The Ethno Science Approach and its View of the Role of Marriage in a Society - Thesis Example

The Ethno Science Approach and its View of the Role of Marriage in a Society The field of ethno science seeks to provide an accurate understanding ofculture through its own language and by focusing on both theoretical abstractions and empirical data. Due to complexities involved in describing marriage with a single universal definition, ethno science recognizes marriage by the roles it functions in different societies. From an ethno science point of view, marriage is a social contract that basically transforms the duties and responsibilities of the participants, provides linkages in kinship patterns, and defines interactions between different individuals in accordance with cultural norms.

The purpose of this study is to understand different roles marriage plays in the creation of extended families and kinship patterns. The paper is aimed at an audience of contemporary 21st century couples whose definition of marriage is rooted on the concept of love and compatibility. Bell (1997) describes marriage as a relationship between a man, or more than one man, and one or more than one woman with a “demand-right of sexual access within a domestic group and identifies women who bear the obligation of yielding to the demands of those specific men” (237).

An ethno science approach to the functions of the social institute of marriage seeks to arrive at an accurate and concise description from the eyes of the participants. This is in contrary to the generalized perception of marriage in the contemporary society where marriage fundamentally serves to provide legal and social recognition of a union between two people. For an ethno science perspective, marriage plays a key role in creation of new kinship ties, in the up-bringing of children conceived within the union.

Marriage also plays a role in describing the acceptable and unacceptable sexual relations between different members of the society. Ethno science recognizes the role marriage plays in functional division of labor, emotional support, procreation, and rearing of children. Marriage in this case involves the two individuals in the union as well as the social and economic organization of the society. ReferencesBell, D. (1997). Defining Marriage and Legitimacy. Current Anthropology, 38 (2), 237–254.