Page 70 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Sukanya Das, Lovely Professional University
Unit 3: Marriage

Unit 3: Marriage Notes

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
3.1 Concept of Marriage
3.2 Forms of Marriage
3.3 Marriage among Muslims
3.4 The Christian Marriage
3.5 Summary
3.6 Key-Words
3.7 Review Questions
3.8 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit students will be able to:
• Understand the concept of Marriage.
• Discuss the forms of Marriage.
• Know the marriage among Muslims.
• Explain the Christian Marriage.
Introduction

Different sciences have different frames of reference in studying any institution. Marriage is also
conceived differently by social scientists in different fields. While the popular concept of marriage is
that it is a union between a man and a woman, anthropologists like Lowie, Murdock and Westermarck
emphasize on social sanction in the union and how it is accomplished by different rituals and
ceremonies. Sociologists like Blood, Lantz and Snyder, Bowman, Baber, Burgess, etc., view it as a
system of roles and as involving primary relationships. Indologists look upon Hindu marriage as a
sanskar or a dharma. Before studying the traditional and modern systems of Hindu marriage, we will
try to understand the concept and the sociological significance of marriage.
3.1 Concept of Marriage

Every individual has to play a number of roles in his life, or we may say, life consists of a combination
of roles played in various institutional settings. Of the various roles one plays, two roles have a very
great significance: one is the economic role and the other is the marital or the family role. The former
is unquestionably prominent in life because one devotes quite a good part of his career in performing
it. Assuming that one starts earning one’s livelihood at the age of twenty to twenty-four years and
continues to do so up to the age of fifty-eight to sixty-two years, that is, the economic career is spread
over to about four decades and that every day one devotes eight to ten hours to his job/work, one can
well assume the period which one’s economic role consumes. The marital role also involves about
forty to fifty years of one’s life. But, of these two roles, the marital role is more important than the
economic role because when the latter involves secondary relations, the former involves personal or
primary relations.
Primary relations are essentially unlimited, particularistic, emotionally involved, altruistic and
spontaneous. Conversely, secondary relations are typically limited, standardized, unemotional,
utilitarian and contractual. Again, primary relationship in marriage is different from the primary

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