Social Institutions: Family, Marriage and Kinship
This domain examines how families are formed, how marriages are arranged and how kinship organises rights, duties and inheritance. The exam expects correct classification and the ability to connect institutions to wider society.
Family
- Nuclear family: parents and unmarried children; common in urban and migration contexts.
- Joint family: two or more generations sharing residence, property and a common kitchen; it may be patrilineal or matrilineal.
- Residence rules: patrilocal (wife lives with husband’s family), matrilocal (husband with wife’s family), neolocal (new household).
Marriage
Forms include monogamy, polygyny (one man, several wives) and polyandry (one woman, several husbands). Rules include endogamy (marriage within a group), exogamy (outside one’s clan or gotra), cross-cousin marriage and levirate. Dowry and bride price are transfers with different logic: dowry moves with the bride; bride price moves to the bride’s family.
Kinship
Kinship is consanguineal (by blood, e.g. siblings) or affinal (by marriage, e.g. in-laws). Lineage, clan and kindred are different scales of kinship. Kinship shapes inheritance, care and political support.
Worked example
Question: ‘Among the Khasi, descent is matrilineal.’ What follows? Reasoning: trace descent through the mother, note matrilocal residence and inheritance through the youngest daughter, but do not conclude that women hold all political power. Matrilineal means descent through women; matriarchal means female rule. The distinction is the mark-earning point.
Traps
- Confusing matrilineal with matriarchal.
- Treating joint family as any large household; common property and kitchen matter.
- Mixing polygyny and polyandry.
- Assuming kinship is only biological; adoption and marriage create kinship too.