Socio-economic Role of Kinship Organization in Bangladesh: Study of a Village

Abstract

The dissertation entitled "Socio-economic Role of Kinship Organization in Bangladesh: Study of a Village" is an empirical research work based on mainly participant-observation method. The central concern of this study is the analytical description of kinship organization and its socio-economic role (i.e., economic, political, religious, socio-cultural etc), in a village, named Srirampur in Natore district in the northern part of Bangladesh. Besides participant-observation method, a census was conducted on village household. Furthermore, data was collected on genealogies and some statistics. While living in Srirampur, I had an opportunity to gain and intimate understanding about the underlying factors associated with the interaction of the kin members leading to decision-makings in their everyday familial living. This time I also got an opportunity to bring together field data on various kin terms used among relatives' network in the study village. The various kinship terms as prevalent in the study village have been discussed from the standpoints of Muslim male ego and married Muslim female ego. The study provides new data and attempts to interpret these data in the light of the recent changes in the rural society of Bangladesh. However, the findings of the study have shown that the kinship systems are universal. These are always important, which play crucial roles in economic, political, religious and socio­cultural sectors. Moreover, it is important to note that the basic units of kinship organization (i.e., household, family and lineage) co-exist in the village and they are in their different phases of the development playing crucial roles in the traditional as well as modern economy and politics of the rural society of Bangladesh including Srirampur, my study village.