Stephen M. Cherry draws upon a rich set of ethnographic and survey data, collected over a six-year period, to explore the roles that Catholicism and family play in shaping Filipino American community life. From the planning and construction of community centers, to volunteering at health fairs or protesting against abortion, this book illustrates the powerful ways these forces structure and animate not only how first-generation Filipino Americans think and feel about their community, but how they are compelled to engage it over issues deemed important to the sanctity of the family.
Revealing more than intimate accounts of Filipino American lives, Cherry offers a glimpse of the often hidden but vital relationship between religion and community in the lives of new immigrants, and allows speculation on the broader impact of Filipino immigration on the nation. The Filipino American community is the second-largest immigrant community in the United States, and the Philippines is the second-largest source of Catholic immigration to this country. This ground-breaking study outlines how first-generation Filipino Americans have the potential to reshape American Catholicism and are already having an impact on American civic life through the engagement of their faith.
No other book in the field so fully combines vivid clinical examples, specific details of technique, and mature perspectives on both effectively functioning families and those seeking therapy. The views and strategies of a master clinician are presented here in such clear and precise form that readers can proceed directly from the book with comparisons and modifications to suit their own styles and working situations.
Salvador Minuchin presents six chapter-length transcripts of actual family sessions—two devoted to ordinary families who are meeting their problems with relative success; four concerned with families seeking help. Accompanying each transcript is the author’s running interpretation of what is taking place, laying particular stress on the therapist’s tactics and maneuvers.
These lively sessions are interpreted in a brilliant theoretical analysis of why families develop problems and what it takes to set them right. The author constructs a model of an effectively functioning family and defines the boundaries around its different subsystems, whether parental, spouse, or sibling. He discusses ways in which families adapt to stress from within and without, as they seek to survive and grow.
Dr. Minuchin describes methods of diagnosing or “mapping” problems of the troubled family and determining appropriate therapeutic goals and strategies. Different situations, such as the extended family, the family with a parental child, and the family in transition through death or divorce, are examined. Finally, the author explores the dynamics of change, examining the variety of restructuring operations that can be employed to challenge a family and to change its basic patterns.
Some fundamental questions about the individual and the family in communal life are raised in this first collection of essays in English by Israeli sociologist Yonina Talmon. The author, who hitherto has been known to students of revolutionary and collectivist societies mainly through her journal articles, was engaged in an extensive study of the kibbutz at the time of her death in 1966. The decade of research conducted in representative kibbutzim, in cooperation with the Federation of Kevutzot and Kibbutzim, included interviews with kibbutz members as well as observation of kibbutz life. The author gives here a general report on the findings, followed by the results of seven specific investigations that shed light on major problems of many societies: social structure and family size; children’s sleeping and family eating arrangements; occupational placement of the second generation; mate selection; aging; social differentiation; and secular asceticism.
“This collection of essays,” writes S. N. Eisenstadt in his Introduction, “represents a landmark in the development of the sociological study of the kibbutz movement.” Yonina Talmon’s “work not only opened up the kibbutz to sociological research, but put the research on kibbutz life in the forefront or sociological thinking and analysis.”
Now available in paperback, Kevin O’Neill’s highly praised study of rural Ireland in the years leading up to the "Great Hunger" of the 1840s explicates the social, economic, and demographic conditions of the era. He argues that overpopulation and deprivation were inextricably linked to a third variable—the rapid economic development of rural Ireland that was shaped by British interests.
Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil was originally published by the University of California Press in 1992. Alida Metcalf has written a new preface for this first paperback edition.
The family, Cynthia Patterson demonstrates, played a key role in the political changes that mark the history of ancient Greece. From the archaic society portrayed in Homer and Hesiod to the Hellenistic age, the private world of the family and household was integral with and essential to the civic realm.
Early Greek society was rooted not in clans but in individual households, and a man's or woman's place in the larger community was determined by relationships within those households. The development of the city-state did not result in loss of the family's power and authority, Patterson argues; rather, the protection of household relationships was an important element of early public law. The interaction of civic and family concerns in classical Athens is neatly articulated by the examples of marriage and adultery laws. In law courts and in theater performances, violation of marital relationships was presented as a public danger, the adulterer as a sexual thief. This is an understanding that fits the Athenian concept of the city as the highest form of family. The suppression of the cities with the ascendancy of Alexander's empire led to a new resolution of the relationship between public and private authority: the concept of a community of households, which is clearly exemplified in Menander's plays. Undercutting common interpretations of Greek experience as evolving from clan to patriarchal state, Patterson's insightful analysis sheds new light on the role of men and women in Greek culture.
In the wake of vast social and economic changes, the nuclear family has lost its dominance, both as an ideal and in practice. Some welcome this shift, while others see civilization itself in peril—but few move beyond ideology to develop a nuanced understanding of how families function in society. In this provocative book, Margaret F. Brinig draws on research from a variety of disciplines to offer a distinctive study of family dynamics and social policy.
Concentrating on legal reform, Brinig examines a range of subjects, including cohabitation, custody, grandparent visitation, and domestic violence. She concludes that conventional legal reforms and the social programs they engender ignore social capital: the trust and support given to families by a community. Traditional families generate much more social capital than nontraditional ones, Brinig concludes, which leads to clear rewards for the children. Firmly grounded in empirical research, Family, Law, and Community argues that family policy can only be effective if it is guided by an understanding of the importance of social capital and the advantages held by families that accrue it.
The term “Abrahamic religions” has gained considerable currency in both scholarly and ecumenical circles as a way of referring to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In The Family of Abraham, Carol Bakhos steps back from this convention to ask a frequently overlooked question: What, in fact, is Abrahamic about these three faiths? Exploring diverse stories and interpretations relating to the portrayal of Abraham, she reveals how he is venerated in these different scriptural traditions and how scriptural narratives have been pressed into service for nonreligious purposes.
Grounding her study in a close examination of ancient Jewish textual practices, primarily midrash, as well as medieval Muslim Stories of the Prophets and the writings of the early Church Fathers, Bakhos demonstrates that ancient and early-medieval readers often embellished the image of Abraham and his family—Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac. Her analysis dismantles pernicious misrepresentations of Abraham’s firstborn son, Ishmael, and provocatively challenges contemporary references to Judaism and Islam as sibling religions.
As Bakhos points out, an uncritical adoption of the term “Abrahamic religions” not only blinds us to the diverse interpretations and traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam but also artificially separates these faiths from their historical contexts. In correcting mistaken assumptions about the narrative and theological significance of Abraham, The Family of Abraham sheds new light on key figures of three world religions.
Roman politics and religion were inherently linked as the Romans attempted to explain the world and their place within it. As Roman territory expanded and power became consolidated into the hands of one man, people throughout the empire sought to define their relationship with the emperor by granting honors to him. This collection of practices has been labeled “emperor worship” or “ruler cult,” but this tells only half the story: imperial family members also became an important part of this construction of power and almost half of the individuals deified in Rome were wives, sisters, children, and other family members of the emperor.
In A Family of Gods, Gwynaeth McIntyre expands current “ruler cult” discussions by including other deified individuals, and by looking at how communities in the period 44 BCE to 337 CE sought to connect themselves with the imperial power structure through establishing priesthoods and cult practices. This work focuses on the priests dedicated to the worship of the imperial family in order to contextualize their role in how imperial power was perceived in the provincial communities and the ways in which communities chose to employ religious practices. Special emphasis is given to the provinces in Gaul, Spain, and North Africa.
This book draws on epigraphic evidence but incorporates literary, numismatic, and archaeological evidence where applicable. It will be of interest to scholars of Roman imperial cult as well as Roman imperialism, and religious and political history.
This story begins with a phone call out of the blue: a lawyer tells a writer that his ninety-six-year-old father, with whom he has had no contact since the age of three and whom he has twice tried to find without success, has just died, leaving him nothing. Half-reluctant, half-fascinated, both angry and curious, Keith Maillard begins to research his father’s life. The result is a suspenseful work of historical reconstruction—a social history often reading like a detective story—as well as a psychologically acute portrait of the impact of a father’s absence. Walking a tightrope between the known and the unknown, and following a trail that takes him from Vancouver to Montreal to his native Wheeling, West Virginia, Keith Maillard has pulled off a book that only a novelist of his stature could write.
A spirited defense of feminism, arguing that the lack of support for working mothers is less a failure of second-wave feminism than a rejection by reactionaries of the sweeping changes they campaigned for.
When people discuss feminism, they often lament its failure to deliver on the promise that women can “have it all.” But as Kirsten Swinth argues in this provocative book, it is not feminism that has betrayed women, but a society that balked at making the far-reaching changes for which activists fought. Feminism’s Forgotten Fight resurrects the comprehensive vision of feminism’s second wave at a time when its principles are under renewed attack.
Through compelling stories of local and national activism and crucial legislative and judicial battles, Swinth’s history spotlights concerns not commonly associated with the movement of the 1960s and 1970s. We see liberals and radicals, white women and women of color, rethinking gender roles and redistributing housework. They brought men into the fold, and together demanded bold policy changes to ensure job protection for pregnant women and federal support for child care. Many of the creative proposals they devised to reshape the workplace and rework government policy—such as guaranteed incomes for mothers and flex time—now seem prescient.
Swinth definitively dispels the notion that second-wave feminists pushed women into the workplace without offering solutions to issues they faced at home. Feminism’s Forgotten Fight examines activists’ campaigns for work and family in depth, and helps us see how feminism’s opponents—not feminists themselves—blocked the movement’s aspirations. Her insights offer key lessons for women’s ongoing struggle to achieve equality at home and work.
Helena Wall shows what life was like in colonial America, a culture where individuals and family were subordinated to the demands of the community. Using local town, church, and especially court records from every colony, she examines the division of authority between family and community throughout colonial America.
Although this close relationship and its consequences for private life bred many tensions and conflicts, the premises and conditions of that interdependent association persisted even into the nineteenth century. Wall sketches the subsequent changes and outlines the new arrangements of family and community life as the colonies moved toward the formation of a new nation.
With a focus squarely on the Midwest, Wendy Bilen pieces together the history of her grandmother, Josie Broadhead, born in 1911 and raised on the North Dakota prairie. Josie married a Wisconsin farmer and moved to a large dairy farm outside La Crosse; along the way she began taking in people in need of a home: ". . . beggars and drunks and children of drunks, mentally ill children and children with mentally ill parents. Brothers and cousins and sisters and in-laws and strangers."
By taking on these challenges that no one else wanted, Josie left an almost mythical legacy. Years after Josie's death, Bilen embarks on a journey to unearth Josie's story and quickly realizes that the search is about her, too. As she discovers her grandmother's complicated nature ("a woman proud and humble, loving and unaffectionate, strict and visionary, joyful and troubled, a woman held together by contradictions like an arch and its capstone"), she learns much about herself and her own choices. And as she breathes life into Josie and her family, friends, and neighbors, the author evokes a powerful sense of place of small towns and farms, of prairie, of Josie's home, all of which feel both fresh and satisfyingly familiar.
Much more than mere memoir or family history, this dual story about Bilen's journey illuminates the surprising ways our lives intersect with our ancestors'. An extraordinary story about a seemingly ordinary woman, Finding Josie will inspire readers to explore their own family history in their own way.
When Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy, his wife, Varina Howell Davis, reluctantly became the First Lady. For this highly intelligent, acutely observant woman, loyalty did not come easily: she spent long years struggling to reconcile her societal duties to her personal beliefs. Raised in Mississippi but educated in Philadelphia, and a long-time resident of Washington, D.C., Mrs. Davis never felt at ease in Richmond. During the war she nursed Union prisoners and secretly corresponded with friends in the North. Though she publicly supported the South, her term as First Lady was plagued by rumors of her disaffection.
After the war, Varina Davis endured financial woes and the loss of several children, but following her husband's death in 1889, she moved to New York and began a career in journalism. Here she advocated reconciliation between the North and South and became friends with Julia Grant, the widow of Ulysses S. Grant. She shocked many by declaring in a newspaper that it was God's will that the North won the war.
A century after Varina Davis's death in 1906, Joan E. Cashin has written a masterly work, the first definitive biography of this truly modern, but deeply conflicted, woman. Pro-slavery but also pro-Union, Varina Davis was inhibited by her role as Confederate First Lady and unable to reveal her true convictions. In this pathbreaking book, Cashin offers a splendid portrait of a fascinating woman who struggled with the constraints of her time and place.
The Follinglo Dog Book both is and is not about dogs. The dogs are certainly here: from Milla to Chip the Third, we encounter a procession of heroic if often unfortunate creatures who, along with their immigrant masters, led a hard life on the nineteenth-century American frontier. However, if you pick up this book thinking it will offer a heartwarming read about canine experiences, you will find yourself reinformed by the way it unfolds.
Instead, these are the stories of a Norwegian pioneer family that came in 1860 to settle the Iowa prairie on a homestead called Follinglo Farm in Story County, Iowa. In the Tjernagels' experience one may read a chronicle of the state, the region, and the nation. Arriving in Iowa in what was still the age of wooden equipment and animal power, the Tjernagels witnessed each successive revolution on the land. They built homes and barns, cultivated the land, and encountered every manner of natural disaster from prairie fires to blizzards. Through all the struggles and setbacks, Peder Gustav Tjernagel's stories sparkle with boyhood pranks and adventures, in which the family dogs frequently play a role.
Readers will discover a wonderful cast of Norwegian relatives and neighbors, including a Herculean uncle, Store Per (Big Pete), who could lift a cow by its horns; a mysterious aunt, Stora Fastero (Big Sister), whose arrival signaled that a baby was soon to be born; and Elling Eilson, the walking Lutheran apostle. And, of course, there are the dogs who shepherd, protect, and even baby-sit the residents of Follinglo Farm.
In this last book by the late Donald Pitkin, author of The House that Giacomo Built, comes a story of the Schorcht family, through whose fortunes and struggles one can see the transformations of Germany through the long twentieth century.
Each chapter of Four Germanys is reflective of generational rather than historical time. In 1922, Edwin Schorcht inherited his family farm, and in Part One, Pitkin traces the derivation of this farmstead. Part Two focuses on Schorcht’s children who came of age in Hitler’s Germany. Part Three has the Schorchts growing up in the Ulbricht years (1950–73) of the German Democratic Republic. The book concludes with the great-granddaughter, Maria, looking back to the past in relation to the new Germany that history had bequeathed her.
Ultimately, Four Germanys reflects the impact of critical historical events on ordinary East Germans while it also reveals how one particular family managed its own historical adaptation to these events.
Winner of the Kemper & Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History for excellence in historical scholarship for the year 2002, awarded by The Historic New Orleans Collection, The Louisiana Historical Association.
Albert Coryer, the grandson of a fur trade voyageur-turned-farmer, had a gift for storytelling. Born in 1877, he grew up in Prairie du Chien hearing tales of days gone by from his parents, grandparents, and neighbors who lived in the Frenchtown area. Throughout his life, Albert soaked up the local oral traditions, including narratives about early residents, local landmarks, interesting and funny events, ethnic customs, myths, and folklore.
Late in life, this lively man who had worked as a farm laborer and janitor drew a detailed illustrated map of the Prairie du Chien area and began to write his stories out longhand, in addition to sharing them in an interview with a local historian and folklore scholar. The map, stories, and interview transcript provide a colorful account of Prairie du Chien in the late nineteenth century, when it was undergoing significant demographic, social, and economic change. With sharp historical context provided by editors Lucy Eldersveld Murphy and Mary Elise Antoine, Coryer’s tales offer an unparalleled window into the ethnic community comprised of the old fur trade families, Native Americans, French Canadian farmers, and their descendants.
This book is the first systematic account of the law and economics of the family. It explores the implications of economics for family law—divorce, adoption, breach of promise, surrogacy, prenuptial agreements, custody arrangements—and its limitations.
Before a family forms, prospective partners engage in a kind of market activity that involves searching and bargaining, for which the economic analysis of contract law provides useful insights. Once a couple marries, the individuals become a family and their decisions have important consequences for other parties, especially children. As a result, the state and community have vital interests in the family.
Although it may be rational to breach a contract, pay damages, and recontract when a better deal comes along, this practice, if applied to family relationships, would make family life impossible—as would the regular toting up of balances between the partners. So the book introduces the idea of covenant to consider the role of love, trust, and fidelity, concepts about which economic analysis and contract law have little to offer, but feminist thought has a great deal to add. Although families do break up, children of divorce are still bound to their parents and to each other in powerful ways.
The Republic of the Rio Grande had a brief and tenuous existence (1838–1840) before most of it was reabsorbed by Mexico and the remainder annexed by the United States, yet this region that straddles the Rio Grande has retained its distinctive cultural identity to the present day. Born on one side of the Rio Grande and raised on the other, Beatriz de la Garza is a product of this region. Her birthplace and its people are the subjects of this work, which fuses family memoir and borderlands history.
From the Republic of the Rio Grande brings new insights and information to the study of transnational cultures by drawing from family papers supplemented by other original sources, local chronicles, and scholarly works. De la Garza has fashioned a history of this area from the perspective of individuals involved in the events recounted. The book is composed of nine sections spanning some two hundred years, beginning in the mid-1700s. Each section covers not only a chronological period but also a particular theme relating to the history of the region. De la Garza takes a personal approach, opening most sections with an individual observation or experience that leads to the central motif, whether this is the shared identity of the inhabitants, their pride in their biculturalism and bilingualism, or their deep attachment to the land of their ancestors.
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