Family dynamics
Rajesh Kumar Aggarwal

The Family in India: Structure and Practice
compiled and edited by Tulsi Patel.
Sage Publications, New Delhi.
Pages 310. Rs 380.

The book is sixth in the seven volume series on "Themes in Indian Sociology" and is based on the articles published on the family theme in Sociological Bulletin during the last five decades. It contains 12 thematic papers, besides an introduction by the author. All papers except for one were published during the early 50s and 60s.

The book is divided into three parts. In the first part, which deals with theoretical aspects related to nature and scope of family in the western, patriarchal and matriarchal societies, Carle C. Zimmerman focuses on historical and civilisation routes to family. Describing family as an institution, he attributes crisis in a family to factors like divorce, remarriage, generic disjunctive sexual union and culture.

A. A. Khatri points out that all of us are devoted to our family of procreation and family of orientation. He describes family as not only a kinship organisation with a formal structure, but also a configuration of interactive personalities. He focuses on the need to study intra-family interactive patterns among castes, social classes, religious groups and different types of family organisations since such patterns differs among different family members. M. F. Nimkoff points out need to study the structural and functional ties between households through longitudinal trends studies.

The second part of the book deals with joint family myths. Citing empirical evidence, I. P. Patel says even the Census of India adopted a wrong definition of joint family on the basis of number of family members within a household, ignoring the patrilineal or matrilineal joint families.

A chapter presents a symposium on caste and joint families, highlighting views of Aileen D. Ross, I.P. Desai, A. Aiyappan, M.S.A. Rao, Hemlata Acharya and B.R. Agarwala. While Ross talks about the gender discrimination in families on the basis of geographical mobility, social mobility and ideational mobility, Patel describes the role of migration in breaking the joint families. He says in spite of having separate accommodations, people keep close relationships with their families.

William A. Morrison argues that quasi-joint and joint families are traditional middle class village phenomenon, whereas the upper and lower socioeconomic groups prefer nuclear families. K. M. Kapadia has intervened how education, employment and urbanisation brings transition in the structure and nature of inter-personal relations in family.

Citing examples from a study carried out in Nagpur district, Edwin D. Driver says joint families are not very popular in central India, especially among the youth and educated couples. A. M. Shah highlights the phase of dispersal in the family development process. He describes production, reproduction, socialisation, care of the elderly and domestic worship as progressive factors of development, while division, separation and dispersal as regressive factors in the family development process.

The last section gives ethnographic and historical account of family changes. It suggests that kinship, demographic, cultural, social and caste factors have a bearing on actual composition of the household.

On the whole, the book contains some good writings on family structure and practices in India. The reproduction of such old works shows that nothing becomes obsolete in social sciences. The book can be useful to teachers and students of social sciences.

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