ABSTRACT
The study of kinship is a perennial theme for the social anthropologist. An understanding of the kinship system in any society is essential as a clue to the workings of some of the most fundamental relationships—sexual, marital, economic, in that society. It also may be of prime importance in the process of socialisation, in developing patterns of reaction to authority and in providing important symbols for the moral evaluation of conduct. In British society, problems of the structure and function of kinship , as distinct from the structure and function of the elementary family , have received little attention as yet. In the past literature on the family practically no reference is made to the roles of kin outside the immediate groups of parents and minor children. In the nineteenth century it might have been said that for certain sections of British society some kinship content was to be found in the ritual field.
