Women at Work: Some Changes in Family Structure in Amedzofe-Avatime, Ghana

Africa ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne Brydon
Keyword(s):  
Family Structure ◽  
Nuclear Family ◽  
Group Structure ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Residential Group ◽  
Traditional Area ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Village

Opening ParagraphThis paper examines some recent developments in family and residential group structure in the village of Amedzofe-Avatime. The village is one of a group of seven which, with their surrounding farmlands, constitute the Avatime traditional area in the Volta Region of Ghana. The study of Amedzofe (and Avatime) family structure is singled out here as of interest for two reasons. In the first place, a study of current (1977) Avatime family structure indicates that new forms are emerging of patterns of child rearing. Esther Goody's work on both traditional and more recent patterns of fostering in Ghana is particularly relevant here (E. N. and J. R. Goody 1967; Goody 1970; 1975). Secondly such a study provides empirical evidence that Goode's (1963) pattern of change in family structure showing the increasing influence of ‘modernisation’, while it may be pertinent in the long term, is not being realised among Avatime. What is happening, rather, is a drift away from a stable conjugal pattern. Here I am concerned mainly with the first point. As it is elucidated, it will become clear that the incidence of Goode's nuclear family based units is not increasing in modern rural Avatime. A detailed examination of the structure and composition of residential groups and their significance for a modern society is forthcoming.

Changing Family Structure and Youthful Well-Being

1987 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN N. EDWARDS
Keyword(s):  
Family Structure ◽  
Nuclear Family ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Conceptual Problems

The vanishing nuclear family constitutes one of the most significant demographic and social transformations in recent history. A voluminous body of theoretical and empirical literature in family studies, proceeding on the assumption that the nuclear family is the optimum child-rearing structure, suggests this change will have dire consequences for the well-being of future generations. The present essay challenges that conclusion, pointing out various methodological and conceptual problems with the extant research on which this prediction is based.

The Origins of the Village Revisited: From Nuclear to Extended Households

2002 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kent V. Flannery
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Family ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Near East ◽  
Shared Storage ◽  
Nuclear Families ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
Two Stages ◽  
Extended Households ◽  
The Village

In Mesoamerica and the Near East, the emergence of the village seems to have involved two stages. In the first stage, individuals were distributed through a series of small circular-to-oval structures, accompanied by communal or “shared” storage features. In the second stage, nuclear families occupied substantial rectangular houses with private storage rooms. Over the last 30 years a wealth of data from the Near East, Egypt, the Trans-Caucasus, India, Africa, and the Southwest U.S. have enriched our understanding of this phenomenon. And in Mesoamerica and the Near East, evidence suggests that nuclear family households eventually gave way to a third stage, one featuring extended family households whose greater labor force made possible extensive multifaceted economies.

Urbanization and Family Structure in the Ivory Coast

1966 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remi Clignet
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Family Structure ◽  
Ivory Coast ◽  
Nuclear Family ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Relative Decline

Urbanization may be viewed as a particular manifestation of social change. As such, it is often defined as a process leading originally distinct social systems to a common destination. As an example, it is supposed to facilitate the universal emergence of a European type of nuclear family. In this perspective, many scholars have been eager to determine the extent to which African patterns of familial behavior lose their traditional specific properties. These researchers have in fact equated the problem of measuring urbanization with the problem of measuring the relative decline and persistence of traditional affiliations. Taking as examples the familial systems of two Ivory Coast peoples, the present paper intends to show some of the limitations of this type of analysis.

scholarly journals Montenegrin-Albanian Linguistic Border: In Search of “Balanced Language Contact”

Slovene ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria S. Morozova ◽  
Alexander Yu. Rusakov
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Community Members ◽  
The Past ◽  
External Relations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
The Village

The article aims to clarify the notion of “balanced language contact” and to model the situation of a language contact (in the present and the past) in one of the ethnically and linguistically mixed regions of the Montenegrin-Albanian linguistic border. The study focuses on the situation in the bilingual community of thevillageofVelja Gorana, located in the area of Mrkovići inSouthern Montenegro. The community of the village, as it seems at a first glance, provides a good example of a “balanced contact” situation. The language situation in Velja Gorana is described in the article as a set of micro-situations, or scenarios, developing on family and individual levels. Attention is paid not only to the communication in the family domain, but also to the external relations of the community members. Following on from this material, the authors attempt to develop a methodology for assessing the role of both languages in such communities in general, showing which factors influence individual linguistic behavior; how this behavior may change during an individual lifetime; how the different speakers’ strategies amalgamate in what can be considered as behavior of a multilingual speech community. Analyzing the information on the history of Velia Gorana, in particular, conducting a detailed examination of the origins, genealogies and marriage strategies of its families, allows the authors to reconstruct the mechanisms for the development of “linguistic exogamy” in the community of Velja Gorana and to make assumptions about the nature of the contact situation in this region in the past.

The Institutional Effect

Capital Women ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 159-198
Author(s):  
Jan Luiten
Keyword(s):  
Family Structure ◽  
Nuclear Family ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Institutional Diversity ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Term Outcome ◽  
Long Term Outcome ◽  
Institutional Effect

This chapter addresses several issues, all with the underlying intention of refining and reorienting the nuclear-hardship debate. There is a need for such reorientation, as several indicators show that the long-term outcome of this process toward a society built upon nuclear households has not led to more hardship; quite the contrary. Nor would it be fair to claim that this outcome has to be entirely due to top-down provisions, and then in particular, to charity. In this chapter the authors stress the institutional diversity of the solutions for hardship and focus on one particular group in society, namely the elderly. They demonstrate that the elderly had more “agency” than is usually expected and that a combination of institutional arrangements in addition to the top-down provisions granted the elderly more options to deal with the supposed hardship of growing old in a nuclear family structure.

scholarly journals Reviving Traditional Food Knowledge Through Food Festivals. The Case of the Pink Asparagus Festival in Mezzago, Italy

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele F. Fontefrancesco ◽  
Dauro M. Zocchi
Keyword(s):  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Traditional Food ◽  
The Past ◽  
Food Knowledge ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Relationship

The article investigates the link between food festivals and traditional food knowledge and explores the role played by tourist events in disseminating local agricultural and gastronomic knowledge. This article presents the ethnographic case of the Pink Asparagus Festival in Mezzago in Italy, analyzing how the festival supported the continuation of crop production and its associated traditional knowledge in the village. In the face of a decline of asparagus production, the article highlights the role of the festival in fostering a revival of local food knowledge, which is also able to embrace modernization, at the same time maintaining a strong sense of the past and Mezzago's legacy. Thus, the article suggests that festivals are not just events aimed at commodifying local knowledge, but can be important tools to refresh and maintain local expertise, which is vital and pressing in the context of modern society, and strengthen and expand the relationship between members of the community, thus converting the festival into an endeavor to foster sociocultural sustainability.

Dietary Change in a Sudan Village following Locust Visitation

Africa ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. L. Corkill
Keyword(s):  
Rainy Season ◽  
Sesame Seed ◽  
Dietary Change ◽  
Black Cotton Soil ◽  
Blue Nile ◽  
Acacia Gum ◽  
White Nile ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Village ◽  
Made In

Opening ParagraphThe village of Ulu lies at about latitude 10° N. between the White Nile and the Blue Nile in the southern part of the Fung area of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The surrounding country is mostly thin savannah on black cotton soil but there are occasional outcrops of laterite as at Ulu itself. Water-holes are found and may be made in the larger watercourses after these have dried up at the termination of the rainy season. The dry season is roughly December to May. The inhabitants of Ulu call themselves Fung and are black Moslems of a possibly aboriginal stock. Wandering Araboid nomads of the Mesallamia and other tribes with camels, cattle, sheep, and goats may be encountered visiting traditional grazing areas. The Fung of Ulu cultivate millet, cow-peas and sesame seed as subsistence crops and in normal times surplus is bartered with the nomads for animals and no doubt clarified butter also. A small amount of cash is obtained by the gathering of acacia gum which is disposed of through the local Arab merchant.

Social interaction and the management of Songhay socio-political change

Africa ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 765-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Stoller
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Ziziphus Jujuba ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Stranger ◽  
The Village ◽  
Sociocultural Knowledge

Opening ParagraphKwaara banda daarey, hala ga kano, yeow s'a gar. The stranger (no matter how long he/she has lived in a town) will never possess the choicest fruit of the daarey tree behind the village.The daarey tree (Ziziphus jujuba) is found in and around Songhay towns in the Republic of Niger. Since its sweet red fruit is coveted, the whereabouts of the finest daarey are never divulged to foreigners, lest they steal from the Songhay that which is most delicious in their communities. The proverb underscores just how careful the Songhay are in protecting from non-Songhay that which is their own. It also suggests that just as non-Songhay will never possess the choicest daarey fruits, so too they will neither marry the most beautiful Songhay maidens nor become influential in community affairs. The most beautiful maidens, like the best daarey trees, are kept from the sight of non-Songhay; the sociocultural knowledge which enables a person to be perceived as influential is never taught directly to those who have migrated to the lands of the Songhay.

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