The study of kinship phenomena is the description and analysis of kinship in societies without unilineal descent groups. These kinship systems provisionally have been termed “bilateral” or “cognatic.” They also have been recognized to exist on all levels of socio-economic complexity ranging from the hunting and gathering band to the industrialized state. The principle concept historically associated with the study of bilateral or cognatic kinship systems is the kindred . It is sometimes referred to as the bilateral kindred or as the personal kindred .
Murdock (1949: 57), after examining the kinship structure of 250 societies concludes that Kindreds are occasionally reported for patrilineal societies, such as the Bena, Ojibwa, and Tikopia, and for matrilineal tribes, such as the Hopi, Iroquois, and Nayar, but the overwhelming majority are recorded for bilateral societies or for tribes with non-exogamous sibs or lineages, like the Fox and Tswana. They appear especially common with bilocal residence, though they also occur frequently with neolocal residence. In general, they are clearly associated with an absence of unilinear descent. Probably they will ultimately appear to be characteristic of most bilateral societies.
In Murdock’s (1960:4) recent theoretical discussion of the kindred, the following definition is provided: It is always Ego-oriented, is., composed of persons related to a particular individual (or group of siblings) bilaterally (literally “on both sides”). The members of a kindred, other than the core individual and his siblings, need not be, and frequently are not, related to one another, In any society, kindreds necessarily overlap one another endlessly. They are not discrete units; society can never be divided into separate kindreds as it can be segmented into discrete families, lineages, clans or communities. He adds that a kindred cannot be a descent group or a corporate group.
In summary, there is general consensus on the following characteristics of a kindred:
- (1) it is defined by reference to Ego;
- (2) it is the same in composition only for siblings;
- (3) it is not a corporate group;
- (4) it has no leader or headman;
- (5) its boundaries are relatively undefined and shifting;
- (6) it is not a descent group.
- (7) It has no name
The most salient part of Murdock’s definition of the kindred is its reference to an individual’s maternal and paternal relatives or, stated more precisely, to an Ego-oriented network of parental kin.
Certainly this is not a new idea. Morgan (1870: lo), in his pioneering cross-cultural study of kinship nomenclature systems, writes: Around every person there is a circle or group of kindred of which such person is the centre, the Ego, from whom the degree of the relationship is reckoned, and to whom the relationship itself returns. Above him are his father and his mother and their ascendants, below him are his children and their descendants; while upon either side are his brothers and sisters and their descendants, and the brothers and sisters of his father and of his mother and their descendants, as well as a much greater number of collateral relatives descended from common ancestors still more remote. To him they are nearer in degree than other individuals of the nation at large.
And other anthropologists have repeatedly observed that regardless of the presence of unilineally organized descent groups in a society, Ego, in terms of kinship rights and duties, is filiated bilaterally with both maternal and paternal kin . Since this is a thoroughly documented point, it seems curious, given Murdock’s definition of the kindred, that he believes it to be a type of kinship structure that is especially characteristic of societies without unilineal descent groups.
Traditionally and logically there are two main approaches to the study of kinship behavior: (1) the study of organized or corporate kin groups; and (2) the study of kinship ties from the social perspective of Ego. Where the first approach examines the organization and interrelationships of corporate kin groups, e.g. the extended family, lineage, and clan, the second examines the nature and extent of Ego’s relationships with kin. These two types of system-references, viz. the corporate kin group and the kin ties of Ego, are complementary-not competing-approaches to the analysis of kinship phenomena. This is especially true for studies of cognatic kinship systems where, in the absence of large corporate kin groups, the analysis often emphasizes the study of kinship from the social position of Ego.
In an attempt to conceptualize more clearly “the groups usually included under the heading of the family,” Rivers (1924: 15) distinguished among: “(i) the small group of parents and children; (ii) the bilateral group, consisting of persons related through both father and mother; (iii) the unilateral group of persons related through the father only; and (iv) a fourth group, of a unilateral kind, consisting of persons related through the mother only.” He then named these groups respectively; (i) the family; (ii) the kindred; (iii) the patrilineal joint family; and (iv) the matrilineal joint family. Rivers (1924: 14) says of the kindred that “this form of grouping is rare”
The presence of kindreds among New Englanders as well as among the East African Nuer. However, a review of the field monographs (Evans-Pritchard 1940; Warner and Lunt 1941) reveals that although neither society distinguishes in terms of sentiments between paternal and maternal kin, the New Englanders’ economic obligations are also parentally bilateral whereas the Nuers’ are culturally weighted unilaterally, because membership in a patrilineage influences the direction and content of many of their economic activities with kin. But instead of such comparative formulations in positive terms of the various structural features of kindreds, we seem only to have succeeded in establishing a negative model for an analytical point of view by emphasizing what a kindred is not: e.g. it can have no leader; it is never the same except for siblings; it is not a descent group; it is not a corporate group; it has no name except in reference to its personal focus; its boundaries are shifting, etc.
