[themacguffinman]

The difference is that it's pretty acceptable for you to reject family requests for money, it doesn't make you a pariah and being a pariah doesn't carry the same consequences when non-family institutions govern society.

The article spends a lot of time belaboring this point: you don't have to do what your family asks you to do in developed countries. On the other hand, becoming outcast from your family in a kinship-dominated society means you have nowhere else to turn to which is enormous pressure.

[ozim]

in a kinship-dominated society means you have nowhere else to turn to which is enormous pressure.

Also enormous abuse.

Lots of people lament loss of family ties in western society.

But they completely ignore amount of abuse that comes with power of:

„you have no one else to turn to, stay with your family, we will beat you, rob you, but family is important”.

[UltraSane]

Corinne Hofmann is a Swiss woman who married a Kenyan Samburu warrior named Lketinga Leparmorijo and had a daughter. She opens a shop but they lose money because Lemalian gives too much credit to friends and neighbors, and because they have to pay bribes to the mini-chief. Lemalian argues that this is no problem because she has more money in Switzerland. The mini-chief demands that Carola hires his teenage nephew as a shop assistant. She has to accept this although she does not need him and he does not work hard. After some time, when he is just drinking beer and not working, she fires him. Later he returns and attacks her. A local judge rules that she has to pay two goats for firing him, but the boy's family has to pay her five goats to compensate for the attack.

[mothballed]

The article's description of kinship sounds a bit like family based governance and taxation. Only with say a western government their enforcers will happily imprison anyone not giving what the government ("kin") says is owed, and those who resist being violently dragged jailed typically find a fate even worse.

The western version then of being a pariah for not paying up is violence rather than ostracization and shame. Of course until you get rich enough that you can corrupt the government itself.

[JumpCrisscross]

> with say a western government their enforcers will happily imprison anyone not giving what the government ("kin") says is owed

Big difference between taxation and patronage is when the rules are known. You generally know ex ante what you should owe in taxes. With patronage, if you have a windfall, the rules adjust to require you give it away.