The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
STUDY GUIDE
Anthropology 304, Family, Kin and Community
Gillis, John R. 1996. A World of Their Own Making Myth, Ritual, and the Quest
for Family Values, New York: Basic Books.
PART I: ON PRE-MODERN FAMILIES (pre-1850)
1. What is the purpose of writing this history, according to Gillis? p. xi. To
examine the appropriateness of current myths and rituals about family, to write
a history of family CULTURE, to contribute to cultural reconstruction, and to
realize a deeper understanding of rituals and myths, ESPECIALLY for MEN.
Discuss concept of "culture" and his point about men.
2. p. xv. What does Gillis mean when he says that we expect families to do the
symbolic work once assigned to religious and communal institutions--e.g.
parishes, villages, landlords, etc.?
How does this apply to the families you know
about?
3. Imagined Families: - a. p. xvi Why does Gillis think it necessary to distinguish "the imagined
families we live by" v. "the families we live with"?
- b. Discuss his statement about turning living rooms into family portrait galleries,
etc..
- c. Why are "the imagined families we live by" so important to us? Gillis says it is
because there is no other place in society for values such as cooperation,
enduring loyalty, and moral considerations.
4. p. xix. Why does he thinks that despite differences in the details of rituals that
family cultures in modern society have basically similar family values?
5. Family Heritage and Class- a. p. 4. In the past the elite kept heritage, land and offices for themselves.
Did the more egalitarian societies perhaps create new kinds of family? new
myths?
- b. p. 13. Why does he think that the relative lack of surnames indicates that
only certain Houses could claim a past?
6. p. 7. What distinguished European families of the past?
- a. nuclear family household based upon monogamous marriage
- b. You could not marry until you were able to support a family.
- c. Therefore, relatively late marriages and relatively large numbers of
unmarried adults
7. p. 12. What does wetnursing and number of adolescents who were sent to
live with other households say about family values and practices?
8. p. 13. Discuss the right of the master of the house to forbid the marriage of
his servants and boarders, who were indentured for periods of time. Discuss
difference between slaves and indentured servants.
9. What is his main point about the pre-modern Catholic church's attitude
towards family?
- Celibacy was higher and family should not interfere with God.
- Early church property and growth depended upon children and kin not being
able to make a fixed claim on property.
- Protestants felt too great a love of
family would detract from the love of God, p.15.
- Not until the 12th century did married people become canonized, p. 28
.
10. p.16. Our pre-modern ancestors were not homebodies, they were attached
to place but not houses.p. 32 & 33 p. 37
Also they tended to socialize in taverns
and pubs or to feel free to enter other's homes at will.
Discuss the possibility of
researching and writing on the relationship between family and the local
gathering spot.
11. Discuss the importance of fictive kin relations.
p. 25, Importance of fictive
kin relations of godparenthood and co-parenthood and p. 27 fraternities and
guilds as extended fictive kin,
Baptism: a symbolic second birth with spiritual
parents.
p. 36 Discuss the importance of parishes as opposed to home. One had rights
in parishes. Possible paper topic: on parishes and families.
12. KEY POINT: p. 29. The reimagining of the holy family as nuclear and
patriarchal came with the Protestant Reformation and the rise of the middle
class.
13. p. 30 But the Protestants spiritualized the human household, not the nuclear
family as such. Explain.
14. p. 32 The Household was a unit of production and consumption. Why was
this important to the family and kin?
- p. 35, Its economic, political and religious responsibilities little time or space for
an exclusive nuclear family.
- p. 34 The godly household as a little church or a little commonwealth.
15. p. 37 Discuss the shape of rooms and houses as indicators of family culture--e.g., entry directly into kitchen where the hearth was and where all family
activity took place including sleeping.
16. p. 39, Parish members and church would intervene into family matters,
without being concerned about "family privacy".
17. p. 43, Discuss the concept of "rites of passage". Possible paper topic.
18. p. 49, Why was it only elites who marked birthdays? Because other people
age was determined for them, not by years, but by their station in life.
19. Old people were reluctant to retire because retiring diminished their status
and power and standard of living.
20. Discuss the idea of Life as a small parenthesis and the wheel of fortune
metaphor. These ideas fit the high mortality level. Most families were upset by
death.
21. Note the shift in metaphor from life as wheel to life as a journey.
22. p. 55, Why did they look for signs of the future in the dying as opposed to
newborns?
PART II: On the Beginnings of the Modern Family in Victorian Times
23. p. 61, What set the modern family apart from the pre-modern? Its removal
from society. And the dependency we have on the smallest of possible symbolic
universes--the nuclear family.
24. Discuss the summary of changes on p. 70
25. The importance of CLASS in defining the modern family.
26. p. 72, What does he mean that families began to put themselves on display?
27. p. 73, Note the importance of dependent children in the definition of family.
28. p. 74, What is the difference between "family" and "household", e.g. in use
of kinship terms v. sir and madam?
29. KEY POINT: p. 112, "The household had been the master metaphor for all
living arrangements prior to the mid-nineteenth century."
The elite esp. were concerned about maintaining the HOUSE.
30. The importance of the house becoming a HOME a middle class phenomenon
that comes with the toppling of the aristocracy.
p. 116, Discuss the new idea of the home as sanctuary.
In what family practices does Gillis see the home as becoming a sanctuary? Decorating, family pictures, mirrors, immobile furniture, the
threshold, the parlor, the separation of family and servants, separation of
kitchen and dining room, fireplace in parlor, (which after the establishment of
funeral parlors became the living room), the establishment of set meal times,
and family as nocturnal.
31. How was family and home gendered? Importance of women in making a
home NOTE: p. 77, on women as rememberers and keepers of family stories,
etc., and women as the selfless sex.
p. 120, Give a summary of the representative Victorian wife. Who was she?
32. What does Gillis mean when he says that the home was a cure for newly
discovered agoraphobia p. 121.
33. p. 101-104, Gillis summarizes the changes in meaning of Christmas from a
community festival to a family festival. Discuss old Christmas as a community
festival for adults.
34. p. 85, Discuss the change in images of family as related to changes in ideas
of the elderly and the young, family begins to focus on the importance of youth
(AND OF CHILDREN).
35. p. 134, Discuss Gillis' argument that the conjugal couple's basis in love is
likely to cause it to end.
36. p. 135, He notes that the premodern couple knew each other and were
chaperoned by their peers.
37. Motherhood and Maternity - p. 153, Discuss Gillis point that we only recently assumed that motherhood
and maternity are the same.
- In premodern days, high maternal mortality and high infant and child mortality
and high birth rate made the equation of maternity and motherhood more
problematic.
- p. 155, Discuss the idea of allowing others to raise one's children, to rely "on
the kindness of strangers", e.g., 1/4 of children given up to others in Toulouse
France in 18th.
38. p. 162, What is the "couvade"? What is its significance to family history and
vaues?
39. p. 171, Older ideas were that birth was an event In their desire to control
birth, birth was medicalized, and then controlled by male doctors.
40. p. 172, Doctors began to treat birth and pregnancy as illnesses.
41. p. 174, Discuss the idea of the return to "natural" childbirthing."
42. p. 177, KEY POINT: Why does Gillis refer to the idea of the full time stay at
home mother as the ideology of "true motherhood"?
43. p. 181, Discuss the shift in places of motherhood and fatherhood, e.g., p.
193, shift in custody to mothers.
44. p. 196, Good mothering is considered natural and therefore not
praiseworthy, but good fathering calls forth praise.
45. p. 197, Discuss what Gillis sees as the possible contradiction between good
husbandhood and good fatherhood.
46. p. 200, Note the image of doctor as ritual elder.
47. The dying removed from family- p. 210, Aging and dying were reinterpreted as disease rather than as
God's will.
- p. 221, Our fear of death has isolated the dying from family, kin and
community.
48. What are the contemporary changes in family?
- a. 226 reritualization, e.g. cards
- b. 227 love in cyberspace
- c. 227 overworked American
- d. 227 regimented leisure time
- e. 228 public into private in form of media--tv, radio, noise rather
than quiet of the Victorian home
- f. 228 quality time
- g. 229 superkid
- h. 229 young people acting more adult: sex earlier, working earlier
- i. 229 loosening of age grading ???
- j. 230 adult birthdays
- k. 231 on even adulthood and aged as a stage of becoming rather
than being.
- l. 231 earlier retirement
- m.233 on youth and aging as non-linear chronotypes.
- n. 234 home as a busy place people go in and out of.
- o. 234 home away from home as a consumer idea, e.g. family food,
home cooking, family vacation.
- p. 235 women still have less claim to time and space than either
children or men
- q. 237 rise in home-centeredness and nostalgia for roots.
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