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VOL. 7, ISSUE 4 (2025)
Culture, society, and economy: A holistic anthropological analysis of social institutions, kinship, and economic life
Authors
Ganesh Shrirang Nale Satarkar, Dr. Priyanka Sambhaji Jadhavar
Abstract
Social anthropology offers a comprehensive framework for understanding
the complexity of human life through the interrelated study of culture,
society, institutions, kinship, and economic systems. This research article
presents an integrated conceptual analysis of key anthropological
constructs—culture, society, social institutions, kinship, marriage, family,
and economic organization—emphasizing their universality, variation, and
dynamic transformation. Culture is examined as a learned, shared, symbolic, and
adaptive system encompassing values, beliefs, norms, and world-views, while
processes such as enculturation, acculturation, transculturation, and culture
change highlight cultural dynamism. Concepts such as cultural relativism,
folk-urban continuum, and the distinction between great and little traditions
illuminate cultural diversity and continuity. Society is analyzed through its
structural components—groups, institutions, associations, community, status,
and role—along with the regulation of sexuality through incest taboos,
endogamy, exogamy, and rites of passage. The family and marriage are examined
as universal yet culturally variable institutions, focusing on typologies,
residence patterns, marital forms, and transactional systems. Kinship systems,
descent rules, terminology, and social mechanisms such as joking and avoidance
relationships reveal the organizational logic of social relationships. The
article further explores economic anthropology as a bridge between culture and
material life, contrasting formalist, substantivist, Marxist, and functionalist
perspectives, particularly those of Bronislaw Malinowski. Subsistence
strategies, division of labour, exchange systems, and ceremonial economies such
as the Kula, Potlatch, and Jajmani system are analyzed to demonstrate the
embeddedness of economy within social relations. By adopting a holistic and
comparative approach, this paper underscores anthropology’s relevance in
understanding continuity and change in a rapidly globalizing world.
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Pages:126-129
How to cite this article:
Ganesh Shrirang Nale Satarkar, Dr. Priyanka Sambhaji Jadhavar "Culture, society, and economy: A holistic anthropological analysis of social institutions, kinship, and economic life". International Journal of Sociology and Political Science, Vol 7, Issue 4, 2025, Pages 126-129
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