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The History of the Family in Africa and Europe: Some Comparative Perspectives*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

David Warren Sabean
David Warren Sabean
Affiliation:
Max-Planck Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen
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Extract

One of the problems with interdisciplinary work is that the outsider to a discipline so often tends to join its discourse at points which seem irrelevant to its practitioners. The experience is not unlike that of the foreign visitor who watches with amazement and not a little sadness as the ‘natives’ abandon those items of their culture which seem to him to be of most value. And the ‘native’ has only impatience for advice to slow down the pace of change.

African specialists on the history of the family seem to be entertaining a similar break with their past practices and present significant problems of orientation for the outside observer. The chief dissatisfaction appears to be with the legacy of the powerful generation of anthropologists who emerged in the 1930s and 1940s. They dealt with the organization of large corporate groups and interpreted action, belief and feeling in terms of a few principles derived from the structures of such groups.1 It has become an everyday criticism that this great work suffers from its ‘timelessness’, and of course historians have a professional interest in reiterating the point. More serious is the fact that the older constructs no longer seem to assist in analysing either the new problems that excite the historian aware of what his colleagues elsewhere are doing or the actual findings of new research.

To the outside observer – in this case an historian of Europe, whose bedtime reading consists of ethnologies of Africa, Papua-New Guinea, and the like – a confrontation with current research on Africa helps focus issues and problems in his own work and suggests a few points where common discussion might be fruitful.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , April 1983 , pp. 163 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 I am thinking here, of course, of such anthropologists as Meyer Fortes, Raymond Firth, and E. E. Evans-Pritchard. Their works are too well known to need citation, but there are a few texts that might usefully be recalled: Fortes, Meyer, ‘Malinowski and the study of kinship’, in Raymond, Firth (ed.), Man and Culture (London, 1957), 157–88Google Scholar; Sahlins, Marshall, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago, 1976), 4–18Google Scholar; Barnes, J. A., Three Styles in the Study of Kinship (Berkeley, 1972), ch. 3.Google Scholar

2 Alan Macfarlane bases his interest in the computer and new forms of data on such notions as networks. In turn, he derives the usefulness of network analysis from a dissatisfaction with structures. See Macfarlane, Alan ‘History, anthropology and the study of communities’, Social History, V (1977), 636–8.Google Scholar Variations in the text can be found in his Reconstructing Historical Communities (Cambridge, 1977), 17–22.Google Scholar Consult also his Origins of English Individualism (Oxford, 1978), 64 f., 127 f., 140.Google Scholar Among other authors that can be usefully consulted are: Bailey, F. G., Stratagems and Spoils: a Social Anthropology of Politics (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; Jeremy, Boissevain and Mitchell, J. Clyde (eds.), Network Analysis: Studies in Human Interaction (Paris, 1973)Google Scholar; Geertz, Hildred, ‘The Meaning of Family Ties’, in Clifford, Geertz et al. ., Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society (Cambridge, 1979), 315–79.Google Scholar

3 A useful work to consult is Kate, Young, Carol, Wolkowitz and Roslyn, McCullagh (eds.), Of Marriage and the Market (London, 1981).Google Scholar

4 See, for example, Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Les stratégies matrimoniales dans le système de réproduction’, Annales, XXVII (1972), 1105–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Vernier, Bernard, ‘Émigration et déréglement du marché matrimonial’, Actes de la Recherche en sciences sociales, no. 15 (June 1977), 31–58,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘La circulation des biens, de la main d'œuvre et des prénoms à Karpathnos: du bon usage des parents et de la parenté’, ibid. no. 31 (January 1980), 63–92. See also the introduction to Robert, Berdahl et al. . (eds.), Klassen und Kultur (Frankfurt, 1982).Google Scholar

5 See the argument of Medick, Hans and Sabean, David, ‘Interest and emotion in family and kinship studies: a critique of social history and anthropology’, in Hans, Medick and David, Sabean (eds.), Emotion and Material Interest in Family and Kinship (Cambridge, forthcoming).Google Scholar

6 Among works worth consulting see Philip, Mayer, (ed.), Socialization: the Approach from Social Anthropology (London, 1973)Google Scholar and Fortes, Meyer, Time and Social Structure and Other Essays (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1970).Google Scholar

7 See, for example, Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer (Oxford, 1951), 3Google Scholar; Fortes, Meyer, The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi (London, 1949), 44 ff.Google Scholar

8 Brunner, Otto, ‘Das “ganze Haus” und die alteuropäische “Ökonomik”’, in his Neue Wege der Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschichte (second ed., Göttingen, 1968), 110–11.Google Scholar

9 Levine, David, Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

10 Herbert, G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (Oxford, 1977).Google Scholar

11 For example, Goody, Esther, Contexts of Kinship: an Essay in the Family Sociology of the Gonja of Northern Ghana (Cambridge, 1973), 254–78.Google Scholar See also Goody, Jack, ‘The evolution of the family’, in Peter, Laslett, assisted by Richard, Wall (ed.), Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972), 103–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Riehl, W. H., Die Naturgeschichte des Volkes als Grundlage einer deutschen Sozial-Politik, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1854)Google Scholar; Le Play, P. G. F., La Réforme sociale (third ed., Paris, 1901).Google Scholar

13 See, e.g., Bourdieu, ‘Stratégies’.

14 Brunner, ‘Das “ganze Haus”’.

15 I am currently investigating the village of Neckarhausen in Württemberg. The evidence is taken from the protocols of the village court, the church consistory, and the regional court in the town of Nürtingen. A forthcoming book on kinship and family in Neckarhausen will present the evidence in detail.

16 See especially the discussion in Kramer, Karl S., Volksleben im Hochstift Bamberg und im Fürstentum Coburg (1500–1800) (Würzburg, 1967), 212–15.Google Scholar

17 Buecher, Karl, Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft. Vorträge und Versuche (seventh ed., Tübingen, 1910)Google Scholar; Brunner, ‘Das “ganze Haus”’; Finley, Moses, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley, 1973)Google Scholar; Polanyi, Karl et al. . (eds.), Trade and Markets in the Early Empires (Chicago, 1971).Google Scholar

18 Brunner, , ‘Das “ganze Hause”’.Google Scholar

19 Medick, Hans, ‘The proto-industrial family economy: the structural function of household and family during the transition from peasant society to industrial capitalism’, Social History, I (1976), 291–315, at p. 297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Levine, , Family FormationGoogle Scholar; Medick, , ‘Proto-industrial family’.Google Scholar

21 Brunner, ‘Das “ganze Haus”’; Medick, ‘Proto-industrial family’.

22 Bourdieu, , ‘Stratégies’.Google Scholar

23 Laslett, Peter, ‘Introduction: the history of the family’, in Laslett, (ed.), Household and Family, 1–73.Google Scholar

24 See the criticism in Medick, , ‘Proto-industrial family’ and the notions of Jack Goody, ‘Evolution’.Google Scholar

25 See Laslett, (ed.), Household and Family.Google Scholar

26 On the character of lists see Goody, Jack, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge, 1977), 74–128.Google Scholar Goody's distinction between plough and hoe cultures and the different modes of surplus extraction contains an implicit foundation for the point I am making here.

27 See the remarks by Chaytor, Miranda, ‘Household and kinship: Ryton in the late 16th and early 17th centuries’, History Workshop, no. 10 (Autumn, 1980), 25–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Gutman, , Black Family.Google Scholar

29 Henning, Friedrich Wilhelm, ‘Die BetriebsgröBenstruktur der mitteleuropäischen Landwirtschaft im 18. Jahrhundert und ihr EinfluB auf die ländlichen Einkommensverhältnisse’, Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie, XVII (1969), 171–93.Google Scholar

30 Johann Georg Riempp is discussed in Sabean, David, ‘Young bees in an empty hive: relations between brothers-in-law in a Württemberg village around 1800’, in Medick, and Sabean, , Emotion and Material Interest.Google Scholar

31 Kramer, , Volksleben.Google Scholar

32 This material will be discussed in my forthcoming book on kinship and family in Neckarhausen.

33 Levine, David and Wrightson, Keith, ‘The social context of illegitimacy in early modern England’, in Peter, Laslett et al. . (eds.), Bastardy and its Comparative History (London, 1980), 158–76.Google Scholar

34 Sabean, David, ‘Unehelichkeit: Ein Aspekt sozialer Reproduktion kleinbäuerlicher Produzenten. Zu einer Analyse dörflicher Quellen um 1800’, in Berdahl, et al. . (eds.), Klassen und Kultur, 54–76.Google Scholar

35 Mitterauer, Michael, ‘Familienformen und Illegitimität in ländlichen Gebieten Österreichs’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, XIX (1979), 123–88.Google Scholar

36 First thoughts on divorce in the village are contained in Sabean, David, ‘Small peasant agriculture in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century: changing work patterns’, Peasant Studies, VII (1978), 218–24.Google Scholar The matter will be handled at length in the book on kinship and family in Neckarhausen.

37 Ibid.

38 Huften, Olwen, The Poor of Eighteenth-century France, 1750–1789 (Oxford, 1974).Google Scholar

39 Medick, , ‘Proto-industrial family’.Google Scholar

40 Medick, Hans, ‘Plebejische Kultur, plebejische Öffentlichkeit, plebejische Ökonomie. Über Erfahrungen und Verhaltensweisen Besitzarmer und Besitzloser in der Übergangsphase zum Kapitalismus’, in Robert, Berdahl et al. . (eds.), Klassen und Kultur, 157–204.Google Scholar

41 In contrast to the argument here, see the forthcoming book on gender by Ivan Illich.

42 See Strathern, Marilyn, Women in Between: Female Roles in a Male World, Mount Hagen, New Guinea (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Strathern, Andrew, ‘Work processes and social change in highland New Guinea’, paper presented to the Anthropology and History Round Table I (Göttingen, 1978).Google Scholar

43 Medick, , ‘Proto-industrial family’Google Scholar and Levine, , Family Formation, for example.Google Scholar

44 See Huften, , Poor of Eighteenth-century France.Google Scholar

45 For example, Maher, Vanessa, Women and Property in Morocco: Their Changing Relation to the Process of Social Stratification in the Middle Atlas (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar; Goody, Jack, Death, Property and the Ancestors (Stanford, 1962)Google Scholar; idem, Production and Reproduction (Cambridge, 1976); idem, ‘Inheritance, property and women: some comparative considerations’, in J. Goody et al. (eds.), Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe 1200–1800 (Cambridge, 1976), 10–36; David Sabean, ‘Aspects of kinship behaviour and property in rural Western Europe before 1800’, ibid. 96–111.

46 See Medick, and Sabean, , ‘Interest and Emotion’.Google Scholar

47 Medick, and Sabean, , ‘Interest and Emotion’.Google Scholar

48 Goody, Jack, Death, Property and the Ancestors.Google Scholar