of biological perception, consanguinity with linkages that are meaningful insofar as they reveal some lineage. He contends that this is the result of the dominance of the American paradigm of Kinship on other cultures. Therefore, Schneider’s usage of the phrase “blood is thicker” to signify the formation of solid relationships is a very obvious idiom for defining Kinship in this context. However, this does not imply that biological linkages are universal, intrinsic, adequate, conceptual, or unique. As an alternative, these aphorisms suggest that blood ties (bonds) can be more potent than other interpersonal interactions.
Morgan’s theory asserts that when determining kinsmen, the classification technique is based on the knowledge of how the members are linked physiologically or genetically. Thus, in turn, is dependent on how they intermarried. Like many other scholars, Morgan places a high value on marriage, which is defined as a sexual connection between a man and a woman between two people. Morgan became interested primarily in the comparative analysis of familial relationships to understand broader social dynamics as her research progressed. She regarded kinship relationships as a fundamental component of civilization. As a result of subsequent publications, she established an essential link between social growth and technological advancement. He highlighted the importance of familial and property relationships in one’s life. He investigated the connection between the development of technology, the evolution of family relationships, the growth of property relations, the emergence of more comprehensive social systems and structures of governance, and the development of intellectual development. Slavery, barbarism, and civilization were the three major stages presented by Lewis Henry Morgan. The stages were divided and defined by technological improvements, animal domestication, agriculture, metalworking in the barbarian era, and development of the alphabet and writing system, among other things in the civilization era.
In addition to detailing what Morgan indicated, McLennan adds to his theory by stating that, while Kinship followed family relationships, it was highly dependent on the social duties of those who were kin to the kinsmen. Moreover, according to McLennan, responsibility, rights, wealth, and succession were distributed according to blood relationships. McLennan coined Exogamy as a marriage that takes place outside of a tribe, for instance, a bride captured amid warring tribes. The third type of endogamy was also identified by him as marriage inside a unit, for example, a union of two warring clans or a union within a particular demographic, which led to monogamy and the establishment of Kinship through men rather than through females. He caught the interest of Sigmund Freud, and other anthropologists such as James George Frazer, W. Robertson Smith, and Émile Durkheim, with his ideas on totemism. They were likewise intrigued by the topic.
Both scholars agree that Kinship was centered on marriage, factors of reproduction, and genetic relationships. In their theories, the initial societies were primarily dominated by women, and the sorts of Kinship used by these ethnicities were less rigidly monitored than they are now. However, there were several intermediary steps between what McLennan and Morgan named a condition of primitive promiscuity and a state of advanced promiscuity. In this way, sexuality and marriage were unrestrained by the patriarchal monogamy family form of civilization, which was in its formation phase at the time they placed nineteenth-century European and Euro-American society. (Alber et al., 2019). On the contrary, on kinship terminology, McLennan expressed his displeasure with the opinions of American anthropologists Lewis Henry Morgan, contending that it suggested degrees of respect based on concerns of rank and age rather than consanguineous relationships. Totems, according to McLennan, were remnants of a previous religion that worshipped plants, fetishes, animals, and, eventually, anthropomorphic gods.
In conclusion, it is clear from Morgan and McLennan’s theories that just two elements were needed to consider genealogy after clarifying the difficulties of expressing Kinship. First, marriage was viewed as only a sexual union between two people, and second, consanguinity was seen as a standard ancestry belief system. Anthropology, as the research of individual existence and culture, has developed over time due to various investigations and research projects that Western social scientists initially carried out. Anthropological studies frequently include a description of characteristics unique to a culture and analysis of these characteristics in the realm of human existence in general as observed by anthropologists. According to different cultures, diverse kin categories have different meanings, roles, and functions. Finally, The kinship categories stay the same, irrespective of how the kin types work and their duties within the culture in which they live.
References
Alber, E., & Thelen, T. (2019). Politics of Kinship. Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 59(Cahier 234 (2), 359-376.
Schneider, D. M. (2021). Rivers and Kroeber in the Study of Kinship. In Kinship and social organization (pp. 7-16). Routledge.
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