Defining Extra-Household Social Institutions

Abstract

In Chapter 4, the peasant household was examined in terms of its functions: production, human reproduction and consumption. Its consumption function is generally considered definitive, with household membership delimited on the basis of a shared cooking pot. As with all social categories, this standard definition of the household is an over-simplification of reality. It abstracts from the complexity of familial residential relations, giving precedence to consumption over production and human reproduction as well as inferring a relatively static view of the Tanzanian household that obscures the household’s evolution from lineages and clans.¹ Nevertheless, the ‘household’ is a useful category, representing a social grouping that is the locus of concrete activities performed on a daily basis involving all of Tanzania’s population. Delineating and defining Tanzania’s other major social institutions is a more difficult task that requires methodological clarification.