Breaking down the question
This is a two-part 10-mark question with a clear internal structure. The first part asks for a definition of kinship — a short, precise conceptual statement. The second, weightier part asks you to explain the specific contribution of George Peter Murdock to the study of kinship.
The word Briefly sets the scale: this is not a full essay but a focused note. Yet Murdock is named specifically, so a generic account of kinship will not earn the second half of the marks. You must recall his particular ideas — his cross-cultural, comparative method and his claims about the family and kinship terminology. Grounding is available in the note on the types of kinship systems in India.
How to approach it
Devote the opening to a crisp definition distinguishing consanguineal from affinal ties. Then spend the bulk of the answer on Murdock, moving through his major works, his method and his substantive claims. Keep the tone descriptive and organised, and close with a short evaluative line that shows awareness of the critiques his universalism attracted.
Model answer
Kinship refers to the socially recognised network of relationships that bind individuals together through ties of blood, marriage and, in some societies, adoption. Sociologists distinguish two basic strands: consanguineal ties, based on descent and shared blood, such as those between parent and child or between siblings; and affinal ties, based on marriage, such as those between husband and wife or between a person and their in-laws. Kinship is a fundamental principle of social organisation, especially in pre-industrial and traditional societies, where it regulates marriage, descent, inheritance, residence and the allocation of rights and obligations.
George Peter Murdock made a landmark contribution to the comparative and cross-cultural study of kinship. His method was distinctive: rather than studying a single society intensively, he assembled data from a large sample of societies drawn from across the world and analysed them statistically. This comparative apparatus, associated with the cross-cultural survey he helped build, allowed him to test propositions about kinship on a global scale. His major work, Social Structure, published in 1949, remains his most influential statement.
Murdock's central claim was that the nuclear family — a married couple and their children — is a universal human social grouping, found in some form in every society he examined. He argued that the nuclear family performs four essential functions: sexual, reproductive, economic and educational. Larger kinship units, in his view, are built up as combinations of nuclear families. He classified composite forms such as the polygamous family and the extended family as clusters of nuclear units linked through shared members.
He also advanced the systematic study of kinship terminology, classifying the ways different societies name their relatives — for example, whether a term merges or separates parallel and cross cousins — and relating these terminologies to underlying rules of descent, residence and marriage. By correlating terminology with social organisation, he sought general regularities in how kinship systems are patterned.
Murdock's universalism has been criticised, notably by scholars who point to matrifocal households and communal child-rearing arrangements as challenges to the claimed universality of the nuclear family. Nonetheless, his rigorous comparative method and his framework for classifying families and kin terms gave the study of kinship a systematic, cross-cultural foundation that shaped subsequent research.
Examiner's perspective
For a 10-mark answer the examiner wants both halves delivered without padding. A clean definition that separates consanguineal from affinal ties secures the first part quickly and shows conceptual clarity.
The marks then hinge on genuine recall of Murdock rather than vague praise. Naming Social Structure, the cross-cultural method, the universality of the nuclear family and its four functions, and his work on kinship terminology signals precise knowledge. A brief critical line — noting the challenge posed by matrifocal families — lifts the answer above mere reproduction and shows balanced judgement, which examiners value even in short-format questions.