Kinship and the management of personal relations: kin terminologies and the “ axiom of amity”

Abstract

This paper eschews the fashionable study of the taxonomic structures of kinship terminologies to consider the social contexts in which kin terms are used and the reasons why. The Thai and Malay material amply confirms what is sometimes ignored, that the principles of genealogical classification are but one component in the analysis of kin term usage which is in turn part of the total field of conventions ordering everyday interaction. This fact prompts once more the question of what it is about kinship ?or more precisely, kinship terminology ? that accounts for both its very prevalent and non genealogical use in the societies examined. The ethnographic record for the central region of Thailand is replete with examples of a degree of variation in the behaviour of individuals occupying specified kin statuses which makes generali zation, or even the perception of order, problematic. The total lack of corporate groups based on either descent, or kinship in conjunction with some other principle, can be linked to a lack of effective kinship based authority structures and consequent freedom in interpretation of social roles. Thus the conclusion might well be drawn that in this amorphous situation kinship institutions are relatively unimportant, certainly in the sense that they afford no effectively sanctioned means for the control of scarce resources. Yet the very pervasiveness of kinship in rural life suggests otherwise. Furthermore, the manner in which Thai extend their use of kin terms suggests that there is some thing distinctly positive about kinship which those schooled in either the significance of jurai norms and corporate groups, or in the total primacy of genealogy, have overlooked.