Go to Canada essay! Is kinship unimportant in Western societies? Author's name (parents' draft). Terence Rajivan Edward (now Doctor) Dialogue on names (fictional): "Now why do you want a name?" So that my works can be identified - that is one reason. "You need a number really." Author's name (my first draft). 0161__Rajivan Abstract. The topic I shall address today is not from spoken conversation, but I guess it would arouse the curiosity of those I have conversed more with. Is kinship unimportant in Western societies? I provide clarifications of the terms "Western society," "kinship" and "unimportant," but later dispute the clarification of unimportant: kinship is unimportant if there are few or no rules featuring kin restrictions. Can there not be have-your-cake-and-eat-it approaches, where there is no rule but "my family dominate"? I later provide some intuitive reasons for thinking that kinship is important in Western societies, intuitive in this sense: if you use a clarification which leads to the conclusion that kinship is nevertheless unimportant, it is likely that the clarification is the problem. Kinship is used as a basis for racial and ethnic identities, making it important. Also various Western governments face the problem of underpopulation, encouraging people to produce new kin. Draft version: version 3 (26th May 2026; version 2 on 17th September 2025, slight amendments) Software used: Google docs, google.com PDF at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395579568_Go_to_Canada_essay_Is_kinship_unimportant_in_Western_societies "Darling, hold my hand And you'll be part of our very large band" 1. Introduction Once upon a time there was only philosophy. I mean there was only philosophy as what people of high intellectual ability did research in; but now there is physics, there is biology, there is economics, and more. That is what legend says, anyway. Amongst the disciplines is social anthropology. What is that? Since the 1920s or soon after, it has had this image: the anthropologist is a posh white gentleman (or gentlewoman) and he travels to a remote society and studies an isolated primitive tribe there, and then reports to us their beliefs and their customs and their social structure and maybe more. The image is inaccurate in various ways, but I shall leave these ways aside here. The study of kinship is central to social anthropology. A lecturer at the University of Manchester once introduced the topic like this: kinship is to social anthropology as logic is to philosophy. A question within social anthropology, in light of its knowledge of other societies, is whether kinship is unimportant in our Western societies. The purpose of this essay is to give the simply-worded response of a reasonably intelligent person of our time to this question, not an expert in kinship. But it may be said that I am simply too involved with social anthropology to not count as a sort-of expert. In the next part of this paper, I try to clarify key terms within the question: kinship, unimportant, and Western societies. For "unimportant," I rely on a clarification suggested by the anthropology literature. In the third part, I raise an obvious problem for the claim that kinship is unimportant in Western societies: monarchies. I also present a defence of the claim. In the fourth part, I dispute the value of the clarification I rely on, by showing how kinship can be important in a way that clarification is blind to. In the fifth part, I speculate that extended families may be more important in Western societies than we imagine. In the sixth and seventh parts, I give intuitive reasons for thinking that kinship is important. They are intuitive in the sense that if you work with a clarification which leads to the conclusion that actually kinship is unimportant in Western societies, despite one of these reasons, the clarification itself is likely to be the problem. 2. Preliminary clarifications "Is kinship unimportant in Western societies?" We must of course first clarify terms! Western. The term "Western" is often not used in a strict geographic sense. Some societies located geographically in the West are not counted as Western in this frequently used sense. Western societies here refers to the liberal democratic societies of the West and also Australia and New Zealand, I suppose: the societies of the white man, although I am an ethnic minority living in one, a Sri Lankan Tamil by heritage. Liberal democratic societies are marked by certain rights, such as the rights to freedom of speech and of movement, the right to a fair trial, and the right to hold personal property. Kinship. Who are your kin and who are not? In Western societies, our relatives by blood are certainly our kin. My parents and my sister are my kin. What about a man's wife or a woman's husband or one's spouse? Are they one's kin? I assume many will say, "Not sure. It depends on how you define kin." Also are we not as human beings bound by ties of blood, when you compare us with members of another species? The people who count as kin by blood-relations in a Western society are those you are prohibited from marrying. "But does not consistent Western liberalism allow one to marry any consenting adult?" Okay, we will say that kin in the Western society I live in are the relatives by blood one is not allowed to marry in this society, such as siblings and parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles who are siblings of one's parents; also kin includes one's spouse, if one has a spouse, even though they are not a relative by blood presumably. "What about adopted children?" We need to move on from the fascinating issue of who our kin are, unfortunately, apologies for any political incorrectness. Unimportant. I shall not give a general clarification of unimportant or important, rather I shall rely on a clarification of when kinship is important in a society, or more important to be precise. The clarification was suggested to me by this argument presented but not endorsed by a distinguished contemporary anthropologist, namely Dame Professor Marilyn Strathern: Kinship was the focus of one very detailed project in London (Firth, Hubert and Forge 1969), but as the authors point out, by comparison with many other societies with which anthropologists are familiar, kin groups beyond the nuclear family do not constitute units of the wider social system. We do not use such groupings as the basis of political organization except in the most informal way, nor as major channels of economic activity. Even the nuclear family emerges in some regions as less organizationally significant than in others… (1982: 74) According to this argument, as I simplify it, in Western societies kinship is unimportant because there are few rules which feature kinship restrictions. An example of such a rule is "You can only apply for this lectureship job if you are from one of these three families…" The clarification this suggests is that kinship is more important in a society to the extent that there are rules which feature kinship restrictions. Fewer rules of this kind means kinship is less important. I shall provisionally work with this clarification, which has a great advantage: it allows for measurement. 3. The monarchy argument The monarchy argument says that kinship is important in at least one Western society, namely the United Kingdom, because there is a monarchy there and you CANNOT be a member of this important institution without the appropriate kin-relationship. We have a king, you know! The monarchy, by the way, is in the newspapers everyday it seems and has been for decades, mostly famously covering the life and death of Princess Diana. ("What are newspapers?" I imagine a person from the future asking. They provide brief information about what is going on in the society and sometimes beyond: news. But they sometimes seem to marginalize more important information for gossip which interests a lot of people, or some of them do.) An objection. We are saying that the more kinship is important in a society, the more there are rules which feature kinship restrictions, but the monarchy is only one institution with such rules. Evidence of more such rules is needed before you can say that kinship is important in even one Western society. (I am wondering whether this objection can be countered by pointing to more and more rules to do with the monarchy.) A side-worry. Marilyn Strathern is not convinced that kinship is unimportant in Western societies but she does not discuss this obvious concern about the unimportance claim. A worry someone might well have is: why should we trust such an anthropologist? She is renowned for her studies of the Hagen people, but when you do not encounter this expected discussion point, you wonder how far she can be trusted in her inquiries elsewhere. 4. Have your cake and eat it? The objection in the previous section suggests to me that there might be a problem with the clarification above of when kinship is important in Western societies. If it allows one to defend against the monarchy argument above (see the objection), then is the problem not with the clarification itself rather than the monarchy argument? Anyway, it is not clear that it does allow this, but in this section I want to propose that there is a major problem with the clarification. The Western society I live in seems rich in what I call have-your-cake-and-eat-it practices. To have your cake and eat it is a"saying in this society. What does it mean? On one interpretation, it identifies something impossible: you cannot have your cake before your eyes, or before you to smell, and also eat it (fully eat it). On another interpretation, someone can be said to have their cake and eat it when they combine things which seem impossible to combine. Consider the prohibition or taboo on beating your children, even if they are naughty. How is a parent going to avoid a spoilt child, a brat, a character later unsuitable for society? (Does not another saying, "Spare the rod, spoil the child," apply?) If you look into this issue, you find various "tricks" to avoid this. For example, the naughty child is sent to play with other children in team sports but they will not pass the ball to him if he (or she) is too cocky or too naughty. A have-your-cake-and-eat0it practice, or set of practices: no beating and yet no spoilt child. In a society permeated by have-your-cake-and-eat-it practices, we should not be surprised if someone has figured out a way to have no rule in an institution which explicitly privileges their kin and at the same time to ensure that their kin get privileged over others, regardless of merit. For example, people from these five families regularly get jobs in a certain university as lecturers, even though others can apply and some of these family members are not suited to being lecturers. UNFORTUNATELY, the clarification above of when kinship is more important in a given society simply overlooks clever have-your-cake-and-eat-it strategies. Kinship could be very important in a Western society and yet seem unimportant, applying this clarification. 5. The extended family? Back in 2010 and 11, I mixed with some postgraduate students of law who had come to the UK from China. One of them told me about a role in the law school. I cannot remember the role exactly, but it requires a majority of votes to get: let us suppose it is president of the law society. BUT the overseas Chinese law postgraduate students have a vote amongst themselves concerning who is the best candidate amongst them. THEN that "internally-voted" candidate goes forward to compete with other candidates, local white ones, Nigerian ones, etc. And all the overseas Chinese vote for the internally-voted candidate. It seems they are taking the best means available to them to ensure an overseas Chinese candidate is president. But that does not seem to fit with local English values. England (and Western societies in general) are famous for individualism. To be in line with individualism, shouldn't a person interested in the role simply compete as an individual? (Well, actually we think it is reasonable for them to have some light assistance from friends and family, but not this internal vote amongst people who share an ethnic identity to stand the best chance that "one of our people" gets the role. It is hard to spell out our sense of limits within individualism though.) BUT when you think about this case, you realize that there are lots of ends regarding which a more independent individual is likely to lose to a large team interested in "one of us" succeeding. And you wonder whether even the white man generally abides by his famous individualism or works in large teams. Then you think about how various people from overseas contrast the role of the extended family in other societies (aunts, uncles, cousins of one's parents, all involved in a project) with the emphasis on the nuclear family here in Western society and the small role for the extended family here. (Or I think about this anyway,) And you wonder how true that contrast really is. I recently saw a comedy sketch in which white parents have amassed a vast amount of information about who their daughter might romantically be interested in, romance being a famously individual matter in the West. Unfortunately, all I have is suggestive material such as this, when more reliable material is crucial for a fuller assessment of the question. (Anyway, sometimes one likes to read the reflections of an individual person, no?) 6. The ethnic identity argument Western liberal societies today are multicultural. And people within them have racial or ethnic identities: "I am black" thinks one, "I am brown" thinks another, "I am yellow" thinks a third, "I am white" thinks a fourth, and so on. Or "I am Nigerian," "I am Irish," "I am South Asian," "I am Chinese," etc. Racial and ethnic identities are important in our societies. * There are laws protecting against racial discrimination and there are lawsuits to do with them. * There are protests against racial discrimination. * Probably some people vote for a political party because of reasons to do with their racial or ethnic identity, e.g "I will vote for this party because I am black and they have a black politician" or "I will vote for this party because I am Asian and they have an Asian politician." * Ethnic and racial identities are the object of much study. But where do our ethnic or racial identities come from? I assume, in many cases, one "looks" at oneself and one's kin and develops such an identity, or develops one through discussion with kin or finding out about kin. Given the assumption, kinship is important. ("So what exactly is the argument? You are saying that if our ethnic identities in Western society are caused by something and our ethnic identities are important in this society, then the something which caused them is important and the something is kinship"? Um, er…) 7. The underpopulation argument Some Western societies in Europe have shrinking populations. And there are government policies to encourage to have children. There was famously the "Do It for Denmark" campaign, concerning Denmark, a country in Europe. Italy and Spain also have problems of birth rate, according to a politics-focused Instagram poster. But then is not kinship important, because there are government policies to encourage producing kin? Appendix 1: the possibility response Let us assume that kinship is unimportant in Western societies compared to other actual societies. But perhaps we should also compare Western societies with possible societies. It is possible for a society to have even less rules featuring kinship-restrictions, for example a society in which one can marry one's blood relations, operate on them as a doctor, etc. Appendix 2: Strathern's own response Strathern writes: Far from being conceptually marginal to economic and political stratification, kinship provides a way of talking about its implications… I am thus concerned with the way in which features of our kinship system may be used as symbols for other things… (1982: 77) I anticipate someone's arguing that kinship metaphors and analogies are helpful but dispensable (see Edward 2022). One can communicate the message without these. Appendix 3: Buchi Emecheta quote In British society, two children of the same father but different mothers are described as half relations, e.g. "This is my half-brother." Also two children from different fathers but the same mother. This is a quote from a novel by Nigerian Buchi Emecheta: The men murmured and one of them exclaimed, 'Have you ever heard such rubbish? Children of the same father calling each other "half". No wonder the white people's country is a place of everybody for himself.' They all laughed again. I never heard such laughter. (1994: 80) The individualistic quality of Western liberal societies, including even its political system with the emphasis on individual rights, is here "blamed" on the white person's system of kin classification. The Nigerian men described think that what are here called half-brothers should simply be described as brothers. References (note: this essay depends a lot on previous writings of mine) abiclarkecomedy (and four others). Comedy sketch on Instagram. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/C0ewewPLlpI/ Edward, T.R. 2022. Against the symbolism solution for why kinship is significant in the West. Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2023. An obvious response to "Is kinship insignificant in Western liberal societies?" Available on academia.edu. Edward, T.R. 2023. "Is kinship insignificant in Western liberal societies?": an underpopulation response. Available on academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2023. "Is kinship insignificant in Western liberal societies?": a possibility response. Available on academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2025. To have your cake and eat it: social practices in British society and beyond. Available on PhilPapers. Emecheta, B. 1994. Kehinde. London: Heinemann. Glynne, J. 2015. Hold My Hand [Official Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLyUcAUMmMY&list=RDcLyUcAUMmMY&start_radio=1 Marinatakes. 2026. Why money can't fix the birth rate crisis. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DXz9aTLzYZm/ Strathern, M. 1982. The place of kinship: kin, class and village status in Elmdon, Essex. In A.P. Cohen (ed.), Belonging: Identity and social organisation in British rural cultures. Manchester: Manchester University Press.