Kinship also has a role in business, bureaucracy and politics. It is said in our country that the bureaucratic bosses and political leaders miss no opportunity to recruit their kinsmen in government and public sector jobs. One who is not related to the powerful persons cannot hope to get employment. In popular terms it is called nepotism.
If we look outside our country towards Europe and the US, we find that “the capitalist labour market is ostensibly based on formally voluntary contracts and individual achievement and not on kinship commitments and ascribed identity.
It is, therefore, customary to regard the kin-based organization as a contrast, and possible threat, to the bureaucratic organization characteristic of both the labour market and the system of political administration in modern states/societies.”
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In big business houses such as that of Birlas, Tatas, Ambanis and Godrej, production is supervised by kin-based executives and supervisors. The business houses have a belief that the kinsfolk in industry and trade have loyalty to specific persons. Though these business houses have now become purely economic and professional enterprises, kin-based organizations continue to remain in operation.
Kinship is also tied with politics. Public life in our country is characterized by the kin groups of those who are in power. Very often we talk about the role of dynasties in ruling the country.
We also find that cabinet berths are created in consideration of kin relations. Tickets for contesting elections are also given on kinship consideration. As a matter of fact, in our day-to-day activities kinship and organizational functioning are so intertwined that it is difficult to isolate the two.
“The relationship between kin-based and bureaucratic organizations must always be explored in empirical context. Then, we will discover that the two principles very often function simultaneously; that they are not mutually exclusive in practice. A person may support both ideals of formal justice and kinship solidarity in different situations.”
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Yet another area of kinship is related to gender. Social anthropology has witnessed towering anthropologists who have contributed substantially to the development of this discipline. It is interesting to note that none of these scholars has touched the problem of relationship between kinship and gender.
In studies of kinship, the male perspective is often taken for granted. “Certainly women have a place in these studies; they sometimes appear as wives, mothers and sisters, but rarely as independently acting persons.
They appear as resources which society (that is, men) controls; they are exchanged between groups, are married, and are burnt alive, accused of witchcraft and so on.
Additionally, classic anthropological studies of kinship have rarely explored how particular kinship systems create particular kinds of gender relations, what sort of ideology justifies men’s power over women or even reflected on the fairly obvious fact that a kin relationship is often a gender relationship as well.”
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Recently, the gender problem, that is, the discrimination of men against women, has become a burning issue both in Europe and India. It was sometime in the beginning of 1930 that Bombay University debarred a woman from appearing for an undergraduate degree simply became she was a woman.
Today, there has emerged a growing literature in sociology and social anthropology which tries to look at social life from a gender neutral perspective or even with an explicit female bias.
When there is a strong wave of globalization it is natural to examine the status of woman with respect to that of man. There are differences in power between persons. But these differences should not dwell on gender.