Contemporary Societies B Case Studies and Key Issues

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Contemporary Societies B - Case Studies and Key
Issues study pack 3.70 available from my
office (323) please do read the texts for the
tutorials! explore additional literature when
writing an essay (reading list on course
homepage) and preparing exams topics http//www.pe
ople.ex.ac.uk/mzv201/SOC1026B.doc do your own
literature searches (e.g. by following up
references, by using the electronic library
resources) keep asking questions and discussing
issues!
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tutorials - do sign up (if you havent done so
already) - begin next week (as specified) - bring
one question/statement into each tutorial!
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assignments - literature list for the essay -
handwritten excerpt (summary/extracts of a
text) - 2000 words essay to be submitted Friday
14th March (put them into your tutors pigeon
hole) (HPS1021 please check your BART
timetable)
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Do not use websites as literature!!! Only
peer-reviewed academic journals and published
academic books will be accepted in the reference
list.
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assessment if you are on SOC1026 (30
credits) three hour exam, answer three questions
(at least one from each half of the course) if
you are on SOC1026B (15 credits) two hour exam,
answer two questions if you are on
HPS1021 essays and exams as set out in the module
specification for HPS1021
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• aims
• - problematising introductions in special
  sociologies
• - (effects of general social change in specific
  fields)
• - inner dynamics of those fields and their
  implications for general social change
• analytical approach
• synthetic imagination

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topics - family from pre-industrial to
post-traditional new forms and persistence of
old normative expectations - religion from
secularisation to consumerisation survival and
transformation cult of the individual and
consumerism as invisible religion - health and
illness from acute to chronic, from treatment
to prevention, from the medical encounter to
the medicalised society - spatial mobilities
migration trans-nationalism and hybridity
new complexities and old barriers tourism
cosmopolitanism and affirmation of identity
and difference
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NB the change of perspective!!! ? How do the
inner dynamics of modern arrangements institutio
n of the nuclear family as reproductive
unit functionally differentiated religion in
secularist society professionalised medical
services organised mass mobilities - in
themselves drive these arrangements beyond
themselves? - perpetuate themselves in new
arrangements as present absences or persistent
ideals beyond their apparent obsolescence?
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• the family key points
• the modern family as institution for society
  but outside society
• the inner contradictions of the nuclear family
  drive it beyond itself
• new forms challenge the nuclear family and
  simultaneously confirm it as persistent ideal
  type

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significance of the family site of reproduction
(biological, social, cultural) - production of
new members - socialisation function formation
of basic forms of sociality enculturation in
traditional religion, systems of allegiance -
reproduction of class and position distribution
of life chances continuity of property (land,
businesses, houses, savings) continuation of
class cultures (habitus) i.e. transmission of
economic, social and cultural capital (cf.
Bourdieu)
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the traditional family (stem family)
patriarchal and consanguinal authority of pater
familias rests with eldest man, wives join
husbands families, strong emotionally charged
blood bonds multigenerational married sons
with their children high birth rates, many
children (as insurance for old age) an low
marriage age autarkic/self-sufficient
entities/societies of their own (outside and not
for society) sociality produced and maintained
by prestations totales i.e. by marriages
between family groups
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• the real traditional family in N-W Europe (1)
• was SMALL, because of
• a lack of available land for farming, lack of
  available positions in a feudal system
• high retirement age (hence only few
  three-generation families)
• high marriage age, large proportion of
  unmarried, high maternal mortality
• relatively low birth rate

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maid Lina 25
mother Alma Svenson 37
father Anton Svenson 46
daughter Ida Svenson 4
son Emil Svenson 6
farmhand Alfred 30
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• the real traditional family in N-W Europe (2)
• traditional elements
• - patriarchal and conjugal
• a unit of production no separate spheres of
  work and leisure (for society)
• open to related and neighbouring families,
  community etc., fully integrated in wider
  social context (in society)
• - based on obligation rather than emotion
• childhood not a separate sphere of life,
• children work (i.e. no childhood)
• extended family but not by kin
• (apprentices, maids, farm hands, lodgers...)

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The historians taught us long ago that the King
was never left alone. But, in fact, until the end
of the seventeenth century, nobody was ever left
alone. The density of social life made isolation
virtually impossible, and people who managed to
shut themselves up in a room for some time were
regarded as exceptional characters relations
between peers, relations between people of the
same class but dependent upon one another,
relations between masters and servants these
everyday relations never left a man by himself.
This sociability had for a long time hindered the
formation of the concept of the family, because
of the lack of privacy. Ariès, Philippe
(1962) Centuries of Childhood, translated by
Robert Baldick, London Jonathan Cape
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...the child soon escaped from his own family,
even if he later returned to it when he had grown
up. Thus the family at that time was unable to
nourish a profound existential attitude between
parents and children. This did not mean that the
parents did not love their children, but they
cared about them less for themselves, for the
affection they felt for them, than for the
contribution those children could make to the
common task. The family was a moral and social,
rather than a sentimental, reality. In the case
of very poor families, it corresponded to nothing
more than the material installation of the couple
in the midst of a bigger environment the
village, the farm, the courtyard or the house
of the lord and master where these poor people
spent more time than in their own
homes... Ariès, Philippe (1962) Centuries of
Childhood, translated by Robert Baldick, London
Jonathan Cape
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• factors to consider
• - impact of scarce resources (land available,
  restriction on trade)
• - impact of mode of production
• - impact of property relations (role of
  inheritance laws, customs like dowry)
• is this a social institution for society outside
  society?
• what is different in the modern family?
• role of emotional bonds, handling of continuity
  and discontinuity, social control
• - inner instability of the two-generation family,
  individualising tendency of weak ties... a source
  of modernity?

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suggestion While in family types like the Balkan
zadruga (which is a stem family!) there are
strong emotional bonds and continuity of the
largely autarkic family and in the traditional NW
European family there are weak emotional bonds
and a discontinuity in a highly socialised
family the modern (bourgeois/middle class)
family combines strong emotional bonds with a
particular form of discontinuity... (more about
that in Parsons!)
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persistence of the myth In preindustrial
societies, people take a wide view of family
ties, recognizing the extended family as a family
unit that includes parents and children as well
as other kin. this group is also called the
consanguine family because it includes everyone
with shared blood. With industrialization,
however, increasing social mobility and
geographic migration give rise to the nuclear
family, a family unit composed of one or two
parents and their children. The nuclear family is
also called the conjugal family, meaning based
on marriage. Macionis, John J. (2005)
Sociology, Upper Saddle River NJ Pearson
Prentice Hall, p.462
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reasons for the myth of the traditional family -
impressionistic evidence from migrants and
anthropology and historical imagery - romantic
longing in the face of industrialisation -
threat of des-integration of the family as
observed in the working classes - political
agendas/familism patriarchalism,
anti-egalitarianism, anti- democratic
sentiments self sufficiency of families as
alternative for a costly welfare state, locus of
responsibility for social problems etc.
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reasons for the myth of the traditional family -
impressionistic evidence from migrants,
anthropology and historical imagery
(progressivism, Imperialism) - romantic longing
in the face of industrialisation - threat of
des-integration of the family as observed in
the working classes - political
agendas/familism patriarchalism,
anti-egalitarianism, anti- democratic
sentiments self sufficiency of families as
alternative for a costly welfare state, locus of
responsibility for social problems etc.
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next time - traditional and modern family -
the dynamics of the nuclear family innovation
and inertia inner contradictions - please
read Mitterauer/Siedler Parsons