ANT 239 - Family and Kinship

Course Units: 1.0

How do families differ across cultures? How do families change with globalization, urbanization, migration and mass education? This course examines families and extended family networks in Asia, the Pacific Islands, Africa and the US. We will start by examining marriage, looking first at marriage in linage-based societies where family ties structure economic and political relationships and where marriages are used to establish alliances between groups. Next, we will focus on the reasons why arranged marriages are giving way to love marriages in many areas of the world and why people in many countries are postponing or opting out of marriage. A subsequent unit will look at international “care chains” in which people in wealthy first world nations pay people from poorer nations to care for children, people with long term illnesses, and the elderly. We will examine the impact of such care chains both in wealthy nations and on the families of those who migrate to take on jobs as care workers. Finally, we will examine changing ideas about the
elderly across cultures and a growing trend away from family care toward independent living and institutional care. CQ: LCC,SOCS, GCHF, GSPE ISP: AIS, GSW