Category: Sociology of Kinship

  • NEGOTIATIONS WITH PATRIARCHY IN CHANGING SPACES

    I was born in Sidhpura, Kasganj, a small town in Uttar Pradesh. Every community lives in harmony in this town, but most of the population is inhabited by the Baniya community. According to the Varna System, Hindu society is divided into four varnas that are, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya, Shudra, and those who do not come…

  • AFRICAN KINSHIP SYSTEM AND MARRIAGE: SUMMARY

    Kinship eventuated from the primitive and most traditional societies. It has its roots in simple societies which were not so complex. Communities and social bonds are necessary attributes for kinship systems. In order to understand a society, community, or its culture, one should have adequate knowledge about its past or history, but social anthropologists could…

  • The Structure of Families and Households in the UK

    Family can be defined as “a group of persons united by the ties of marriage, blood, or adoption, constituting a single household and interacting with each other in their respective social positions, usually those of spouses, parents, children, and siblings” (Barnard, 2021). Family also plays a role in influencing and affecting the development, behaviour, and…

  • Understanding Key Concepts in Kinship Studies: At a Glance

    If one is to trace the history of the development of social science disciplines such as sociology and anthropology, one can see how family and kinship were perhaps the first social phenomena that were studied systematically. For over a period of nearly 200 years, kinship studies have undergone a dramatic transition, following much-needed incorporation of…

  • Leela Dube: Biography, Works, Contributions and Achievements

    Leela Dube was a pioneering Indian feminist anthropologist who showed how gender is quietly shaped through everyday family life, marriage rules and kinship customs. She explained how patriarchy gets reproduced through practices like patrilineal inheritance, patrilocal residence, dowry, and gendered socialisation, where girls and boys are raised with different expectations. Her work made it clear…

  • Radcliffe Brown: Biography, Contributions and Books

    Early life: Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown was born in Birmingham in 1881. He belonged to the English lower middle class. With economic support from his brother, Radcliffe-Brown embarked on medical studies. But his teachers encouraged him to move to Cambridge and study anthropology. While at Cambridge, Radcliffe-Brown became a pupil of pioneering ethnologist W. H. R….

  • Unilateral Descent: Sociology of Kinship Notes

    Unilateral descent is a system of kinship in which descent is one can trace one’s ancestors through only one gender, either the male or the female. Based on this we can divide between the patrilineal or matrilineal line of descent. When descent is traced through the father it is called patrilineal descent. Here, the father’s…