A kinship system includes all relationships based on blood and marriage that link people in a web of rights and obligations, the kind of groups that may be formed in a society on the basis of kinship and the system of terms used to classify different kin. The system of kinship involves the following basic aspects:
- Kinship system is an important sub-system of the total social structure.
- It is a network of one to one (dyadic) social relations between person to person in a community.
- It involves relationship with consanguine and affine.
- The relationships define myriad aspects important for the society such as marriage, succession, inheritance, role expectations, economic role, political role, religious role, etc.
- These are regulated by social rules and norms.
Radcliffe-Brown, an eminent social scientist, calls kinship system a system of kinship and affinity. The term ‘affinity’ means relation through marriage while ‘kinship’ here refers to consanguineal or blood relatives i.e. relation through descent. According to him, a kinship system is in the first place a system of dyadic relations between person to person in a community, the behaviour of any two persons in any of these relations being regulated in some way, and to a greater or less extent by social usage. It is a network of one to one (dyadic) social relations between person to person in a community.
We have noted that each person has two sets of relative or kins —consanguineal (related through blood or descent) and affinal (related through marriage). In a society, the mutual rights and duties of relatives to one another are defined by social norms and usages. All these networks, groups and social practices regarding kinship are part of kinship system.
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