Understanding Black Households: The Problem

Households can be taken for granted in the West because the nuclear family system with its bilateral descent ensures a fairly standard pattern of co-residence, with predictable patterns of pooling resources. In contemporary southern Africa, the tradition of patrilineal descent in black families enta...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social dynamics 2003-12, Vol.29 (2), p.5-47
Main Author: Russell, Margo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Black Family
Blacks
Coresidence
Ethnicity
Family
Family Structure
Households
Patrilineality
Social dynamics
Sociology of the family
South Africa
Southern Africa
Southern African Cultural Groups
Sub Saharan Africa
Western Society
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Households can be taken for granted in the West because the nuclear family system with its bilateral descent ensures a fairly standard pattern of co-residence, with predictable patterns of pooling resources. In contemporary southern Africa, the tradition of patrilineal descent in black families entails a much wider set of options for co-residence as relatives disperse to make a living in the new global economy. The agnatic idiom continues to give coherence to volatile, contingent black households. The paper traces the distinctive historical roots of Western and African households and argues against the assumption that black South Africans are engaged in some sort of transition to a Western pattern.
ISSN:0253-3952
1940-7874
DOI:10.1080/02533950308628674