Kinship and Descent:
“Kinship” is a relationship based on one or more parent-child links (technically known as filiation), marriage links (affinity), or a combination of the two. “Descent’ is a principle arising out of a series of ‘affiliations’ (i.e. parent-chiId links). Modern social anthropologists make distinction between ‘kinship and descent on one hand, and between ‘descent and alliance’ on the other. Descent theorists, mainly the followers of Radcliffe-Brown, Fortes, postulated that descent is the independent variable, which generates the organization of kinship system, especially kin terms. Roger Keesing (1975} has made conceptual clarification between kinship and descent as follow:
| SI NO. | Kinship | Descent |
| 1 | Defined with reference to individual i.e. Ego –focus group | Defined with reference to an ancestor /ancestress |
| 2 | Universally important | Culturally recognized in some societies |
| 3 | Normally bilateral | Connects a limited category of persons |
| 4 | Kinship relationship are relative | Absolute |