Family and social network : roles, norms, and external relationships in ordinary urban families / Elizabeth Bott ; preface by Max Gluckman.

  • Elizabeth Spillius
Date:
1971
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Family and social network : roles, norms, and external relationships in ordinary urban families / Elizabeth Bott ; preface by Max Gluckman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    FAMILY AND SOCIAL NETWORK given the cultural standardization of roles, in families according to which kin fall in their nearby network. Turner's analysis has to be set in a' wider perspective. He found that in 115 families in the Pennine parish, 'when kinsfolk are excluded [because husband and wife tend to include the same kinsfolk in their respective social networks], thirty-two couples could be unambiguously identified for whom the husband's friends constituted a close-knit male network, and the wife's friends a close-knit female network. These thirty-two couples also demonstrated a high degree of conjugal role segregation.'^ This last finding seems to be part of a wider contention that 'since marital roles are parts of sex roles there is likely to be a fit between mono-sex group membership and role segregation at the logical level. . . .' (to quote C. C. Harris, The Family, 1969, p. 174). This is preceded by the statement that 'mono-sex groups are likely to be formed where the sex-roles are themselves rigorously differen¬ tiated'. This seems to me to push the problem one stage further back: in which circumstances are mono-sex groups likely to be formed г And here my hunch, inspired by my knowledge of tribal societies illuminated by the Bott hypothesis, is that the close- knit network of nearby kin who also participate together in economic activities produces both segregation in mono-sex groups and in conjugal roles. And I believe also that the tighter the fit between these variables, the more likely is it that segregation of roles (sexual, including marital) will be more than the habits of individual couples—it will contain a high degree of convention, passing into ceremonial and even ritual practices and occult beliefs. 2 ^ C. Turner, 'Conjugal Roles and Social Networks: A Re-examination of an Hypothe¬ sis', Human Relations, Vol. 20 (1967), pp. 121-30, at p. 125. ^ See R. O. Blood's 'Kinship Interaction and Marital SoHdarity', Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, Vol. 15 (1969). pp. 171-84. where marital soHdarity is taken to be rhe satisfaction of the wife with the husband's role performance in the marriage. He concludes that, aside from the fact that in the U.S.A. 'couples with close-knit networks perform more house¬ hold tasks separately (p. 175), ... an overdose of kin contact is Hkely to poison marital health. In proper doses, kin may provide external support for marital soHdarity' (p. 183). The reader is referred to Bott's citation from my own 'Estrangements in the Family' for comparison, at the head of her new chapter. xxii