Kinship Studies and Gender

Kinship Studies and Gender

This has reference to Leela Dube's excellent piece on 'Doing Kinship and Gender', (November 11, 2000). Along with Iravati Karve, she deserves appreciation and respect as a great woman anthropologist of India. In 1965 I met Karve by chance in American Institute of Indian Studies, New Delhi. Before that I had the good luck of meeting Dube in Mussoorie. Both have worked on the subject of kinship. Just as Dube guided a doctoral student to work on matriliny in Islamic society, Karve guided a student to explore linkages between kinship and racial characteristics of people. She discussed this with me in the context of bilateral cousin marriage of the Mers of Saurashtra with preference for matrilateral cross-cousins. This system gives higher status to women in Mer society. The subject of kinship and status of women in different societies may be looked upon as androcentric bias of anthropologists. That is not true by any means.