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Title details for The Social Origins of Private Life by Stephanie Coontz - Available

The Social Origins of Private Life

by Stephanie Coontz
ebook
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A highly original account of the evolution of the family unit
Current debates about the future of the family are often based on serious misconceptions about its past. Arguing that there is no biologically mandated or universally functional family form, Stephanie Coontz traces the complexity and variety of family arrangements in American history, from Native American kin groups to the emergence of the dominant middle-class family ideal in the 1890s.
Surveying and synthesizing a vast range of previous scholarship, as well as engaging more particular studies of family life from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, Coontz offers a highly original account of the shifting structure and function of American families. Her account challenges standard interpretations of the early hegemony of middle-class privacy and “affective individualism,” pointing to the rich tradition of alternative family behaviors among various ethnic and socioeconomic groups in America, and arguing that even middle-class families went through several transformations in the course of the nineteenth centure.
The present dominant family form, grounded in close interpersonal relations and premised on domestic consumption of mass-produced household goods has arisen, Coontz argues, from a long and complex series of changing political and economic conjunctures, as well as from the destruction or incorporation of several alternative family systems. A clear conception of American capitalism’s combined and uneven development is therefore essential if we are to understand the history of the family as a key social and economic unit. Lucid and detailed, The Social Origins of Private Life is likely to become the standard history of its subject.
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Publisher: Verso Books

Kindle Book

  • Release date: February 23, 2016

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9781786630018
  • File size: 890 KB
  • Release date: February 23, 2016

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9781786630018
  • File size: 890 KB
  • Release date: February 23, 2016

Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

History Sociology Nonfiction

Languages

English

A highly original account of the evolution of the family unit
Current debates about the future of the family are often based on serious misconceptions about its past. Arguing that there is no biologically mandated or universally functional family form, Stephanie Coontz traces the complexity and variety of family arrangements in American history, from Native American kin groups to the emergence of the dominant middle-class family ideal in the 1890s.
Surveying and synthesizing a vast range of previous scholarship, as well as engaging more particular studies of family life from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, Coontz offers a highly original account of the shifting structure and function of American families. Her account challenges standard interpretations of the early hegemony of middle-class privacy and “affective individualism,” pointing to the rich tradition of alternative family behaviors among various ethnic and socioeconomic groups in America, and arguing that even middle-class families went through several transformations in the course of the nineteenth centure.
The present dominant family form, grounded in close interpersonal relations and premised on domestic consumption of mass-produced household goods has arisen, Coontz argues, from a long and complex series of changing political and economic conjunctures, as well as from the destruction or incorporation of several alternative family systems. A clear conception of American capitalism’s combined and uneven development is therefore essential if we are to understand the history of the family as a key social and economic unit. Lucid and detailed, The Social Origins of Private Life is likely to become the standard history of its subject.
Expand title description text
History Sociology Nonfiction
  • Details

    Publisher:
    Verso Books

    Kindle Book
    Release date: February 23, 2016

    OverDrive Read
    ISBN: 9781786630018
    File size: 890 KB
    Release date: February 23, 2016

    EPUB ebook
    ISBN: 9781786630018
    File size: 890 KB
    Release date: February 23, 2016

  • Creators
  • Formats
    Kindle Book
    OverDrive Read
    EPUB ebook
  • Languages
    English