Conclusion

This chapter brings together all the arguments highlighted in the previous chapters and propose various theoretical postulates. The first postulate relates to the relationship between forms of social structure and forms of social institutions. The argument is that forms of social institutions, that is, whether institutions are group specific or cut across identity barriers, are dependent on the nature of the structural divisions in society. Primary institutions such as kinship, religious and cultural institutions developed based on the substructural divisions in society. These primary institutions replicate the nature of the divide in the social substructure. Kinship rules, religious tenets and cultural norms all combine and reinforce the structural divisions in the society by institutionalising the kinds of behaviour favourable to such reinforcement. These primary institutions, having been developed based on the substructural divisions, served as the basis of secondary and tertiary institutions.