6.3 Kinship

Definition: the network of relationships traced through blood (consanguineal) and marriage (affinal) ties — society's infrastructure of identity, obligation and marriage-regulation. Core concepts: descent (unilineal — in Nepal overwhelmingly patrilineal — vs bilateral); lineage and clan (the thar and gotra: Bahun-Chhetris must marry outside their gotra); kinship terminology (Nepali kin terms encode behaviour: the respect owed to a jethani vs the licensed joking with a namrata-class affine — vocabulary as norm); avoidance vs joking relationships (the classic ethnographic pair). Nepali particularities (learn three): 1. Maiti (natal home): a married woman's natal family remains her lifelong refuge and ritual anchor (from the wedding-day send-off to the lifelong bhanja–mama ties between her brother's children and her own) — kinship that the patrilocal household does not contain. 2. Guthi: the Newar kin-cum-temple-cum-land corporation organising ritual, worship and mutual aid — kinship as institution (a living answer to Unit 2.5's "institution vs organisation"). 3. "Afno manchhe" (Bista): kinship's dark public face — recruitment, favour and obligation distributed along kin-lines, corroding universalist norms in bureaucracy and business; the sociological diagnosis of much that anti-corruption law fights.