What is kinship ? Briefly explain G. P. Murdock's contribution to the study of the kinship system. (Answer in 150 words)

- What is kinship ? Briefly explain G. P. Murdock's contribution to the study of the kinship system. (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
Kinship is the social recognition of blood and marriage ties; Murdock made comparing kinship systems a statistical exercise.
Body
1. What kinship is: The socially recognised relationships of descent and marriage, through which societies organise residence, inheritance, succession, authority and the choice of spouse.
2. What Murdock contributed: In Social Structure (1949) he compared 250 societies drawn from what became the Human Relations Area Files, testing propositions statistically. He held the nuclear family universal, alone or as the nucleus of polygamous and extended families, with four functions: sexual, reproductive, economic and educational. He classified kinship terminologies into six types, Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Omaha, Crow and Sudanese, and codified descent and residence rules, arguing that change begins with residence, then descent, and only afterwards terminology.
3. What it made possible: Cross-cultural hypothesis testing and a shared vocabulary, though the universal nuclear family was contested through the Nayar material.
Conclusion
His classifications remain the working grammar of kinship study even where his universal claims do not.