About the Book
This book represents a conscious and intensive effort to focus the full resources of the social sciences on the basic unit of all human society—the family. It employs a synthesis of four systems of social theory working with the results of a brilliant and epochal research technique—the famous Cross-Cultural Survey. The result is more than just a major contribution to anthropology, or sociology, or psychology, but to an integrated (and yet unnamed) new science of human behavior.
The multiplex files of the Cross-Cultural Survey, the revolutionary research program established in 1937, supplied a detailed, in-depth picture of some 150 societies—folk, historical, and contemporary. From this fantastic wealth of statistical information, Professor Murdock collates and scrutinizes virtually all existing data on the family, shaping them into a coherent, logical pattern that supercedes every study previously published on the family.
Social Structure explores the family and variations of kinship organizations, such as consanguineal kin groups, the clan, and the community. Among the specific topics examined are incest taboos, the regulation of sex, marriage, determinants of kinship terminology, and the evolution of social organizations.
Contents
1 The Nuclear Family
2 Composite Forms of the Family
3 Consanguineal Kin Groups
4 The Clan
5 The Community
6 Analysis of Kinship
7 Determinants of Kinship Terminology
8 Evolution of Social Organization
9 The Regulation of Sex
10 Incest Taboos and Their Extensions
11 Social Law of Sexual Choice
About the Author / Editor
George Peter Murdock, Professor of Anthropology, Yale University.
