The Family is a Type Evolution of a Sociological Institution - Essay Example

RUNNING HEAD: THE FAMILY IS A TYPE EVOLUTION OF A SOCIOLOGICAL The Family is a Type Evolution of a Sociological School Date The Family is a Type Evolution of a Sociological Institution Introduction The foregoing essay provides expiation of normative ideas about the proper place of the family. Macro sociology looks at economies of scale, law, medicine and systems of education to show how society works. The family, the modern unit, instrument and raison d’etre for political action still offers apt locus for generation of theoretical ideas. The tradition of Sociology involves three basic precepts: 1) Functionalist theory – universal acknowledgement that society has needs, and those needs are met through natural social practices and institutions already present in society (Durkheim, 2002); 2) Conflict theory – contention is a force for maintaining social inequality and preserving dominance (Freire, 2007); and 3) Symbolic integrationists -- direct observation of social happenings, and the learning capability that comes from reflection (i.e. advertising) (Mead, 2011). Functionalism and the Family The early functionalist (and structuralist-functionalist) logic of sociologist Emile Durkheim (2002) coalesced entirely with the reproductive focus of eugenics policies that emerged between the World Wars. Durkheim’s functionalist perspective marked the introduction of systems application to institutional analysis. According to Functionalist theories, the presence of “roles” is an organic synthesis of basic knowledge and skills translatable to future generations. Considered the vehicle for “moral education” as a concept stems from this model of socialization, or “cohesive social structure.” Functionalism progressed in sociology of the family perspectives as an explanatory model for “why” families functioned how they do, and places this social formation at the center of socialization of children and classificatory site of common sense administration in government. An example is found in the Western eugenics movement that followed this period. Eugenicists and policy makers “took reproduction to define women’s social roles” into the realm of social mandate (Stephan-Leys, p. 12). Early objections by the Catholic Church opposed this movement, however, instigated public argument on control of reproduction in a strong counter discourse determined to leave proprietary decision to the power of God. Sterilization, birth control and abortions were not only illegal, they were considered contrary to the moral development of Western civilization. According to Stephan-Leys (1991), eugenicists sought to develop a negative eugenics of reproduction that would be “compatible with the very real political and other constraints” of society. “Matrimonial eugenics,” first conceptualized amidst the Italian biotypology movement, opened up an avenue for a “Christian view of eugenics” (Stephan-Leys, 1991, p. 103). The family, the site of intervention where the church and state reproductive policies and politics forged their common mission, soon became the main institutional relationship to God and governance. In what both camps understood to be an impending threat posed to the continuity of family virtues, modern capitalism, while necessary, was also a dangerous harbinger of rapid social transformations. In Argentina, Stepan-Leys (1991) argues: “The combination of exhaltation of maternity and control of sexuality seemed to Argentinean eugenists a satisfactory answer to the problem of the disintegration of the family by modernity. Eugenics was to be ‘hogaria y educacion maternologica (the science of the home and the mother); it was to be a rational form of sex education, directed toward subduing the sexual instinct to the eugenic will and toward the remoralization of the family” (p. 121). Moreover, the fact that “biotypology as intertwined with Freudian, Adlerian and other psychological approaches to mental health, a connection that gave psychotherapy in general a peculiarly hereditarian and at times endocrinological orientation” increased state access to intimate matters; thus serving to expedite an already increasing field of modern legal forms and social regulations (Stephan-Leys, 1991, p. 116). Personal histories had to not only be classified within the nation’s biopolitical economy, but also be managed through social separation and intervention. The mandatory documentation of hereditary distinctions through the registration of biotypological identity cards provided the state with a concrete means to implement eugenic programs of social order. Matrimonial eugenics was an extension of this regulatory intrusion by typologizing people into categories for appropriate marriage selection. Women were of particular interest to reproductive matters of the state. Predictably however, argues Stephan-Leys (1991), “it was not the health of the individual woman that mattered but her health in relation to her child, that is, to the future germ plasm of the nation” (p. 122). Moreover, a mother’s spiritual health marked by her promotion of “psychological wellness” within the Christian family was equally important to the constitution of civilized nations. What is interesting is that the orchestration of negative eugenics in countries such as Argentina took place within a scientific and political climate otherwise deeply invested in positivism. Evolutionary positivism necessarily depended on the unsettling forces of hybridization. Hybridity was at the heart of the utopian technologies trying to forge miscegenation into wholeness. Matrimonial eugenics provided an economic magic trick in a world where only God could plant the seed. Darwinian determinism presented a contentious challenge to nations such as Argentina and the United States that were generally told that their patriotic mission included a “whitening” imperative. Matrimonial eugenics washed over the inherent contradictions which threatened to destabilize evolutionary positivism. Making every white man a God was the chosen answer to an otherwise questionable claim to pure blood. With divinity invested in the “seed of every white, male citizen, national blood would then not be tainted by further miscegenation with natives and African slaves, but increase in “purity”. Hence, just as the heroic fictions narrated the courageous endeavors of the “forefathers,” matrimonial eugenics policies espoused men’s creativity as the primary “active” force enabling an imaginary of national wholeness. Study of the rise of Sociology as a discipline and community of practice in correspondence with state institutions in the early 20th century reveals itself coterminous with the seeds of eugenicists and the interest in related fields of knowledge such as “deviance”. After all, whether by science or by natural selection, the interest in discretionary breeding and the promotion of blood purity is evidenced in the typological classification of “race” as an attendant interest to family; as well as to social norms relevant to class and even culture in contemporary notions of “ethnicity”. Children in their perceived purity were perhaps the most critical element of state intervention in the functionalist period. In Philippe Arias’ Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, he asserts that the teleological development of childhood and adolescence as distinct life phases was part of a vast regime of order-making, instituted within the beginnings of modern European social organization. Supported by a visual analysis of pre-modern paintings – where representations of childhood were traditionally narrated through the miniaturization of adult physiognomy–Arias maintains that childhood is a specifically modern construction of identity. The development of childhood as a technology of exclusion and the articulation of difference – organized through a system of class restraint, genealogical classification and educational pedagogy-has been one of the most effective tools in arbitrating power stratification within modern nation states. Children in their supposed cultural neutrality provide the enabling terrain for the future projection of hierarchical differences. Contradictions of children as both citizens and property left open a space for all kinds of regulation, discipline and abuse (Schuzman, 1988; Guy, 1990). For example, the high incidence of child abandonment during the nineteenth and twentieth century – circumstantially induced by the large and steadily growing migrant population of male industrial labor and female prostitution – set a precedence for the ways in which the working class children and their parents were later monitored by the state. Working class children came to be identified as the quintessential representation of the uncontrolled passions of the masses. Durkheim’s ready explanation was there availed to wash away contentions in functionality. Rigorous concern for public regulation in the modern era developed in tandem with the industrial revolution. During the formative years of independent nationhood in the Americas, children occupied a crucial place in the constitution of social, spatial and legal principles of community organization. According to Francine Masiello (1992), interests in the proper location of children were not restricted to the controlling agenda of the elite. “In effect,” argues Masiello, “the legal status of women and their offspring became a major obsession of all social classes” (p.112). Despite the negation of evolutionary positivism in miscegenation, the legacy of genetic science as a “pro” method of controlling “problems” and its slippery translation in the lexicon of social formations as innate tendencies is highly relevant to the current examination of the 21st century family. Regardless of class standing, women (i.e. mothers) stand at the symbolic crossroads of civilization still. Translation of subjection(s) by women to “domestication” still permeate our psychological landscape; hoodwinking conventions of televised family life. Conflict In the 1960s, conflict theorists like Freire shifted sociological theory toward questioning of traditional authority. Advocacy platforms and related social justice initiatives sparked from this general interest in learning institutions as a springboard for inciting social change were consistent with the broader scope of Neo-Marxist thought popular at the time. Conflict theorists propose that “education” is important to other institutions (i.e. family) in that it perpetuates the ‘status quo’ of hegemonic retention. How institutions “think” was an earlier proposition in the field, yet as this perspective matured challenges regarding equitable distribution in resources were pushed to the forefront. An example is the role of the state as a “learning institution” for families. Court ordered programs related to divorce and parental custody have a lot to do with delineation of full or partial visitation where a household has one or more documented offenses (i.e. domestic violence, child abuse, or drug or alcohol). Where those offenses are committed by the mother, father, guardian, and/or caregiver, learning is replaced with non-negotiable removal of any child or children from the home. For sociologists the conflict perspective is central to examination of institutions in oversight of the family. For instance, The Department of Job and Family Services oversees a process of temporary or terminal retraction of the rights of parents due to incompetency (Peoples Law Organization, 2010). Evidence based practice research on the transmission of violence is pertinent to the conflict perspective in this case in dialogue with social learning theory which cites near future aggressive misconduct by children whose parents use the same tactics in their dealings with other people. Family law custody cases typify this dialogue, where families are forced into moral correctives in court ordered drug rehabilitation and mandated foster care placement programs to protect the rights of the child (Dwyer, 1995). Notwithstanding sociological interpretation of modern institutions and the family, advocacy on behalf of the child is real. Conflict theory supposes that conflict once worked out through processes, is iterative so that short-term and long-term solutions may be found. In this case, state institutional social protections are put into place in response to the conflict surrounding the child’s life, up to removal from the environment that is violent. Symbolic Interactionist In Have You Seen Me? Recovering the Inner Child in Late Twentieth-Century America, Ivy (1993) argues that the interest in “missing and abused children and their recovery” is part of a therapeutic discourse on intervention that emphasizes adult addictive behaviors. Ivy (1993) suggests that the individuated focus in addiction intervention assumes that the addict is believed to be in a “state of infantile dependency.” The episteme to the practice is based on the recovery of “the so-called inner child through the [evocation] of repressed memories” that purportedly leads to the “subsequent ‘recovery’ from addiction, [the subject will ‘recover’] from all ails” (Ivy, 1993, p. 82). Indicative of symbolic interactionism as proposed by Mead, integrationist logic targets observation as a model of influence affecting individual family members’ performance, perceptions and attitudes. According to Ivy’s (1993) analysis, self-help ideologies heal unchecked desire of the “wounded child”. The parent merely wants to get in touch with the “true self”. Ivy’s (1993) argument is in confrontation with traditional sociological approaches which is assessed through the advertising model. Symbolic child abuse, disappearance and addiction fit squarely with the dependent machinations of capitalist culture: “it is clear that the missing and abused child offers rhetorical assets to consumer capitalism that the rape victim [for example] does not. The child can take the full weight of victimhood in total purity. . . the integrity and purity of the child – even if missing from home or hidden in the adult – assures a reserve that is outside the depravations of uncontrolled capitalist desire” (Ivy, 1993, pp. 97-98). Reminding us that the majority of missing children are abducted or abandoned by family members, the child so central to official institutions in law, market and psychological care is lost as a consequence of the very inaptitude of the institutions meant to protect them. References Administration of Children and Families (2010). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved 2 August 2011, from http://www.acf.hhs.gov/ Aríes, Phillipe (1962). Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Dwyer D.C., et al. (1995). Domestic violence research - theoretical and practice implications for social work. Clinical Social Work Journal, 23(2), 185-198. Durkheim, E. (2002). A Moral Education. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Freire, P. (2007). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Ivy, M. (1993, Winter). Have You Seen Me? Recovering the Inner Child in Late Twentieth-Century America. Anne McClintock (Ed.). In Explores the Sex Trade. 37, 227-252. Duke University Press. Masiello, Francine (1992). Between Civilization and Barbarism: Women, Nation and Literary Culture in Modern Argentina. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press. Mead, G.H. (2011). The Philosophy of Education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Schuzman, Mark D. (1988). Order, Family, and Community in Buenos Aires 1810-1860. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Stepan, Nancy Leys (1991). The Hour of Eugenics : Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Read More