Kinship

Anthropological (related to humankind in all its aspects), ethnographical (related to ethnic groups) and sociological (related to social aspects of human life) studies suggest that social organization in the primitive societies was/is kinship-based. Kinship refers to blood and family relationships (such as father, mother brother, sister), unlike the marital relationships (wife, husband) or contractual relationships (employee, employer). Kinship traces descent from the same ancestors, either paternal or maternal. Thus, kin-groups, kin-brotherhood (phratry), clans, gens, tribes were the initial social groupings depending on the size of different units, which formed the basis of communal life. Notwithstanding the differences in opinion relating to matriarchal or patriarchal nature of early societies, we can say that descent was consanguineous and blood-based. While Maine and MacIver supported the patriarchal view, Morgan, McLennan, Jenks supported the matriarchal view. MacIver, hinting at the link between kinship, social organization, patriarchal authority and the State says, ‘the authority of the father passes into the power of the chief … Kinship creates society and society at length creates the State’.⁷³ As such, kinship-based social organization becomes the basis of further division and subdivision into more extended groups such as clan, tribe, etc. While kinship becomes the source of social expansion into family, clan, gens and tribe, the paternal authority of the family head prepares the ground for emergence of the authority of the tribal chief. This authority might have combined all sorts of power—military, coercive and punishing, religious, and arbitration.

Development and expansion of kin-based social groups, along with some form of authority, would have provided the beginning for larger tribal groups and confederacy based on what Gettell says, ‘need for protection of common interest’.⁷⁴ While kinship-based society required protection of property, pastoral and animal resources, food and shelter, tribal and tribal confederacy might have required protection of common interests like welfare and security of groups included in the confederacy, order and arbitration in case of disputes amongst different patriarchal heads. In the recent past or even in contemporary times, we can see examples of hereditary transfer of authority. The concept of the royal family, ruling dynasty, etc., reminds one of kinship-based patriarchal authority. Kinship, it seems, would have played an important role in evolution of the concept of authority.