Culture Comparisons Between the !Kung Culture and the Indian Culture
Kenya Chappell
Professor Emily Dean
Anthropology 1010
Nov 3rd, 2012
Ethnographic Comparison
For this paper I chose along with the ethnography of !Nisa, to write about the Family, Marriage and Kinship ties of Indian culture specifically of the village of Ratakote as told in Conformity and Conflict. The first thing I noticed about both cultures was they practiced arranged marriages with their children preferably being young (the Indians explained that young age was best so their children wouldn’t start becoming sexually active and elope with someone else they fell in love with and break off the entire marriage they were in). Both cultures were very close to each other family-wise even if they weren’t related to each other. The !Kung people didn’t like to marry or arrange a marriage with other blood related family members even with distant cousins and if a person shared the same surname as one of the family members or even a child if the woman is older, they are forbidden to marry her. The Indian culture on the other hand had 36 different Araks or clans with a name for each one which a member from that particular clan used as their surname. Parents were forbidden to marry their children off to their own Araks they themselves came from in order to prevent incest. One other interesting fact I found out that differed these two cultures from one another was who the children went to after a divorce. The Indian culture gave the husband custody of the children as they generally gave the males more importance. They had a matrilineal society where the ancestry was traced through the men. There was even a quote in the Conformity and Conflict book that explained the man was considered the one who planted seeds while the woman was the field in which they did it, explaining the sexual relationship between a husband and wife. In the !Kung culture the children stayed with their mother. Another difference is in the !Kung culture the husband traveled to the bride’s
Professor Emily Dean
Anthropology 1010
Nov 3rd, 2012
Ethnographic Comparison
For this paper I chose along with the ethnography of !Nisa, to write about the Family, Marriage and Kinship ties of Indian culture specifically of the village of Ratakote as told in Conformity and Conflict. The first thing I noticed about both cultures was they practiced arranged marriages with their children preferably being young (the Indians explained that young age was best so their children wouldn’t start becoming sexually active and elope with someone else they fell in love with and break off the entire marriage they were in). Both cultures were very close to each other family-wise even if they weren’t related to each other. The !Kung people didn’t like to marry or arrange a marriage with other blood related family members even with distant cousins and if a person shared the same surname as one of the family members or even a child if the woman is older, they are forbidden to marry her. The Indian culture on the other hand had 36 different Araks or clans with a name for each one which a member from that particular clan used as their surname. Parents were forbidden to marry their children off to their own Araks they themselves came from in order to prevent incest. One other interesting fact I found out that differed these two cultures from one another was who the children went to after a divorce. The Indian culture gave the husband custody of the children as they generally gave the males more importance. They had a matrilineal society where the ancestry was traced through the men. There was even a quote in the Conformity and Conflict book that explained the man was considered the one who planted seeds while the woman was the field in which they did it, explaining the sexual relationship between a husband and wife. In the !Kung culture the children stayed with their mother. Another difference is in the !Kung culture the husband traveled to the bride’s