The modern family in social-anthropological perspective

SYNOPSIS A review of what light social anthropology throws on the problems confronting the modern family serves to illustrate the part this discipline can play in the advancement of the social sciences as a whole, and to show its progressively closer association with general sociology. Many prevailing misconceptions about the nature of marriage and the family among non‐literate peoples may be traced to mid‐nineteenth‐century unilinear evolutionism, which, despite the advances made by modern social anthropology, still maintains a remarkable grip on the lay mind. The conceptual aids of social anthropology enable one to appreciate the contrasts that exist between the symmetrical, ‘multilineal’ kinship system of the English‐speaking nations and the markedly unilineal (i.e., patrilineal or matrilineal) systems of many non‐literate peoples. The former is associated with a highly symmetrical form of marriage which brings into being a type of elementary family that is potentially independent of its kinship matrix, and consequently well adapted to the conditions of high mobility and social autonomy that have prevailed in our society, especially since the industrial revolution. The increasing independence of the modern family has been accompanied by a generalization of rôles within it, so that the modern child has but two parents and a few siblings with whom to form the whole gamut of social relationships that his counterpart in many non‐literate societies forms with a wide and socially diversified body of kinsmen

Autonomy · Epistemology · Evolutionism · Genealogy · Independence (probability theory · Kinship · Modernization theory · Political science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Rural development and sustainability

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