Professor Dr. Clark-Decès’s research on Tamil kinship and marriage challenges Dumont’s alliance theory and Lévi-Strauss’s idea of marriage as reciprocal exchange between distinct social groups. Clark-Decès argues that there is nothing systematic or stable about the kin and affine distinction or the principle of opposition in the Tamil kinship and that the general vocabulary for kinship in the Tamil language shows the Tamil kinship to be about ownership rights rather than reciprocity, and that the Tamil marriage pragmatics portray inherent entitlement and violence rather than a spirit of equality and mutuality. Further, that the so-called cross-cousin marriage rule is not really indiscriminate but is marred by elitism based on side, seniority, rank and hierarchy, that the uncle-niece marriage is the most common and most favored marriage is said to provide the ultimate evidence that Tamil kinship is woman-centered, woman-powered and where females prevail and men willingly surrender. For all of these reasons and more, Clark-Decès insists that the structural approach taken in the past, showcasing reciprocal alliance as the cornerstone of Dravidian kinship, must be discarded.
\nThe responder, Ruth Vaz, is a Tamil woman and she presents her view on the kinship, marriage and social organization of her own people, the Kallar of Thanjavur district in Tamil Nadu State of south India. She provides ample data affirming the fundamentality of the principle of opposition in Dravidian kinship and of the cross-cousin marriage alliance among her people. She challenges Clark-Decès’ exegeses of the meaning of kinship in Tamil and provides a corrective by offering her own exegeses of the word for kinship in Tamil. She exposes the distortions in the professor’s portrayal of the Tamil Mother’s Brother and rejects the heavily biased and misleading conclusions made by Prof Dr. Clark-Decès. The responder also provides additional data from the Hill Madia kinship system of the central Dravidian variety to show how every major claim made by the professor is misguided by unreasonable biases.
","language":"eng","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\n\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Dravidian Kinship"},{"word":"Alliance Theory"},{"word":"Structural Approach"},{"word":"Thanjavur Kaɭɭar"},{"word":"Madia Kinship"},{"word":"Uncle-niece marriage"},{"word":"Feminist Approach to Kinship"}],"section":"Articles","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/48j3d5q8","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Ruth","middle_name":"Manimekalai","last_name":"Vaz","name_suffix":"","institution":"Independent Scholar","department":""}],"date_submitted":"2025-10-12T04:58:31.939000Z","date_accepted":"2025-10-12T08:45:34.535000Z","date_published":"2025-10-25T19:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/kinship/article/53129/galley/40058/download/"}]}