Doing Kinship and Gender in a Comparative Context

Leela Dube (1923-2012) was an Indian social anthropologist / sociologist whose primary interest was in the field of family and kinship studies. This essay traces the zig-zag process of her intellectual evolution over five decades into one of the leading feminist anthropologists of her day – in India, in the Asian region, and indeed globally. Crucial turning points in this evolution were: (i) her self-initiated field study of the accommodation of the matrilineal kinship system of the Lakshadweep islanders with the androcentric legal apparatus of Islam; (ii) her role as the ‘sociologist’ member of the famous Committee on the Status of Women in India, an experience that convinced her that the best contribution she could make to the emerging women’s studies discourse was through the conceptual and methodological resources of her own discipline, anthropology; and (iii) her self-conscious deployment of the so-called ‘comparative method’ of anthropology to explore the contrasting patterns of gender relations in strongly ‘patrilineal’ South Asia versus ‘bilateral’ Southeast Asia. She saw this ambitious comparative exercise, largely ignored by both her admirers and her critics, as enabling an emancipatory rethinking of some of the dominant paradigms of Western feminism. It was also, incidentally, a bold step in the disciplinary evolution of Indian social anthropology.