Transcript What is the Family?

Kinship Practices
Enculturation/ Socialization and the
Life Cycle
 The main agents of SOCIALIZATION
(enculturation) – family, school, peer
groups, the mass media, and the work
(particular attention to gender
socialization) .
 The main stages of life cycle identified as:1)
infancy; 2)childhood and adolescence, 3)
young and mature adulthood, and 4) old
age
 Anthropological notions of “social birth”
and “social person”
 Social death vs. biological death
Anthropology and the Study of
Kinship Practices
Kinship (family, marriage,
gender) forming the basis of
the discipline;
 ‘comparable to logic in
philosophy and the nude in
art’
Kinship: a symbolic idiom that refers to biological
ties which people use to organize their social lives.
- Kinship and Fieldwork
ex. degrees of “relatedness”
- Kinship and Biology
Ex. mating vs. marriage; births vs.
descents; blood metaphor
- Kinship terms
Kinship & Politics: Blood is thicker than water
GIFT
means present in English
means poison in German
means married in the Scandinavian
languages.
Q: any significance for kinship
analysis?
Bride price?
What is the Family?
 A definition of the family that avoids Western
ethnocentrism see it as a group composed of a
woman composed of a woman and her
dependent children, with at least one adult man
joined through marriage or blood relationship.
 The family may take many forms ranging from
a married couple with their children (conjugal
family) as in North American society to a large
group of several brothers and sisters with the
sisters’ children (consanguineal family) as in sw
India among the Nayar (the Mosu people of SW
China).
 The particular form taken by the family is
related to particular social, historical, and
ecological circumstances.
Functions of family
 Nurturance of children
Nurturing children traditionally has been the
adult female’s job, although men also may play
a role, and in some societies mane are even more
involved with their children than are women.
 Economic Cooperation
Dependence on group living for survival is basic
human characteristic. Economic activities of
men and women complement each other. An
effective way to facilitate economic cooperation
between men and women and to provide for a
close bond between mother and child is through
the establishment of residential groups that
include adults of both sexes.
The role of family from the functionalist
perspective (Talcott Parsons)
 Primary socialization (how children learn
the cultural norms of the society into which
they are born)
Q: is family the primary socializing agency?
 Personality stabilization (the role family
plays in assisting adult family members
emotionally).
Family and household
 Households are task-oriented residential units
within which economic production,
consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and
shelter are organized and implemented.
 Unlike family, the household is universally
present. Most households in fact constitute
families (family as the core of the household),
although other sorts of households may be
present as well (e.g., single-parent household in
North America).
Ex 1: Among the Nayar, married men and
women are members of separate households,
meeting periodically for sexual activities.
Family Forms
Nuclear Family
Married couple + Child(ren)
Extended Family
Three or more generations
The nuclear family is widespread, but
not universal.
Kinship Symbols
The extended family
 A collection of nuclear
families, related by ties
of blood, that live
together in one
household (which
might include grand
parents, mother and
father,, brothers and
sisters, perhaps an
uncle and aunt, and a
stray cousin or two.
Residence Patterns
 Patrilocal residence:
a woman goes to live with her husband in the
household in which he grew up.
 Matrilocal residence:
a man leaves the family he grew up to go live
with his wife in her parents’ household.
 Neolocal residence:
a married couple forms a household in a
separate location. This occurs where the
independence of the nuclear family is
emphasized.
Industrialization and Family
Organization
 North America
- Neolocal residence pattern
- patterns of residence and family types
vary with socioeconomic class (ex.
extended families as a response to
poverty)
- The divorce rate rose steeply between
1970 and 1994
Family units in complex societies
 Families are changing to include
stepparenting, “reconstituted families,” gay
and lesbian families, single-parenting,
divorce, and separation.
 Each of these dynamics represents a shift
away from the traditional notion the nuclear
family and calls attention to transformations
that can best be understood in relations to
the times in which they are emerged.
Gay/lesbian family in the US
 Alternative to
traditional
nuclear family
through
adoption or the
new
reproductive
technologies.
Industrialization, State, and Family Planning: China
 Single Child Family Policy / Birth Control
Biological anthropologists vs. Sociocultural
anthropologists
 Demographic Transition :
- low infant mortality rate
- low birth rate
人类学家关注人口增 长的两个层面
 首先，人类学家对于人类生育行为(包括
伴侣/夫妻对于育儿数量的选择和控制)，
采用的是一 种整体性(holism)研究角度，
即把生育行为放在人们日常生活的整个
系统中加以考察。对于特定社会语境中
的行为模式的分析，能使我们看到某 一
地区的出生率往往与地方条件尤其是经
济因素有关。
 人类学家还通 过在小型社区进行深入细
致的田野研究来找出第三世界地区婴儿
出生率偏高的成因。
发展中国家的高出生率问题
 比起尼日利亚或萨尔瓦多的任何普通家庭，
北美地 区处于平 均收入水平的家庭，应
该有能力养育更多的孩子。然而事实上，
北美平均每个家 庭的育儿数量仅为两到
三个。而在尼日利亚等经济欠发达地区，
家户平均育儿多达六七个， 而且已经成
为家常便饭。
 能否想当然地做出以下结论：“穷 国”
的育龄夫妇拒绝计划生育，无视多生多育
对国家的教育和卫生系统带来的负担，是
人 口与环境的关 系、文化价值观、信仰
体系和生育实践对于生育率的深 远影响
 在北美，除了针对育儿的代价和收益
(cost and benefit) 的经济层面的考虑
之外，还有一 系列其他因素，在影响和
促使配偶，使之做出限制家庭规模的决
定。这些因素可以是：与“理 想”家庭
规模相关的文化规范和社会期望；与职
业选择有关的空间流动；妇女就业、职
业目标和怀孕生育时间的“理性”选择；
儿童成长过程对于社会资源的需求和耗
费。
人 口与环境的关 系、文化价值观、信仰
体系和生育实践对于生育率的深 远影响
 在非工业化社会，孩童作为劳力的对于
增加家庭收入和未来养老而言，具有相
当高的潜在价值。除此之外，育龄夫妇
愿意多生多育，还出于对下列因素的考
虑：婴儿的高死亡率；扩大型家庭(多代
同堂的居住模式)中每个 成员所具备的
分担抚养幼儿的能力；比发达国家低得
多的儿童养育费用；妇女育儿责任与赚
钱养家义务之间相辅相成的关系。
Readings
M. Wolf, Uterine Families and the Women’s
Community.
P. L. Kilbride, African Polygyny: Family
Values and Contemporary Changes
Rubie Watson, The Named and the Nameless.
V. Fong, China’s One-Child Policy and the
Empowerment of Urban Daughters