ABSTRACT
The social networks of Punjabi society, together with those aspects of its history and value system as have affected their maintenance, determine what are the relevant units. Specifically, certain structural features explain why the units of the family and the faction rather than the village are of significance. The inegalitarian nature of the societies of which they are a part especially renders them readily isolable. For a village represents a distinct type of social world and whoever lives in a village portrays socially identifiable characteristics—poverty, illiteracy—while usually also they are either tenants or labourers. Factions, which are, in one guise, state-wide family alliances with a political object, then also exist to protect the values to which Jats are faithful. These values require the existence of a wide variety of allegiances for the protection of what Jats regard to be the repository of honour, that is, the family.
