African Families and the Crisis of Social Change

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

African families face serious crises today. They are under economic, demographic and political pressure of all kinds; yet, families are not mere hapless victims of global change. They are proactive, resilient agents and creators of change. This volume studies global and national transformation from the point of view of families in local communities. Contributors are from Africa, North America and Europe, and provide socially and historically based, culturally rich, multigenerational and comparative perspectives on family life in Africa today. The essays explore contemporary change in African families, and consequences for children and parents, the elderly, gender roles, moral values, fertility, health (HIV and nutrition), and economic development. Ultimately, despite desperate economic, sociohistorical, demographic and political circumstances, African families remain vitally important for social and psychological support throughout an individual's life span.

Reviews

"[The authors] are to congratulated for putting together this needed work. The contributions are top-notch. The result is must-reading for Africanists, and a valuable resource for anyone with an interest in the family."-Robert B. Edgerton Professor of Anthropology, UCLA
"In this book the family is at the center of the analysis -- not just the household as it has been to most studies in sociology, economics and demography, nor just kinship, as it was to an earlier generation of anthropologists. The family in this approach, is a flexible and adaptive organization of mutual ties with all the emotional involvement that relates parents to children, husbands to wives and siblings to one another. Each essay deals with a different aspect of family ties in one of the diverse tribes in Central and Western Kenya and Eastern Uganda. The book adds significantly to our understanding of the way families adapt to the changing circumstances brought on by colonialism and post-colonial conditions. [This book] can be of value to administrators and planners as well as to students of Africa and family change in general, by illuminating the key role the family plays in successful adaptation to change."-Walter Goldschmidt Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, UCLA Former President of the American Anthropological Assn.
"There is no other volume that discusses the broad range of actions and responses in contemporary rural families. We are shown how families cope, how family values are utilized and how change is managed and produced in African families. Based on detailed and sensitive studies of the psychology, culture and social organization of contemporary family life in Western Kenya, the book will be required reading for anyone interested in seeing what African family life is really like."-Ivan Karp Professor of Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Studies, Emory University
"This is an excellent resource, not just for students of East Africa, but for those of us interested in understanding the processes of social change and their impact around the globe. Further, this book makes an important contribution to the growing body of research that assigns 'agency' to Africans in the processes of transformation and development."-Mary Osirim Associate Professor of Sociology at Bryn Mawr College
"This is an important book that addresses an issue of global concern with both methodological and theoretical sophistication. On the one hand, this close, focussed look at a small portion of Kenya leads us to think of "families" -- and "family crises" in important new ways. On the other, it helps us better differentiate what may be global from what may be local in the profound ecological, social, and cultural changes that mark this period in human history."-W. Penn Handwerker Professor of Anthropology, University of Connecticut
"This volume brings together a remarkable constellation of distinguished international researchers, many of whom have made landmark contributions to the literature on cultural aspects of human development, interspersed with several of the rising stars of indigenous African social science. Their collective wealth of experience in a sharply defined zone of Eastern Africa should give rise to a valuable addition to the understanding of families as a crucial nexus among gender, generation and culture."-Robert Serpell Former Director of the Institute for African Studies University of Zambia
"With rapid transformation in economic and political processes in the last four decades, pressure on the African family has never been greater. Armed with analytical tools which go beyond conventional anthropological paradigms, the authors of this collection enable us to identify and understand the complex ways in which families in Kenya have internalized and used that pressure to reconstitute and strengthen the bonds of production and reproduction on the eve of the 21st Century."-H.W.O. Okoth-Ogendo Professor of Law, University of Nairobi
In conclusion, as discussed above, there is much to admire in many of the pieces in terms of their theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on households, families, and social change.-American Anthropologist
"In conclusion, as discussed above, there is much to admire in many of the pieces in terms of their theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on households, families, and social change."-American Anthropologist

Author Bio

THOMAS S. WEISNER is Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles. CANDICE BRADLEY is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Lawrence University at Appleton, Wisconsin. PHILIP L. KILBRIDE is Professor of Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College.