Knowing how people make their living is very important; it is because this is how people can survive in the world. In many societies as well as the Dobe Ju and the Chinese immigrants, people make use of kin ties to make or help to make their living. For the Ju/’hoansi, they have two kinds of living groups, one is the “camp”, which is usually large with10-30 members, and is economically self-sufficient. Most of them are based on hunting and gathering. The other one is the “client group”, which can be as small as a single woman married to a man. It is, by contrast to the camp, are dependent on cattle herders for milk, meat, and grains. The camp consists of relatives, friends and in-laws. The composition of the camp is flexible that people only live together if they would like to. Brothers or father and son can be united or divided. This kind of flexibility allows the group to cooperate efficiently for food and resources.
When we look at the Chinese immigrants, we can see a different behavior. The Chinese immigrants would not go blindly for a job or any place to make living in the new country. Instead, they would go to a job or a place where their family members are there so that they could have both financial and emotional support. Besides, the tradition values of the Chinese people do affect the way they work or live a lot. Chinese people believe that they have to bring economic improvement to the family in order to glorify their ancestry. This is one of the motivations for the Chinese people to run their family business well. The two different cultures talked about previously have shown that how people with different backgrounds carrying out economic activities with the help of family or kin relationships.
In addition to the economic activities of the people, how people within a group are connected to each other, how they socialize, is also very vital when anthropologists studying about the human beings. This is because family network can be extended to other social levels for example the whole society.
A Ju person would be called by kin terms if someone has genealogical connection to his/her “parents” (which also include those names-related parents) and if those people are related to other persons with the same name as he/she. This kind of namesake kin makes the social network become broad and their social network is not limited within the descent group (the kind of kin group that members are related by blood). Also, the center of each camp is a core related to older people which are known as the owners of the waterhole. A camp is built up gradually through the addition of in-marrying spouses and spouses bringing their siblings and spouses i.e. affinals (relatives by marriage) in. In order words, it is a form of chain of spouses and siblings radiating from the core.
The Confucianism values have affected the Chinese people for thousands of years. One of them emphasizes that family is the main social unit of the society and the value of family is very important. It suggests that one should care about his/her family members so that the society and community are cared for as well. Children are expected to be respectful to parents and ancestors as well as their elder kinsmen. As the value of family unit is strongly highlighted, members within a family usually have tight connections with each others. As mentioned before, when Chinese people immigrate to San Francisco, they would seek for their family members instead of staying alone. It is not only a matter of getting support but also the fact that they are affected by the traditional values in unconsciously. The other traditional values which let the Chinese community extends outside China are ganqing (sentimental feeling), yiqi (personal loyalty) and renqing (sympathy). With the three values, Chinese people feel that they have the responsibility to take care of not only their families, but also people from the same country. That is why that there are always big Chinese communities for example China Towns in which the Chinese people gather, in different parts of the world.
As we can see from the above given ethnographies examples, the kinship system are tightly connected with the economic actions of a society and the socialization of the group of people. Both of them are indeed crucial for anthropologists to study about the human beings. On one hand, the Chinese immigrants use their social network which is more base on blood relationship, to make their living. On the other hand, the Ju people live in camps for hunting, the access of resources, with relatives or kinsmen which may not be blood related but instead name-related. From those, we can see that why kinship often being the center of anthropology study. The reasons mentioned in this essay are actually interrelated, interdependent and equally important.
Word Count:1005
