Social Institutions: Family, Marriage, Kinship, Education, Religion and Economy
What the exam tests
This domain tests the basic functions, types and changing forms of six institutions, and your ability to compare them rather than list definitions.
Core rules and concepts
- Family: universal, kinship-based and relatively small. Functions include reproduction, socialisation, economic support and emotional security. Types: nuclear/joint, patrilocal/matrilocal, patriarchal/egalitarian.
- Marriage: a socially approved union that legitimises parenthood and creates affinal ties. Rules include endogamy and exogamy; forms include monogamy and polygamy.
- Kinship: relationships by blood (consanguineal), marriage (affinal) and adoption; descent may be patrilineal, matrilineal or bilateral.
- Education: formal schooling and informal socialisation. Manifest functions include literacy, skills and credentials. Latent functions include peer networks, discipline and mate selection.
- Religion: beliefs, rituals and symbols around the sacred; Durkheim distinguished sacred from profane. It provides meaning, cohesion and social control, but can also divide.
- Economy: production, distribution, exchange and consumption; division of labour and changing work patterns.
Worked example
A joint family in a city may retain shared property and elder authority while its members work in separate formal jobs. Reasoning: the family's structure changes slowly, but its economic functions shift to schools, hospitals and markets. This is not 'family decline'; it is functional differentiation.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating family and household as identical; a household can be non-familial.
- Confusing marriage with mating or cohabitation.
- Reducing religion to superstition, ignoring its integrative and conflictual roles.
- Claiming education only transmits knowledge, ignoring latent functions and inequality.