Humans are social creatures. For the most part, we cannot survive and thrive in the absence of contact with others of our kind; whenever there are humans, there are groups…and there are societies. ‘Society’ is often used to refer to a specific group of people living together in particular ways, interacting with one another within one geographical –or social- territory, and sharing one common distinct culture. The term, however, can also be used in its abstract sense to refer to the relationships between these people or to their culture and ideology. Society integrates because it organizes behavior; this organization operates on a variety of levels, the largest of which is that of social institutions. Each institution refers to a specific domain of social interaction and signifies all the mechanisms or patterns of social order focused on meeting social needs and attaining certain ends; the government, for instance, is concerned with group decision-making; other institutions include, education, healthcare, religion….and what interests us most in this article: family.
A typical sociological definition of family is a group of people united by consanguinity (blood) or affinity, constituting a single household and interacting with each other in their respective social positions. The family members are either born into the family (the biological children of parents for instance) or linked through –usually- legal bonds such as marriage or adoption. Nowadays, Because of globalization, and (western) media discourse regarding families, a person might associate the term with a nuclear family consisting of two parents and their children; however, anthropologically speaking, the term goes hand in hand with kinship, and different congregations of kin have been labelled as specific types of family. The aforementioned nuclear/ immediate family is most common, but its members can still live nearby and/or visit their extended families -siblings, grandparents…-; other types of family include matrifocal—mother and children—, patrifocal—father and children—, and avuncular –mother, her children, and her brother.
Family is a cultural universal common to all human cultures worldwide; nevertheless, different past and present cultures have had different norms, traditions, and generally ‘way of life’ which can be typologically classified depending on their similarities and differences. In terms of marriage—the culturally recognized union between people—some people are marked within certain cultures as acceptable spouses or not. Some cultures promote endogamy—marriage between people of same social strata—, others encourage exogamy –individuals (mostly women of low economic status) marrying someone from a high status to move up the socioeconomic ladder, interracial marriages…etc. Also, the forms of marriage can be monogamy—between two people—, polygamy—one man and many spouses—or, in rare cases, polyandry when more than one man share a spouse. People can also marry for different legal, social, libidinal, emotional, financial, spiritual, or religious purposes but these differences are often noticed within the same culture as well. Families can also differentiate cross-culturally in terms of post-marital residence: patrilocal when the wife moves to live with her husband who continues to live in (or near) his father’s house, matrilocal (the opposite), neolocal when both live in an independent household; in terms gender-related power positions depending on the social system to which they belong (whether patriarchal or matriarchal); or (especially in the past) in terms of subsistence— hunters, farmers…etc.
Cross-cultural families -and societies in general- also differ in how they perceive and treat age. Just like gender, people from different ages tend to differ in many aspects, such as legal, political and social responsibilities, the degree of respect, the ‘symbolic capital’ –given that older people often have more social power—, and other things. In fact, even how age is measured tends to differ in some cultures. In most cultures, age is measured by years since birth, but Chinese, for instance, see people as born at age one, not zero; others count age with seasons and others do not measure it at all. Besides, they can differ in how they celebrate age, with some cultures, for instance, celebrating their birthday; others (mentioned in V. Gennep’s rites of passage) celebrate transitions from one age-related status to another with specific rituals or ceremonies…etc.
Bachmann-Medick, D. (2016). Cultural turns: New orientations in thestudy of culture. Walter de GruyterGmbH & Co KG.
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