Set against the backdrop of the colonial period, "Water" highlights the lives of widows in India. Chuiya, an eight-year-old girl, is sent to a widow's ashram after her husband's death, as per society's norms. Unaware of the fact, Chuiya believes that she will be sent back to her home. The story is about a young Kalyani who is an ashram widow but wants to remarry. Chuiya finds her social mother in Shakuntala who takes care of her and eventually manages to send Chuiya away from the ashram. The other movie I chose is called "A Family Thing". When Earl Pilcher's mother dies, she leaves him a letter stating that she was not his birth mother. He goes to Chicago in search of his biological family. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay David Schneider states that every society contains a set of “norms.” The normative system includes the rules by which individuals behave in order to be included in the community. This is evident in "Water", when Kalyani tries to break the norm by remarrying, she is not accepted within the community. These are the “how to do it rules,” as Goodenough (1970) put it. These are the rules that actors must respect without being influenced by the majority. So in the movie 'Water' the widows (actors) have to stay away from fried food; they cannot dress; they have to spend their lives in seclusion in a widow's ashram and, more importantly, they cannot remarry. These are the normative rules in the Indian context. David Schneider talks about a “cultural system”. It is a system of symbols and meanings present in the regulatory system. Culture lays the foundations and the regulatory system decides the role of the characters. Thus, the white sari, the shaved head, the absence of vermilion are all symbolic representations of the normative rules of widowhood in India as in the film. This supports David Schneider's view that cultural and normative systems overlap in everyday life. These rules may not be the same for every company. We can see this in "A Family Thing", where the cultural context is different (American culture) showing the racial divide between "black" and "white". Ray is black and therefore initially refused to accept Earl as his half-brother. David Schneider is of the opinion that each unit in the system, for example, mother or father, can be defined on the basis of four categories of components, the first is the pure kinship component, the second is the age or generation component, the third is the sexual role component and the fourth is the class component. There may also be other types of components. Schneider coined the term conglomerate system for the system of these components. The pure kinship component has two distinctive characteristics: shared biogenetic substance and code of conduct. The mixture of these two characteristics gives rise to three main categories of kinship; the first is the category of blood relatives which is formed when both characteristics are present together, the second is when the element of the code of conduct is present alone, and this gives rise to kinship and finally when the biogenetic substance is present alone the category of relatives are formed in nature. Relatives in law fall into the broader category called the order of law. We can draw examples from “water”, where to some extent the second category of in-laws can be seen. The members of the ashram are called Didi (sister) despite having no blood ties, which demonstrates the absence of biogenetic substance and the presence of only the element of codes of conduct. Therefore, they are linked to each other socially. In "A Family Thing" the brothers are.