Family and Kinship Term Paper

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Family & Kinship (Anthropology)

Kinship in Chinese Culture and Matriarchy (Dominance of Women) among Chinese Families: Case Studies in Southwestern China and Taiwan

Anthropology, as the study of human life and culture, has developed through various studies and researches that have been conducted initially by Western social scientists. These researches have mainly centered on the "exotic" and native cultures of societies and nations located in the East, such as islands in the Pacific and countries in Asia and the Middle East. Although these studies have provided a Western-centric view of various cultures in the world, they have contributed to the development of theory and methodology in anthropology.

Anthropological studies often provide a description of features unique within the culture and analyze these features in the context of human life (in general) as perceived by the anthropologists (in this case, a Western-centric view of human life).

This paper discusses particular incidences of matriarchy being the prevalent cultural structure in an Eastern nation, China. Conducted by the anthropologists Lu Yuan, Sam Mitchell and Margery Wolf, these studies of two different cultures in China illustrates how societies can exist and assume values and traditions that is altogether different from the dominantly patriarchal societies and fixed kinship ties existing in most societies today. This paper posits that through the study of anthropology, cultures that have unique features and deviate from the normative structures of institutions within society (especially those who adopted the Western-centric view of what a society should be) have shown that their being different offers people (i.e., the outsiders) other perspectives in viewing what constitutes a society, which includes the values and traditions inherent in it.

In Lu Yuan and Sam Mitchell's study entitled, "Matrilineal kinship: walking marriage in China," the authors discuss about the powerful role that women play in the Mosuo tribe, located in the Luoshuri village in southwestern China. The Mosuo tribe provides a unique study of anthropology, since it has a social structure that deviates from the common notion of family that societies have in contemporary times. Instead of a family made up of a wife and husband with their children, Mosuo men and women do not engage in marriage, but do practice establishing sexual relations with each other.

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The absence of the tradition of marriage illustrates how women are able to maintain their autonomy from having a family life, and assumes primarily a role of being a mother to her children, but not as wife to the men she had sexual relations with.

The article brings into lucidity social tensions that emerge from family structures, of which the perpetuation of a patriarchal society emerges as the main issue. Apart from the dominance of males in the society, the absence of marriage and establishment of the nuclear family structure in the Mosuo tribe eliminates the occurrence of conflict between the woman and her husband's family. Furthermore, as an informant explains, absence of marriage in Mosuo cultivates a relationship that is "based on love...If a couple feels contented, they stay together. If they feel unhappy, they can go their separate ways. As a result, there is little fighting" (237). From the case of the Mosuo tribe, anthropologists were able to understand and know that the kind of culture that is distinct from the tribe exists, and offers an example of how family structures of kinship and marriage are not subsisted to by the tribe's members.

Analyzed from the perspective of Western social and cultural structures, the tradition of kinship among the Mosuo is categorized as "ancient," a stage of human societal development wherein matriarchy prevails and dominates. It is only with the emergence of Christianity in the history of human society where patriarchy emerged and developed. Thus, the persistence of the matriarchal structure of Mosuo society is considered by social scientists as a "living fossil," a reminder of the early history of human society during its initial stages of developing into a contemporary society. In effect, the Mosuo tribe characterizes the early stage of human civilization, in which "hypothetical "group marriages" of brothers and sisters to monogamy...the Mosuo, with its unusual kinship system, fits into this scheme..." (239).

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