Revision summary
Descent: who belongs across generations (patriliny, matriliny, bilateral). Alliance: who marries whom and how groups exchange spouses (Levi-Strauss, Dumont). North Indian lineage-plus-exogamy versus South Indian cross-cousin prescription illustrate the cut. Caste endogamy is alliance at jati level. Household in the Census is not the descent group.
Model answer
Introduction
Descent rules say who belongs to a kin group across generations. Alliance rules say who may or must marry whom, and how groups exchange spouses. They interlock, but they answer different questions.
Body
Descent
- Unilineal descent traces through father (patriliny) or mother (matriliny). Cognatic and bilateral systems count both.
- Descent allocates membership, often property, ancestor worship, and jural identity.
- Illustration: a North Indian patrilineage (gotra, kul) as a descent corporation; Khasi matriliny as descent through women.
Alliance
- Claude Levi-Strauss treated the incest taboo and the exchange of spouses as the elementary structure of kinship.
- Positive rules (prescriptive cross-cousin marriage) and negative rules (whom one must not marry) organise alliance.
- Louis Dumont read South Indian kinship as alliance between groups, not only as a tree of descent.
- Illustration: Dravidian cross-cousin marriage as repeating alliance; North Indian sapinda and village exogamy as negative alliance with strong patrilineal descent.
Difference
- Descent is filiation through time. Alliance is marriage between groups in a generation and the next.
- A society can have strong descent and weak prescription, or strong alliance with shallow descent names.
- Caste endogamy is an alliance rule at a higher level: marry inside the jati, outside the lineage.
Mead and the household
- George Herbert Mead’s family as the first game of roles is socialisation, not a substitute for these jural rules.
- Census household is not the lineage. Household and kin group must not be collapsed.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD DES[Descent membership] --> TIME[Across generations] ALL[Alliance marriage] --> EX[Exchange of spouses] DES --> KIN[Kinship system] ALL --> KIN
Conclusion
Descent assigns membership through parentage. Alliance assigns marriage relations among groups. Levi-Strauss and Dumont centre exchange; lineage theory centres the corporation. Indian North–South contrasts illustrate the difference without making either region a pure type.
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It constrains it. Alliance theory asks for the positive pattern of exchange, not only the tree.
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Gotra is a descent category that also works as a negative alliance rule: do not marry inside it.
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