Social Institutions: Family, Marriage, Kinship and Religion
Domain 3: Social Institutions - Family, Marriage, Kinship and Religion
This domain tests institutional analysis: how family, marriage, kinship and religion meet basic social needs and how their forms vary. Expect questions on types, functions and change in the Indian context.
Core rules
- Family is a universal, kinship-based institution. Forms include nuclear and joint/extended, patrilineal and matrilineal, patrilocal, matrilocal and neolocal. Functions: reproduction, socialisation, economic cooperation, emotional support and care.
- Marriage is a socially approved relationship that regulates mating, establishes legitimacy and creates affinal ties. Forms include monogamy, polygyny and polyandry; rules include endogamy and exogamy. Under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, monogamy is required and conditions include age, consent and prohibited degrees.
- Kinship is the network of blood and marriage ties: consanguineal (blood) and affinal (marriage). Descent can be unilineal or bilateral; kinship terms classify relatives and prescribe obligations.
- Religion is a system of beliefs, rituals and symbols around the sacred. Durkheim stressed sacred/profane and collective conscience; Weber linked Protestant ethics to capitalism; Malinowski saw religion as reducing anxiety; Marx saw it as a source of false consciousness. Functions include integration, meaning and social control.
Worked example
Migration for jobs may produce nuclear households, but the joint family can persist as a property-holding and ritual unit. The correct analysis distinguishes household composition from family relationships, and notes both change and continuity.
Traps
Do not treat family and household as synonyms. Do not say joint families have disappeared. Do not reduce religion to belief only; practice, organisation and politics matter. Do not confuse polygyny (one husband, several wives) with polyandry.