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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

Discuss the conceptual issues about lineage and descent in India. Give suitable illustrations.

  • UPSC 2020
  • Systems of Kinship in India

Descent is the socially recognised rule assigning a person to a group by ancestry, transmitting membership, property, office and ritual duty. A lineage is a descent group whose members can demonstrate genealogical connection to a known ancestor, unlike a clan, where common ancestry is claimed but untraceable. Both concepts were built on African ethnography, and…

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions.

What the full answer covers

  • The inherited apparatus
  • Does the African model travel?
  • Is gotra a clan or a category?
  • Is the Indian lineage corporate at all?
  • Matriliny and the definition problem
  • Descent, residence and property pulled apart
  • …and 1 more sections, with a conclusion

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