Revision summary
Morgan defined family as practices that display relatedness, not only as a co-resident group. The view fits diverse households, migration, and rites across houses. It makes gendered care visible as work done. It underplays law, property, and caste as closures on who may practise. Use it with Shah, Karve, and feminist political economy, not as a solo theory.
Model answer
Introduction
- David Morgan shifted the sociology of family from a fixed institution to family practices: the activities through which people display relatedness. The view is powerful for contemporary diversity. It is weaker if it dissolves structure, law, and gender into a set of optional habits.
Body
What Morgan argued
- In Family Connections and later Family Practices, Morgan treated family as something people do: phoning, feeding, visiting, naming, and caring.
- Practices are historically situated, have an audience, and can be more or less intense.
- The approach fits later marriage, divorce, step-ties, friendship care, and households that do not match Parsons’s isolated nuclear type.
- It also fits Indian urban life where brothers do not co-reside but still perform joint rites and remittances.
Critical gains
- It avoids treating the census household as the whole of kinship, a warning A. M. Shah also gave in another vocabulary.
- It makes gender visible as who actually does the practice, not as a role label on a chart.
- It allows chosen kin without forcing them into a fake biological box.
Critical limits
- Property, law, and caste endogamy still organise who is allowed to practise family with whom. Practice theory can underplay that closure.
- Talcott Parsons and older functionalism over-fixed the group. Morgan should not over-unfix it into pure process.
- Feminist work on unpaid labour needs the practice idea, but also needs Marx on surplus and patriarchy as structure, not only as a habit.
- Cross-cultural use must not treat British late modernity as the world pattern. Karve’s regional systems still constrain practice in India.
Judgement
- Use Morgan to see doing. Keep descent, alliance, and law to see who may do.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD M[Morgan] --> D[Family as doing] D --> A[Care visit name feed] S[Law caste property gender] --> W[Who may practise] A --> F[Displayed relatedness] W --> F
Conclusion
Morgan’s family practices correctly treat relatedness as activity and fit diverse households. A critical analysis keeps law, property, caste, and gendered labour as structures that decide whose practices count as family. The view is a necessary shift, not a complete theory of kinship.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Does women's education help to eradicate patriarchal discriminations? Reflect with illustrations
Next question on this syllabus topic (2023 · Q5(e)). View answer →
-
Does Morgan say the family has ended?
No. He says the family as a single fixed group is a poor starting point. Practices continue.
-
Can friends be family on this view?
They can if care and display are done. Law and inheritance may still exclude them.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2023 · Q1(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
How does the dramaturgical perspective enable our understanding of everyday life? -
2023 · Q1(d) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Is reference group theory a universally applicable model? Elucidate -
2023 · Q2(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
What, according to Robert Michels, is the iron law of oligarchy? Do lions folly and foxes in Vilfredo Pareto's theory, essentially differ from each other? Substantiate -
2023 · Q3(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
How do you assess the changing patterns in kinship relations in societies today? -
2023 · Q4(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Do you think that common sense is the starting point of social research? What are its advantages and limitations? Explain -
2023 · Q4(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Highlight the differences and similarities between totemism and animism -
2023 · Q5(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Examine the relevance of corporate social responsibility in a world marked by increasing environmental crises -
2023 · Q5(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Does women's education help to eradicate patriarchal discriminations? Reflect with illustrations
More from this topic
Q8(c) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
In what way does queer kinship challenge the traditional kinship system? Substantiate by giving illustrations
Sociology
Traditional kinship canonically runs on descent, marriage alliance and binary gendered terms. Queer kinship organises care, parenthood and belonging beyond that monopoly. Weston’s chosen families and Schneider’s critique of blood as symbol are theoretical anchors. Indian hijra gharanas illustrate initiation-based relatedness outside the patriline. Law often still privileges conjugal heterosexual kinship, which is part of the challenge. The point is that kinship is done through practice, not only inherited as blood.
Q8(a) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
What do you understand by sustainable development? Discuss the elements of sustainable development as proposed in the UNDP's Sustainable Development Goals Report-2015
Sociology
Brundtland defined sustainable development as meeting present needs without compromising the future. The 2015 SDG agenda, reflected in UNDP reporting, treats that as a multi-goal programme. Five elements—people, planet, prosperity, peace, partnership—organise the set. Seventeen goals join poverty and inequality to climate, cities, work and institutions. Sociology stresses unequal needs, risk distribution and weak institutions. The agenda is a frame for development, not an automatic achievement.
Q6(a) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
What is science? Do you think that the methods used in natural sciences can be applied to sociology? Give reasons for your answer
Sociology
Science means systematic, public, criticisable knowledge, not only lab hardware. Positivists apply observation, measurement and comparison to social regularities. Limits include meaning, ethics of experiment, values and the double hermeneutic. Kuhn and feminists complicate even the natural-science side of the contrast. The judged answer is qualified yes: use the tools, drop the closed-system fantasy. Sociology remains a science of an open, interpreted world.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.