What is Socio-Cultural Analysis?

Socio-cultural analysis explores both how communities are organized, as well as how certain people are excluded or not on the basis of who they are or from where they come. Understanding the dynamics of both is essential to determine interventions that will help overcome these inequities.

Social and cultural norms look beyond individual characteristics and place them into the broader context of:

• How societies are organized;
• How they developed a shared identity and acceptance of relations that bind them together; and
• How they acquired shared meanings, values and interpretations of a world view that evolved within a particular place through a process of social learning.

Understanding norms sheds light on the denial of equal human rights to some and not to others across diverse groups. It also informs issues of sensitivity within communities and how interventions may be adapted to build from indigenous knowledge and may be adjusted to ensure conflict sensitivity/ culturally appropriate approaches to work.

Analyzing Social and Cultural Norms

Essentially, analysis of social and cultural norms asks: how are communities organized? And what are the unwritten rules and norms influencing people’s decisions, support/vulnerability and aspirations within a given context? Analyzing social and cultural norms helps identify power relations across communities, how they are reinforced across time, axes of exclusion, and mechanisms of support and justice that characterize a given context.

Areas of Inquiry

To understand social and cultural norms, five inquiry areas are examined:

1. Values systems;
2. Traditional roles and behaviors;
3. Kinship and membership rules and norms;
4. Sexuality and sexual relations as well as
5. Intercultural relations and to the extent applicable, across different social categories, such as caste, ethnicity, class, and age.

• What rights or crimes are defined within traditional, customary or religious law/doctrine?
• Dimensions of exclusion, stigma or discrimination
• Traditional mechanisms for conflict-resolution, justice and social protection
• What are norms, rules and responses to violence – legally and in practice?
• How are norms reinforced or contradicted in formal systems of justice or policy?

• History of peoples and how roles and norms have changed across time (pre-colonial, colonial, post-independence eras).
• Responsibilities and expectations (socialization, division of labor, control and decision-making powers, ownership/custody rights) across gender, caste, ethnicity, age, etc.
• Rights of passage and practices around them
• Mobility and space

• Social organization and hierarchy (patrilineal, matrilineal)
• Rules of kinship
• Inheritance and succession practices
• Relations and social support within groups – What does it entail? Who benefits? Who is excluded?
• Relations across groups and their management
• Forms of social cohesion (informal groups, cooperatives, mutual help, women’s groups, etc.)
• What are the deepest markers of identity (or what is identity-forming?)

• Marriage practices and traditions (age, monogamy/polygamy, bride price or dowry, choice of partners, transitions in clan membership)
• Rules and norms guiding/defining sexual relations and sexuality - negotiation of sexual relations and family planning within households
• Rules surrounding divorce and widowhood
• Taboos and dimensions of exclusion/stigma related to sexuality and sexual relations
• Concepts of sexuality (masculinity and femininity)

• History of inter-clan, ethnic or religious relations and how roles and norms have changed across time (pre-colonial, colonial, post-independence eras)?
  • How have been the relationships between marginalized groups with the dominant group(s) across time? Is it changing? How?
  • How have been the relationships between marginalized groups across time? Is it changing? How?
• What are traditional mechanisms for managing inter-group relations?
• What are attitudes or beliefs that stigmatize or discriminate against specific marginalized groups?
  • Among whom are these ideas held?
  • How are they reinforced or contradicted in language, naming, media, and the words/actions of socio-cultural or political leaders?
  • What is their relation with competing livelihood strategies among groups?