Kinship structures in Asian societies: anthropological perspectives on culture and biology

Role of Anthropology in Studying the Kinship Structure in Asian Societies: Susan Kahn, Janet Carsten, And Linda Stone

Anthropological studies on foreign societies, particularly among Asian cultures, have become the focus of social scientists from Western nations, especially as human society enters the twentieth century. During this period, awareness of the diversity of cultures and societies across the globe has become a challenge for the field of social science to explore what makes these cultures and societies diverse and different from other societies known to them, specifically Western nations.

These anthropological studies focus on various aspects of cultures. The works of Susan Kahn, Janet Carsten, and Linda Stone brings into lucidity the various kinship structures extant in Eastern societies. Kahn centers on the Jews and Israelis' kinship structure, Carsten on Malaysian societies, and Stone on the European society over time (i.e., during the course of human history). These studies from Kahn, Carsten, and Stone illustrate how kinship systems in these societies are not only restricted to biological or genetic relations, but to social and cultural factors as well.

Kahn's study of the Israeli reproduction programs in "Reproducing Jews: A cultural account of assisted conception in Israel" demonstrates how assisted conception and reproduction among Israeli-Jewish women has become a prevalent phenomenon. This phenomenon can be explained by the thinking, "the time arrived, but the father didn't," which provides a holistic view of the nature of male-female relations in the country. In a country where women have achieved self-realization in life, opportunities for marriage and reproduction have either been delayed or not occurred for the country's female population. Thus, in a scenario where women do not want the complications of establishing relationships with other people but wanted to experience having and rearing children, assisted reproduction has become prevalent and in fact, the norm in Israeli society. Kinship structures, then, are not normative, but is actually consisted of the mother and child alone, illustrating how the role of males have been gradually decreasing to being 'suppliers' of sperm cells for the women's use in assisted reproduction.

Studies from Carsten and Stone demonstrate the aspects demonstrated in Kahn's research. Carsten's research centers primarily on the kinship system extant in Malaysia, while Stone looks at how females have managed to gradually increase and assert their role in human society, eventually having their own choice to actively participate in the process of reproduction or not.