Week 6: Cultural, Social

, and Political Institution

s (Part 1
)
Social organization
• Social organization is defined as the system of
relationships between persons and among groups
with regard to the division of activity and the
functional arrangement of mutual obligations within
society. Knowing what social organization can help us
understand the importance of each organization’s role
to the development of the entire society
Kinship, Marriage, and the household
• The family is defined by sociologists Ernest
Burgess and Harvey Lock as a group of persons
united by ties of marriage, blood or adoption
constituting a single household interacting with
each other in their respective social role of
husband and wife, mother and father, brother
and sister creating a common culture.
• There are several kinds of families: nuclear, extended,
and reconstituted families.
• Nuclear families are families that consist of parents and
children.
• Extended families, on the other hand, are composed of
the nuclear family plus other relatives such as
grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. And then the
• Reconstituted families refer to families composed of
spouses and their children from a previous marriage.
Kinship
• Kinship is a system of social organization which is
based on real or recognized family ties. It is a universal
human phenomenon that takes various cultural forms.
• Three types of Kinship :

• Consanguineous Kinship that is also known as kinship

by blood or descent, the
• Affinal Kinship which is also known as kinship by
marriage, and the
• Kinship by Ritual.
Marriages
• Marriages can be monogamous or polygamous.
• Monogamy means that a person is married to
one person only.
• Polygamy, on the other hand, means that a
person has more than one spouse at a time. This
is common among Islamic societies.
Descent
• Descent is the system of acknowledged social
parentage, which varies from society to society.
• This system limits one’s claim of kinship ties with
another. If there is no limitation on the
recognition of kinship, everybody would be kin
to everyone else; but in most societies some
limitation is imposed on the perception of
common ancestry.
Politics of Kinship
• Kinship plays a huge role in the kind of
society that we are living today. Its influence
reaches other organizations, affecting even
our politics and economy.