Living With A Sense of Responsibility

How can we know whether a society arranges its institutions around the value of sociological interdependence, and that it requires that the individual be anchored in the wider kin group? Similarly, how can we know that a society arranges its institutions around the value of sociological independence, and that it requires that the individual be anchored in the nuclear family? The variables of social-emotional anchorage and a sense of identity are too abstract and qualitative to be observed directly. Hence, an independent criterion of this behavior is needed. I suggest that it can be found in the society’s legal system.