Category: Family, Marriage and Kinship

The biological and bio-social factors discussed above help us to understand the omnipresence of the family. George Peter Murdock conducted an analysis of 250 ‘primitive’ societies using the ethnographies relative to them, and arrived at the conclusion that family was present in all. Murdock defined Family as:   a social group characterized by common residence,…

Family may not be indispensable, in the sense that the functions performed by it can be taken over by other agencies of the social system, or a special agency created for them in society—such as the Israeli Kibbutz or the Soviet Kolhos, which take care of the socialization of the young. Children can be produced by surrogate mothers,3 or through…

Recruitment by birth as the principal mode of enlisting membership is common to all societies. It is this aspect of recruitment that has given prominence to the institution of the family. Apart from religion, family is the only institution that is universally found in all societies. It is the family towards which every individual seems to be…

In all inclusive social systems such as society, replacement is mainly through the process of sexual reproduction. This implies that such a social system has to be heterosexual (that is, consisting of both males and females) in demographic composition. We may recall Marion J. Levy’s definition of society, discussed at length in which he says that…

The difference between a living and a dead social system—of whatever size, be it the largest or the smallest—is the presence, or the disappearance (due to death or migration), of its members. A social system lives through its membership. Individuals who belong to it may die or withdraw; their replacement is a must if a…