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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

How do the rules of descent and alliance in kinship differ from each other? Illustrate.

  • UPSC 2015
  • Systems of Kinship

Kinship rests on two principles: consanguinity, organised by rules of descent, and affinity, organised by rules of alliance (marriage). British structural-functionalists (A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Meyer Fortes, E. E. Evans-Pritchard) treated descent as the core of social structure. Claude Lévi-Strauss (The Elementary Structures of Kinship, 1949) and Louis Dumont put alliance first.

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

What the full answer covers

  • Rules of descent
  • Rules of alliance
  • Key differences
  • Indian illustrations
  • Interdependence
  • Conclusion

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