Paper No.

: 02 Social Cultural Anthropology

Module : 09 Approaches to the study of Family

Development Team

Principal Investigator Prof. Anup Kumar Kapoor

Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi

Prof. Sabita, Department of Anthropology, Utkal

Paper Coordinator
University, Bhubaneshwar

Prof. Anup Kumar Kapoor

Content Writer Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi

Prof. A.K. Sinha, Department of Anthropology,

Content Reviewer
Panjab University, Chandigarh

Social Cultural Anthropology

Anthropology
Approaches to the study of Family
 Description of Module

Subject Name Anthropology

Paper Name 02 Social Cultural Anthropology

Module Name/Title Approaches to the study of Family

Module Id 09

Social Cultural Anthropology

Anthropology
Approaches to the study of Family
 Contents

1. Introduction

2. An anthropological approach to family studies

2.1 In the west

2.2 Defining families

2.3 The formal study of families

2.4 The current situation

2.5 Cross-cultural perspectives on families

2.6 Fertility

2.7 changes in families

3 An anthropological approach to study families

Learning objectives
 To develop an anthropological understanding of the concept of family
 To know about the changes that have taken place in the world regarding the concept of family
 To know about different aspects of family
 To know and appreciate the different approaches using which anthropology studies family

Social Cultural Anthropology

Anthropology
Approaches to the study of Family
 1. INTRODUCTION
The mainstream approaches to Globalization (one of the approach, other is Anthropological, described
later) primarily focus on its Economic and Political manifestations. However, Realization of
Globalisation is within families. In the context of family, the Ideological and material changes in the
national and transnational arena intersect with personal decisions that are arrived. As the Globalization
accelerate; the choices, dilemmas, opportunities, and outcomes that accompanied by dynamic process
of globalization also accelerates. By providing the volatility of markets, the speed of communication,
and the intersection of labour force that demands with transnational forces, it is becoming increasingly
difficult to assume familial responses to fluctuating economies and policies, and also the new
representations of alternative lifestyles and roles.

The traditional blueprint are increasingly challenged, negotiated, and revised, that so many individuals
rely on in their societies. In the process of transformation, it includes the Specific phases of the life
course, cross generational and intergenerational relationships, and also the accepted forms of private
living arrangements. Family arrangements are modified and reconceptualised, as the women and men
negotiate breadwinning and domestic labour, and also the new ideological and productive roles occupy
by the children, youth, and the elderly increasingly occupy new ideological and productive roles.
However, these transformations are not happening in an equivalent or sequential manner.

2. AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH TO FAMILY STUDIES

The study of approach is done by Oscar Lewis, in Tepotozlan, Mexico. Anthropological approach to
family studies by utilising all the conceptual categories and methods employed in studies of total
culture is defined in terms of intensive case studies of families as functioning wholes.

2.1 In the West

In attitudes towards the lifestyle of an individual, the differences exist between and within countries
such as single parenthood, same sex couples, and cohabitation. However, more stark are the differences
between the West and the developing world. Globally; representations, ideologies, and even practices,
pertaining to different family forms and lifestyles are spreading. In some areas, they have been met
with nationalistic and fundamentalist response. It focuses on the intimate arrangements of individuals
in the family arena across the worldwide. As part of its basic foundations, virtually, every Western and
non-Western society identifies some form of family as.

Social Cultural Anthropology

Anthropology
Approaches to the study of Family
 Cross culturally, in various forms of material, economic, emotional and ideational exchange, members
of contemporary families are engaged with each other. For the early socialization of children, and as
source of identification for adults, Families also function as the primary site. Despite ethnographic
documentation about the wide variety of family arrangements found in different parts of the world,
almost every society privileges certain family forms over others.

In fact, as Coontz (2000) explains, almost every known society has had a legally, economically, and
culturally privileged family form that confers significant advantages on those who live within it, even
if those advantages are not evenly distributed or are accompanied by high costs for certain family
members. Individuals, who cannot or will not participate in the favoured family form, face powerful
stigmas and handicaps. And also the History provides no support for the notion that all the families are
created equal in any specific time and place. Rather, history highlights the social construction of family
forms and the privileges that particular kinds of families confer.

The concept of family is embedded with symbolic meaning and lived experiences. Families provide the
earliest types of nurturance, protection, and socialization for its members, despite of its forms. It
provides the initial foundation for entering into community and societal relations, and also reflects
meanings, trends, and conflicts in specific cultures. Family issues and relationships remain of
consistent, universal interest and concern to most individuals, as we become increasingly
interconnected. In fact, in many places, family issues are often elevated into the public arena and are
thought to symbolize the basic health of the larger society.

In some areas of the world, fears about societal change have resulted in large-scale movements toward
“maintaining” or “restoring’ family values”, while in other places, the recognition of a plurality of
family forms and relationships has become valorised as reflective of an ever increasing and enriching
form of diversity.

Families have also been the site for the significant feminist critiques, who have questioned the
“naturalness” of traditional family arrangements and also it highlighted the tie between the ideology of
a monolithic family form and the oppression of women. These critiques have elicited widespread,
intense cultural disputes, above all, around men‟s authority in families, and women‟s responsibilities
for nurturance.

Despite controversy around family forms and functions, kinship and family organization form the
basis for much of human existence. Many of the earliest philosophical and the ethical writings reflect a
preoccupation with family life. For example, Confucius wrote that “happiness and prosperity would
prevail if everyone would behave „correctly‟ as a family member” (in Goode 1982). The microcosm of
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 the family (as of utmost importance) thought to symbolize relations in the larger society. Therefore,
fulfilling one‟s obligations to the group or society meant behaving correctly as a family member also.
In the Old and New Testaments, the Torah, the Qur‟an, the Rig-Veda and the Law of Manu, there is an
importance of familial and community relationships are reflected. Even in distant and historical tribal
societies, kinship relations play an important role in social structure.

From an Anthropological perspective, the relationships and accompanying obligatory responsibilities

is an important part of the Social Fabric which joins individuals together and forms the basis which we
refer to as Society. More dynamic conceptualizations of families allow us to understand that
individuals and their families are actively engaged in constant dialectical negotiations with the larger
forces that shape their interactions from within, and also with the external entities. In contrast to
historical perspectives, we recognize that Individuals are active agents within families which are
engaged in a Constant Production and Redistribution of Resources. From this perspective, the family
“is a location where people with different activities and interests in these processes often come into
conflict with one another”.

In the context of globalisation, there is growing uncertainty about which choices will primarily benefit
the individual versus those that are of advantage to the familial group, and it is increasingly more
difficult to determine whose interests should dominate. Interestingly, however, “with all the choices
and variations with respect to families that we recognize and acknowledge in our contemporary world,
even in the West, individuals still continue to segregate themselves into separate family groups, living
in close dwellings”.

Now the question arises, in order to understand why the phenomenon of family life remains as a
critical aspect of the human experience and the current changes in between and around the family life,
it is instructive to examine some of the debates surrounding who and what are families.

2.2 Defining Families

In the contemporary context, there is no single uniform agreed upon definition of what a family is,
despite of the pervasiveness and continuity of some form of familial relationships throughout the
human history. In the west, around 1960s, the revolution in social thought with respect to family issues
has continued to exert influence on contemporary discussions on families by breaking down the unified
concept of “Family”. As this conceptual problem persists, social scientists and policy makers is
debating on which individual constitute family and why that should matter. Despite agreement about
the pervasiveness and continuity of some form of familial relationships throughout human history, in
the current context, there is no single uniform agreed upon definition of what a family is. The

Social Cultural Anthropology

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 revolution in social thought with respect to family issues in the West that had its origins in the
upheaval of the1960s has continued to exert influence on contemporary discussions on families by
breaking down unified concepts of “the family.”

One of the earliest social scientists to be concerned with identifying the structure and processes of
families, Emile Durkheim, emphasized in his work that families took on many forms and yet, formed a
core social institution . This concept was further elaborated by George Murdock (1949). Using data
from both Western and non-Western societies as his basis, Murdock concluded that every society was
characterized by family units that are organized around economic cooperation, sexual reproduction,
and common residence. His definition, while still in use by some, has been widely criticized due to its
functionalist nature. Contemporary theorists point out that the concept of family is really an ideological
construct with moral implications.

The debates over the definition of family have also spilled over with the arguments for individual
rights instead of family rights, and also some says that only certain types of families should be
considered as recipients of social benefits. In a more recent fashion, Bogen schneider and Corbett
(2004) suggest that “no single definition of family may be possible”.

Existing definitions of family might be categorized in two ways:

 Structural definitions that specify family membership according to certain characteristics such
a blood relationship, legal ties, or residence; and
 Functional definitions that specify behaviours that family members perform, such as sharing
economic resources and caring for the young, elderly, sick, and disabled.”

2.3 The Formal Study of Families

The formal study of families commenced in the United States in parallel with the time when the home
economics and sociology were becoming formal disciplines. While a wide variety of scholars and
professionals were concerned with the study of families, the formative period of studying families was
most closely intertwined with the development of North American sociology. Through Urbanization
and Industrialization, this period was characterised by primary interest and concern about social issues.
Fragility of Families and can be seen as subject to social pressures, that could potentially destroy them.
Coupled with vulnerability of family, the problem of community disintegration is of particular interest.
A landmark work suggested that family goals needed to be realigned with individual ambitions in order
to strengthen the role of the institution of families in all societies around the globe.

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 Emile Durkheim writing shortly before the development of these suggestions had also argued that
families, as they had been conceptualized through the Middle Ages in the Western world, were moving
to new configurations that worked less to serve the group and, instead, increasingly only benefited the
individual (Lamanna2002).

Socialization aspects of Families and how Families could be harnessed in such a manner; so that it
produces solid committed citizens that would uphold the values of society; as according to Social
scientific studies on the family, and are significant to reflect upon in current analysis of Families. By
taking the concept, i.e. that families are disintegrating, and individual are increasingly governed by
loyalties to themselves and not the collectively, it is important to note that the Social context are taking
the place that has been changed quite dramatically; despite similarities between the contemporary
arguments.
In contrast, Ethnographers in the field of Anthropology became increasingly interested in the varied
family forms; whereas early family scholars concerned with the sociology of western Families.
Bronislaw Malinowski was mainly concerned with the nuclear family by introducing the functionalist
notion and which is adopted by most family scientists, that family was the basic unit of all societies,
historically and cross culturally, and served to fulfil individuals‟, especially children‟s basic needs.

The emergence of the study of families in the 1920s and 1930s set the stage for our current context. An
increasing interest in the “personal “and the “private” developed can be seen in this period. The
discipline of psychology flourished, and public attention focused on the self, the unconscious, and that
which was “unseen.” Simultaneously, family scholars started trying to understand internal family
dynamics to explain why some families seemed to be stronger than others, what factors can be used to
understand the stability and instability of marriages. And also the period of 1960s which introduced
new social perspectives which had their roots in the civil rights movement, the expansion of sexual
behaviour outside of marriage, the Vietnam War, the revival of feminism and a general
antiauthoritarian stance. The divorce rate climbed to unprecedented rates and women with children
flocked into the work force. While statistics indicate an increase in the percentage of two-parent
families during the decades of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s , Masnick and Bane (1980) point out that it
was only in the late 1970s that the number of nuclear families affected by divorce began to exceed
those disrupted by death.
Further notable family trends accompanied ideological changes as follows: fertility decreased while
cohabitation increased, and “other” forms of families such as step-families, female-headed households,
and gay and lesbian families became increasingly common. By the mid-1970s, the theoretical
convergence which resonated by most of the research and writing on families collapsed. The societal
changes that were impacting every aspect of American life also became reflected in the academic focus
on families. The post-war consensus on “ideal” families broke down and, also scholars started to
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 critique the patriarchal hierarchical model which had been the unexamined basis of virtually all
perspectives on families. The Interdisciplinary focus on families became more common with fields as
diverse as psychology, home economics, communication, and history concerned about the new efforts
to understand family life and composition. This was an important step forward in family research since
it directed the focus away from relationships based on biological ties, and redirected it to an emphasis
onto domestic groups (households) which could contain nonrelatives as well.

Conversely, families were now understood as also encompassing members that extended beyond the
household. Reconceptualising families and separating them from households allow scholars to focus on
macro-processes such as urbanization and migration and their effects on family life. In more current
years, feminists and minority group scholars together started criticizing the white middle-class
breadwinner/homemaker family model which had dominated the study of families. This deconstruction
of the “traditional” family and “natural” sex roles introduced a new dialog about families, gender roles,
and the place of patriarchy in society. Feminist analysis highlighted the gendered experience of family
life and brought to the forefront the experiences of marginalized and oppressed groups. By
emphasizing a post positivist philosophy of science, they also suggested that a researcher‟s values and
culture could colour research, analysis, and the dissemination of findings. More recently, multi-cultural
feminists have introduced the concept of the “matrix of domination”. The Matrix of Domination
analytical tool helps us to conceptualize families as part of a multiplicity of forces which include race,
ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality, each intersecting and functioning, as determinants of lived
experiences. This analytical tool introduces the concept of social positioning. Social positioning is
referred to issues such as the access to power, social class, discrimination, and cultural values. Instead
the theoretical contributions of feminist scholars, current writings on families critiqued, because of the
absence of focus on the interrelationship between families and macro forces. Daly (2003) depicts the
state of current empirical research on families as if “…they are suspended in time, space, and culture”.

2.4 The Current Situation

The current segmentation in the West of “the family” into varied family forms has superseded the
unified concept of the family that dominated through the 1980s, with the breakage in the notion of a
monolithic “natural” family form. This trend has been accompanied by the slow deterioration of the
patriarchal foundation of the Western family, defined as a unit under the care and responsibility of the
father who is accorded primary decision making rights. In the formerly traditional model of the family,
the homemaker/breadwinner model can be imagined as a pyramidal power structure where decision-
making flowed from the father to the mother and the children. The family unit could be conceptualized
as a “centralized hierarchy of relationships”.

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 According to some scholars, today‟s family can be imagined as a “decentralized network of
relationships where decision making tends to flow in all directions”. Allegiances are now concerned on
the well-being of the family, interspersed with pertinent generational affiliations and specialised
interest groups. In other words, youth may identify with the “Millennial Generation,” the “Generation
X,” while older ones may be “Baby Boomers,” or “Traditionalists.” In these types of model, individual
allegiance is primarily bound to familial relationships. From a global perspective, a similar
phenomenon is, in the process, of taking place. Power relations are being rearranged, if we take the
perspective of Globalisation. Economic and political power is now concerned in one or two areas in the
world. In other words, power has become decentralized and may be fluid and diffused to different
places, individuals, groups, or entities. This makes any analytical discussion that primarily focuses on
bounded units of analysis, such as “the family,” “the nation-state,” or “the corporation” in isolation,
obsolete. Instead, in order to understand contemporary phenomena such as globalization, we need to
examine interactions between entities, between micro and macro levels, and the multiplicity of changes
that may result from these interfaces.

2.5 Cross-cultural Perspectives on Families

Families increasingly exert a strong cultural presence across the globe. In many North European
countries and Canada, family conceptualizations now include same sex marriage which became legal,
beginning with Denmark‟s officially enacted registered partnership law in 1989, followed by the
extension of legal rights to registered same-sex couples in Norway (1993), Sweden (1994), the
Netherlands (2001), Belgium (2003),Spain (2005), Britain (2005), and Canada (2005). However, an
extensive anthropological literature has collected documentation domestic groups and families that
differ radically. To understand the broader perspective on the relationship between globalization and
families, it is suggested to examine conceptualization of family in non-Western societies.

In many non-Western societies, the reference group for an individual today, continues to be his or her
kin, relationships that extend far beyond the ties of the nuclear family that form the norm for so many
in the United States and Europe. In these societies, families are often drawn into the decision making
process that influence individual lives on issues that would be considered, in the West, an individual
“private matter.” However, in many non-Western places obligation to kin is of utmost importance, and
any deviation from caring for the collective group can ruin the reputation of an individual. Family
responsibilities have become extremely seriously and despite economic, social, and political changes,
some form of the extended family remains central to individual‟s lives

2.6 Fertility

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 Fertility is related to the major shift in family life, primarily in the West and also in non-Western
regions of the world, especially in Europe. Also, there is ever increasing problem and concern
throughout European societies that extremely low fertility rates could bring about unintended results
such as a dwindling labour supply and the lack of care for the elderly. According to recent statistics, in
the Western world, family size has decreased to 2.8 individuals per household, while in the non-
Western world household size has decreased to 5.7 in the Middle East and North Africa, 4.9 in
Southeast Asia, 4.1 in the Caribbean and 3.7 in East Asia. Simultaneously, it is important to note that
national fertility rates subsume variations between and within countries, and also between urban and
rural areas.
Nevertheless, from a global perspective, fertility has decreased significantly and at a faster pace than
demographers have predicted. The significance of a rapidly dropping fertility rate revolves around the
major changes that this phenomenon implies with respect to the family and the role of women. This
point is poignantly made by R.M. Timus (1966) in Easterlin (2000) in his description of working class
women in England. In only two generations, this reduction of such magnitude devoted to childbearing
represents nothing less than a revolutionary enlargement of freedom for women. The intentional
limitation of family size in the West is one of the most significant changes affecting contemporary
families and gender roles.

2.7 Changes in Families

While globalization continues to draw together individuals into new types of relationships,
communities, and social groups, not dreamed of even just one or two decades ago, we actually know
little about how individuals are experiencing these changes. There continue to be many unexplored
aspects of family life both in the West and in the other areas of the world. For instance, in order to
exceed scholarly frameworks and understandings of family dynamics, it is important to delve into the
actual cross-cultural experiences of marriage, parenthood, singlehood, aging, intergenerational
relationships, same sex couples, and childhood, in order to begin to understand how these social
processes interact with globalizing forces. Also, research needs to be channelized to understanding the
relationship between economics, markets, and family life. What propels individuals in and out of the
labour force at different stages in life? How does the family economy influence the market economy
and vice versa? How is fertility in the industrialize world related to fertility in the developing world in
the context of migration matters? Also, of interest should be the role of multiculturalism in the family
realm. As societies become, more and more diverse, contemporary concepts about families, gender
roles, childhood and aging are introduced and debated. Simultaneously, as individuals from different
groups interact, they may form the new associations based on shared interests, proximity.

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 In the realm of family, we required to understand how this growing diversity is absorbed, interpreted
and acted on. We also required highlighting the integration between women‟s participation in the
formal and informal labour force in both the industrialized and developing world, to gain the insight
into the relationship between the Globalization and family Life. The current dominant Western social
scientific focus does not allow us to understand the multiplicity of conditions under which families
negotiate and come to terms with changing economic, political, and cultural conditions. However, the
unprecedented numerous numbers of women working outside home worldwide is the significant factor
affecting prominent family change. Issues of migration, the aging of the global population and
changing inter-generational relationships are being the important components of these types of
transformations.

Ethnographic and cross-cultural examples illustrate that we need to be cautious in hypothesizing and
investigating that which is deemed to predict or constitute “family change.” Even now, in recent times
also, most explanations of family change concerned mainly on structural influences such as
innovations in technology, the movement of individuals from rural to urban areas, and declines in
mortality and disease. However, an increasing number of researchers are now accounting for family
change by focusing on international networks, interpersonal relationships, and ideational factors. As
Daly (2003) explains, “Examination of families as a cultural form is all about understanding families as
they change. Itis also about understanding families as they perform in relation to perceived collective
codes and beliefs. Family members draw on the rituals, practices, and expectations that are available in
the cultural toolkit, and in the process they create themselves as a cultural form that expresses systemic
beliefs and ideals. They draw meaning from the cultural matrix of which they are a part and express
meanings about the kind of family they wish to appear as, all in the service of creating a definition of
who they are as a family.”
The translation of new ideas about the place and role of individuals with the integration of their
families and larger communities, vast norms and values such as an emphasis on freedom, equality, and
individualism increasingly spread through globalizing forces. Historians of the family have carefully
proven that the modern nuclear family has remained dominant in the West, despite stereotypical
depictions of the decline of family life. These scholars have highlighted the fact that kinship patterns
have not necessarily lessened in value, despite social change, and that the process of industrialization,
while impacting family life, was itself impacted by families. Therefore, learning from the historical
patterns and probable about that as globalization and its concurrent forces play an important role in
family lives, the phenomenon of globalization itself will also be impacted by families that can be
defined.

3. AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH TO STUDY FAMILIES

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 Anthropological approach by utilising all the conceptual categories and methods employed in studies
of total culture is defined in terms of intensive case studies of families as functioning wholes. These
types of studies are particularly useful for problems in field of culture and personality. By providing a
level of description intermediate between the conceptual extremes of the individual and the culture; it
avoids the high level of abstraction and generalization of cultural analysis; as it ignores an individual as
real human beings. In this, two methodological problems are studied i.e. how to arrive at a more
reliable and objective statement of cultural patterns of a given society and obtain a better understanding
of the relationship between culture and the individual.

Tepotozlan is a large and complex village with a population of approximately 3,500 with seven barrios
or locality grouping and; generation and wealth difference and; a rapidly changing culture. Items of
information was the;
 Ownership of property, such as house, land, cattle and other animals, fruit trees and machines
 Occupation and sources of income
 Marital status, number of marriages, barrio of origin or other birthplace of each spouse
 Kinship relation of all persons living on the same house site
 Social participation and position of leadership
 Educational level

Family case studies are centred in the families in trouble, family in depression, problem child in
family, family instability, divorce; that had been used by social workers, sociologists, psychologists,
psychiatrists, and others. These might be characterised on the whole as segmented studies in which
particular aspect of family life is considered. Different methodology is used in anthropology to counter
the problem of studying an individual and its cultural patterns but it also has its limitation both
practical and theoretical. Anthropologists have attempted to salvage the individual through the
autobiographies and individual.
However, in most anthropological community studies, the family is presented as a stereotype where
main emphasis is on presentation of structural and formal aspects of the family rather than upon the
content and variety of actual family life. Intensive case studies can be used to bridge the gap between
the conceptual extremes of the culture at one pole and the individual at the other. Family case studies
enable us to make a distinction between the factors which are cultural and those which are situational
or the outcome of individual idiosyncrasies. To study specific families, advantage of studying a culture
is that it helps us to get the meaning of institution to an individual. It provides forms and structure of
family. There is a need for intensive individual family case studies in cultures all over the world. The
Family Case Studies also presents us with an excellent method of introducing anthropology students to
field work. Family Case Studies are very useful as a teaching aid in communicating a feeling for real
people.
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