Family and Civilization (Background: Essential Texts for the Conservative Mind) - Softcover

Zimmerman, Carle C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933859377 ISBN 13: 9781933859378

Verlag: ISI Books, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

In Family and Civilization, the distinguished Harvard sociologist Carle Zimmerman demonstrates the close and causal connections between the rise and fall of different types of families and the rise and fall of civilizations, particularly ancient Greece and Rome, medieval and modern Europe, and the United States. Zimmerman traces the evolution of family structure from tribes and clans to extended and large nuclear families to the smaller, often broken families of today. And he shows the consequences of each structure for bearing and rearing of children, for religion, law, and everyday life, and for the fate of civilization itself.

Originally published in 1947, this compelling analysis predicted many of today's controversies and trends concerning youth violence and depression, abortion, and homosexuality, the demographic collapse of the West, and the displacement of peoples. This new edition has been edited and abridged by James Kurth of Swarthmore College. It includes essays on the text by Kurth and Bryce Christensen and an introduction by Allan C. Carlson.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Carle C. Zimmerman was an eminent professor of sociology at Harvard University and the founder of the subdiscipline of rural sociology. Among his many other books are The Changing Community and Marriage and the Family: A Text for Moderns.

James Kurth is the Claude C. Smith Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Swarthmore College and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Center for the Study of America and the West. He has written for the National Interest, Foreign Policy, Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs, and other periodicals.

Allan C. Carlson is the John A. Howard Distinguished Fellow for Family and Religious Studies at the International Organization for the Family and editor of The Natural Family: An International Journal of Research and Policy.

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FAMILY AND CIVILIZATION

By Carle Zimmerman

ISI BOOKS

Copyright © 2008 ISI Books
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-933859-37-8

Contents

Introduction by Allan C. Carlson...........................................................................................vii1) Introduction............................................................................................................12) Family Types and Civilization...........................................................................................213) Fluctuation of the Family Bond..........................................................................................374) From Late Roman to Trustee Familism.....................................................................................455) The Trustee Family of the Dark Ages.....................................................................................576) Rise of the Modern Domestic Family......................................................................................757) The Rise of Modern Atomism from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century...............................................938) Philosophy and Familism in the Nineteenth Century.......................................................................1239) The Nineteenth-Century Atomistic Family.................................................................................14110) Disruption of Public Control of Familism...............................................................................16511) The Western Family and the Purposes of Family Sociology................................................................17912) The Dynamics of Familism...............................................................................................18513) The Trustee Family System-Causal Analysis..............................................................................20314) The Domestic Family System-Causal Analysis.............................................................................22115) The Atomistic Family System-Causal Analysis............................................................................24116) The Future of Family and Civilization..................................................................................263CRITICAL ESSAYSFAMILY AND CIVILIZATION: CARLE ZIMMERMAN CONFRONTS THE WEST'S THIRD FAMILY CRISIS by Bryce Christensen.....................287DEMOGRAPHY IS DESTINY: THE FATE OF THE WESTERN FAMILY AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION by James Kurth..............................305Notes......................................................................................................................321Index......................................................................................................................327

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

No problem is more interesting and vital to us than that of the family. The child is born into a family and sees the world through its eyes. His introduction to civilization is through the family. At first he is only a child in a system of social relations consisting of a unity of husband and wife, parent and child. Later he learns that there are relatives (grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) who are closer to him than other people. In time he acquires the idea of friends, and then of strangers. Then he learns that he secures his status through his family. He is an American, an Englishman, a Chinese because he is born into a parental unit that belongs to those nationalities. His parents belong to a certain community and so does he, and they are subject to its rules and privileges. He can and must go to the schools of his community.

As the child grows up, he founds a family of his own where the roles are reversed; instead of remaining a child, he becomes a husband (wife), parent, leader, breadwinner, responsible person, disciplinarian, and status conferrer. In the course of a lifetime, most people play changing roles within the organization known as the family. A broad and philosophical knowledge of the meaning of this to the individual and to society is one of the first requisites of understanding the society of which he is part.

In recent years there has been considerable discussion of the family. Among serious subjects, none are given as much attention as family, government, and religion. No one of these three topics can be discussed without the other. No government or religion is without decided views on the family, and no family can get along without day-by-day contact with the rules, regulations, and ideas of the contemporary, government and religion concerning what is proper, correct, and justifiable family behavior.

This recent discussion has been concerned with "family problems," "the decline of familism," the "evolution of the family," the "origin of the family," and the "changing functions" and "future of the family." It is said that a new type of family has now arisen-the conjugal family. This is supposed to be a family type in which a married pair abstain from having children, or at least give most of their time and attention to their marriage and little or none to the parent-child relationship.

However, this has not always been so. In other times and places familism has had different connotations from those set forth today. Consequently, we have many books on the family that set forth its history, its origins, its functions in different societies, and its present state. This literature, running into thousands of volumes and written in every language in which the study of social science has been attempted, offers many explanations, interpretations, histories, pseudo-histories, and arguments, but little or no agreement concerning the family.

Family Problems in Other Societies

This disagreement over the family is not new. On the contrary, it is one of the oldest arguments of history, as a few examples will show. At the height of the old Roman Empire in Western Europe, from the first to the third centuries of our era, the family relationship was a free one like ours; there were many conjugal marriages such as have recently become popular and are now highly recommended in many circles. At that time under Roman law, divorces were easy and frequent. People did not have many children. The armies were recruited from the barbarians on the edge of the empire. The government offered rewards to people for having children and tried to penalize those who did not by higher taxes, withdrawal of privileges, and so on. There were forces in public life that favored familism and forces that did not. A marriage was at most only a civil contract that had many elements of private contract about it; the latter depended on the kind of marriage chosen. A man who wanted a binding civil contract chose the dignitas type of marriage. If he wanted a looser relationship which meant that the children, if any, remained with the mother's family and never received rights from the father, he chose the more flexible form called concubinatus. A woman who married according to dignitas was supposed to become a mother, and the family consisted of husband-wife, parents-children, and inner versus outer relatives. In the dignitas marriage, the woman left her own home more completely and "cleaved to her husband." However, she brought with her a dower or marriage portion, and her family retained an interest in it; consequently the family was always to some extent tied up with both paternal and maternal relatives. The child of such a marriage came under the potestas, or power, of the father, was given his name, and became his...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: ISI Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1933859377
• ISBN 13: 9781933859378
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 425
• Herausgeber: Kurth James
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar