Dynamics of Family Interaction: Love and Divorce
From Studyplace
These are notes I'm taking for Professor Varenne's class on the Dynamics of Family Interaction. I'm using it as an opportunity to play around with wikis and shared community knowledge. Please feel free to contribute to these notes or share your ideas about how it can be expanded, changed, improved.
Contents |
Infancy and language acquisition: Learning, participation and the children's struggle as they play and resist
Readings
- Weston, Kath. Families we choose: Lesbians, gays, kinship. New York: Columbia University Press. 1991
Reading notes
Weston: Families we choose
Class notes
Link to Professor Varenne's notes
- Mid-term
- be careful not to be confused by definitions
- confusing when trying to use them intellectually
- three types of definitions: empirical generalizations, dictionary, and ideal types
- ideal type: exists in Weberian sociology; what is comparable
- Marriage
- anthropological trick: going to an outlying area instead of mainstream
- studying gay/lesbian families show what might be common to every family
- at every stage of the life cycle, there are different issues
- culture will give you possibilities and constraints
- Anna Karenina: problems that start after marriage; impacts more and more people
- marriage not really a "choice"; limited to range of people you can choose from
- different kinds of "arranged marriages" (through websites, speed dating, etc.)
- marriage system not just cultural (invisible) but political
- traditional American family a rhetorical argument; what families we should have
- not caring about something does not mean not knowing about it; just means that it is irrelevant at that point
- LS: all societies have forms of marriage that comes with special rights and privileges
- A: interesting movie to think about is Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet
- why should we ask for permission to get married? why does it need to be performed by licensed people
- marriages rates declined in Europe when they started questioning why State has right to be involved in marriage
- A: another interesting movie: Prime
- who are going to be your friends after marriage?
- citizenship: marriage for immigration purposes; need to demonstrate love
- symbols of love: cohabitation, sharing bed, etc.
- Homosexuality
- Weston: "coming out" will create trouble
- Schneider: symbols of American kinships; pattern analysis of American families that you can describe
- is spouse considered a "blood" relative?
- homosexuality as genetic
- proper sex (sex within love) vs. wrong sex (sex without love)
- queer theorists: fight for gay marriage is conservative; reinforces love as center of symbolic act
- love seen as exclusive one-on-one
- most see marriage as based on love
- Engels: marriage is a form of prostitution
- Divorce
- what are the regulations of divorce? varies from state to state
- also had to define what is a marriage
- what is dissolvable and what isn't
- regulations define marriage as between two adults; others (e.g. parents, children) don't have rights over the union
- historical outcome, suited for our kind of economic conditions
- adults are free agents as it relates to sex and marriage
Except where