Fictive Kins
- based on neither consanguineal (blood ties) nor affinal (“by marriage”) ties
- found in societies w/ high mechanical societies (eg rural societies)
- SC Dube: unrelated individulas behave like brothers
Significance
Kinship ties are deeper and more extensive in traditional societies as community puts high premium on such ties.
- rights, obligations decided
- system of production, consumption, authority
- lay down marriage taboos
- performance of various rites
Importance of kinship ties have been diluted w/ socio-economic changes.
Factors changing nature of kinship
- nuclear family
- individualization
- migration
- urbanization
- women empowerment
5 Important basis of Kinship by Harry Jhonson
- Sex: sex of blood & conjugal relations eg. husband - wife
- Generation: father - son
- Closeness and intimacy
- Blood relations: mother - child
- Lineage
Family
Cornerstone of Society
Definition
- marriage
- emotional bonds
- common residence
- stipulation of domestic services
- rights & duties of parenthood
- reciprocal relation b/w parents & children
George Peter Mudrock's definition from Social Structure, 1949
The family is a social group characterized by common residence, economic co-operation and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually co-habiting adults.
Essential Functions of Family
- George Mudrock
- regulate sexual relations
- controls reproduction
- economic survival
- socialize children
- Parsons: family performs certain basic & irreducible fn
- primary socialization of children
- stabilization of adult personalities (via marriage)
- criticism: over harmonized view; doesn’t take into account dysfunctions, has patriarchal bias
- Ogburn and Nimcoff
- affectional
- economic
- recreation
- protective
- educational
- Ronalf Fletcher Family and Marriage in Britain 1966
- fn of families NOT industrialization
- responsibility of parents
Latent & Manifest functions
Manifest (Individual) Functions
Latent (Societal) Functions
Dysfunctions of Family
- Morgan in Social Theory and the Family 1975
- family need not be harmonious
- Marxian
- notions of conformity
- David Cooper in Death of Family 1972: ideological conditioning device in an exploitative society
- Edmund Leach Runaway World? 1967
- modern family isolated from larger society & kin is storehouse of stress & tension
Edmund Leach in Runaway World? 1967
Parents and children huddled together in their loneliness take too much out of each other. Parents fight, children rebel.
- Margret Benston (Feminist)
- promotes unpiad labour
- Murray Strauss
- legitimizes sexual abuse
Murray Strauss
Marriage license is a hitting license
- Norman Bell
- parents use children as scapegoat to vent out their tensions
Change in functions of family
- Ronald Fletcher
- family multifunctional social institution
- secondary function now performed by bureaucratic orgs
- modern welfare state control lies in hands of institutions maintaining law & order
- production fn not performed now
- Modern DoL facilitated numerous avenues of employment
- old age homes
Traditional family structure
- Size: nuclear, joint or extended