How Do Awlad 'Ali Bedouin Ideas about Blood Provide the Idiom for Different Kinds of Social Relations?

Kinship is understood as the relationships in a society through blood and marriage. It is considered a fundamental cultural basis. From kinship systems social norms develop in the communities, including rights and responsibilities, greatly impacting behavior. These systems are described as kinship terms, relationships and groups in a society. Kinship ultimately has two core functions through kinship systems that are crucial for the preservation of culture and societies. First, these ties provide continuation of generations and family formation. The lines of descent, the upbringing and education of children, the compromise to provide material possessions and inheriting social positions are all very important. Second, since kinship is based on interdependent relationships, there are established aid systems. These, however would be compromise by the cultural implications of the extended or nuclear kin groups. Additionally, marriage may or may not be founded by blood relationships. Both the consanguineal and the affinal relationship represents a strong bond. However, the cultural norms would dictate whether both have equal value or acceptance in each society. Anthropologists have studied the implications of kinship. One of the topics researched is between kinship and social relationships. The Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin society in the Western Desert, as studied by Abu-Lughod in 1978-1980, through her ethnography ‘Veiled Sentiments’ (1986), showed distinct evidences of the influence of consanguineal and affinal ties into their idiom of kinship and how it links to their social interactions and relationships. In this way defining the different kinds of social relationships.

Kinship is “a key factor in the formation of social groups”, where desce...

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... hers. These children, especially sons, are who secure a more stable status for her in her husband’s kin, since she might still be considered an outsider long after she married. “The position of women and attitudes about the bonds created by marriage give the clearest index of the ideological dominance of agnation in social identity and relationships in Bedouin society”. Polygyny, that is a husband taking more than one wife, is accepted by the Awlad ‘Ali, and they see everything that is advantageous to life about it. The co-wives are part of the fundamental aid-systems, raising each other children together.

Aside to these relationships formed from cultural tradition, the Awla Ali also have “fictive kin” ties with those whom they share do not blood or marriage, but who feel close s if they were quasi-kin. ‘Isha is the Bedouin kinship term for those relationships.