Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
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Page 148
Kinship Roles
All societies attach rights and duties to kinship relationships outside the family or domestic group. At one extreme are those societies in which a very large part of social intercourse and a large number of technical, economic, and political activities are carried on within acknowledged kinship relations, and in which accordingly the rights and duties of kin to each other are various, numerous and in some matters highly specific and heavily sanctioned. At the other extreme are those societies like industrial Europe and America in which these rights and duties are relatively unimportant in many political and economic matters, seldom distinct or precise, and sanctioned mainly by reciprocity - that is, people are free to contract out of their duties to their kin, on pain only of losing their rights to claim reciprocal friendly support and help.
Within these Turkish villages, that is, excluding the political and economic dependence of the rural area on the wider society, kinship relations are the single most important set of relationships outside the domestic group, and a very high proportion of activity is kinship activity. Yet with some minor exceptions, and one major one, which I shall discuss below, different kinship roles do not carry specific and distinct rights and duties, but rather a general duty of affection, help and support.
Kin visit each others' houses, spend their leisure time together, co-operate in work, help each other in small crises, such as temporary shortages or the arrival of the unexpected guest, and in major crises such as sickness, food shortages, sickness of animals, and the ceremonies of birth, circumcision, marriage and death. The degree of intimacy of relationship of this kind
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