Download Unit 13 Family and Household Section 1 Unit Purpose

Unit 13
Family and Household
Section 1
Unit Materials
Questions To Consider
Question 1.
How can we use the study of families and households to explore broad political, economic, or
ideological themes in world history?
Question 2.
What kinds of evidence do historians use to recover family and household histories?
Question 3.
What are some of the ways that family and household structures have varied across cultures and
changed over time?
Question 4.
What is the relationship between family/household and political order? What is the relationship
between family/household and religion?
The Big Picture
How is this topic related to Increasing Integration?
The experience of living in a family or household integrates nearly all humanity. Families and
households provide a nearly universal setting that meets basic human needs — from birth to
death — around the world.
How is this topic related to Proliferating Difference?
At the same time, the exact structure of families and households vary widely, and reflect the
different cultural and historical settings in which they occur. In addition, family and household
structures change over time, creating differences between past and present forms.
Unit Purpose
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Families and households are socially constructed units that provide individuals with their
most intimate and personal means of ordering the world.
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Families and households are universal in world history. Their specific forms, however,
vary widely through time and across space.
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Families and households influenced, and were influenced by, larger societal forces such
as politics, religion, and economics.
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Unit Content Overview
An individual’s earliest and most profound experience of the world takes place at home. The
experience of family life leaves a distinctive and lasting imprint, and shapes our understanding of
how the world outside the home works. However, the meaning and nature of family and
household varies widely across cultures and over time. Like the concepts of gender and
community, families were socially and culturally constructed, not biologically determined. Yet
whatever their form, familial units were used by peoples around the world to construct the order of
their lives at home and they influenced — and were influenced by — the hierarchies of social and
political life in the wider world.
This unit explores how families and households — the most intimate and basic social
organizations — intersected and interacted with ideas, institutions, and communities from ancient
times to about 1750. Too often, historians have ignored the private, daily realm of human activity
in favor of large-scale political affairs and the actions of “great men.” Recently, however, world
historians have approached family differently: as evidence for the variety and commonality of
world history, as models for ordering the world, as evidence of the dynamic nature of the past,
and as a way to bring the ordinary and familiar into global perspective. While reconstructing the
history of families can be difficult, historians have learned to mine rich sources that frequently
document the ways families and households functioned in the past, including oral testimony,
mythology, genealogies, life histories, legal codes, archaeological excavations, language, and
literature. Historians have found that families and households are universal in world history, but
that their specific form is a product of culture and historical change. Moreover, the historical
record as represented by official documents — such as codes of law — merely reports the
prescribed or dictated ideal behavior; actual historical practices often differed greatly from ideals.
Finally, families interacted with and were influenced by various large structures — political,
economic, and ideological. Indeed, the dynamism of historical change is evident not only in the
rise and fall of rulers, states, and empires but also in the shifting patterns of family and household
over time and across cultures.
Unit References
Steven Ozment. When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1983).
David Herlihy, “Family,” The American Historical Review, 96 (1991) 1–16.
Sarah Shaver Hughes and Brady Hughes, eds., Women in World History: Readings from 1500 to
the Present (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1997). 2 vols.
Patricia B. Ebrey, “The Chinese Family and the Spread of Confucian Values,” in The East Asian
Region: Confucian Heritage and Its Modern Adaptation, ed. Gilbert Rozman, (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1991), 45–83.
Tamara K. Hareven, “The History of the Family and the Complexity of Social Change,” The
American Historical Review 96 (1991), 95–124.
Hugh Cunningham, “Histories of Childhood,” The American Historical Review 103 (1998),
1195–208.
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Global Historical Context
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Time Period: 500 BCE–1750 CE
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Family units are nearly universal in world history. By studying these units, world historians
explore the familiar patterns of kin groupings and family social relations while placing these
patterns in larger regional, cultural, and global contexts. In other words, studying family
groups allows world historians to probe the social, political, and economic frameworks
within which families in different parts of the world develop. These frameworks, in turn, help
world historians understand the role gender plays in family relationships, and how gender
ideologies are formed in the wider context of social relations. Studying families provides
world historians with unique perspectives on the global past, and reminds us that although
the global patterns we talk about may be vast, most people experienced these patterns on
a daily basis through their roles as family members.
AP Themes
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Examines change and continuity by exploring the ways in which family structures
changed over time in Europe, China, and the Islamic world.
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Explores systems of social and gender structure by focusing on how family groupings
reflected the wider gender ideologies of their home societies, and how gender ideologies
did not always reflect actual family relationships.
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Discusses cultural and intellectual developments by looking at the ways in which families
were influenced by the cultural traditions and beliefs of the wider society.
Related Units
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Unit 2. History and Memory: How are history and memory different? Topics in this unit
range from the celebration of Columbus Day to the demolition of a Korean museum to the
historical re-interpretation of Mayan civilization. This unit explores the ways historians,
nations, families, and individuals capture, exploit, and know the past, demonstrating the
dynamic nature of historical practice and knowledge. It is related to Unit 13 because it
addresses the ways in which history and memory are frequently constructed within the
context of individual family units.
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Unit 4. Agricultural and Urban Revolutions: What do historians know about the earliest
farmers and herders, and the evolution of cities? Newly emerging evidence about the
“cradles of civilization” is examined in light of the social, technological, and cultural
complexity of recently discovered settlements and cities. This unit is related to Unit 13
because as societies became more complex, the role of women and the nature of
families and households also changed dramatically.
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Unit 6. Order and Early Societies: How do diverse political structures and relationships
distribute power and material resources? Through the rise of the Chinese Empire, Mayan
regional kingdoms, and the complex society of Igbo-Ukwu, this unit considers the origins
of centralized states and alternative political and social orders. It is related to Unit 13
because it examines methods of ordering the world, in addition to the families and
households.
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Unit 16. Food, Demographics, and Culture: What role has food played in human
societies? Studying the production and consumption of food allows historians to uncover
hidden levels of meaning in social relationships, understand demographic shifts, and
trace cultural exchange. This unit examines the earliest impact of globalization including
changing cuisine, environmental impact, and the rise of forced labor as a global
economic force. It is related to Unit 13 because, like the variety in family and household
organization, distinctive cultural foodways arise against a background of larger global
patterns and processes.
Section 2
Video-Related Materials
Video Segment 1: Confucian Views of Family and Household in China
This segment examines the tightly woven connection between Confucianism and family life in
Imperial China, from the second century BCE to the sixteenth century. During the latter Han
dynasty (in the first and second centuries CE) the ideas of Confucius and his followers began to
dominate all realms of Chinese social and political life. For Confucius, the family, not the
individual or the community, was the fundamental unit of society. In the Confucian ideal, families
were to be strictly hierarchical: old over young, and male over female. In addition, Confucianism
idealized the extended family, and encouraged families to favor sons over daughters. By around
1000 CE, Confucian ideals had intertwined with law codes of the state to define the family from
an official and legal perspective. But, as in other cultures, additional factors played a greater role
in shaping the actual experience of family life: economic realities, regional customs, and
individual personalities. Many people could not afford to live in extended families, and the practice
of infanticide — especially of infant girls — became common. Moreover, although women were
supposed to be subordinate to men, their role in educating sons, in running households, and even
in arranging marriages is just one example of the many differences between prescription and
reality in Chinese family life.
Video Segment 2: The Early Islamic Family and Household
This video segment focuses on the spread of Islam through West Asia beginning in the seventh
century CE. The early Muslim community in West Asia developed its practices by melding the
Prophet Muhammad’s teachings with Arab tribal customs already in place. As this new faith
spread throughout parts of Africa and Eurasia, many aspects of family life began to change. For
the most part, although Islam portrayed women as honorable individuals, both the Qur’an and the
Shari’a — the Muslim holy book and system of laws, respectively — reinforced male dominance.
Indeed, because Islamic law recognized descent through the male line, the social and sexual
lives of women were subjected to the strict control of male guardians in order to preserve the
legitimacy of heirs. The family was a highly valued institution in Islam, and was considered the
most important social, economic and political unit of the community. Within the family, marriage
was the primary relationship. As a reflection of these concerns, households in Islamic societies
were set up with two concerns in mind: the right of the family to keep its affairs private, and the
necessity of following the prescriptions of Islamic law and religious practices with regard to
women. However, as historians trace the impact of Islam on families and households over many
centuries, they have discovered that the relative weight of these concerns depended on how
jurists and legal scholars have interpreted and reinterpreted the Qur’an and the Shari’a in the
context of their own societies and cultures.
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Video Segment 3: The European Family and Household from Ancient Rome
to Early Modern Europe
This case study looks at European households from Ancient Rome to the early modern period. In
so doing, it demonstrates the many ways that families and households were greatly influenced by
political and economic forces in the wider society. Over the centuries, many factors shaped family
life in Europe, including state legal codes, Christianity, and urbanization. In early Rome, for
example, legal codes dictated much of what went on inside households. With the rise of
Christianity, the patriarchal traditions of these codes were reinforced by endowing them with
religious authority. By the twelfth century, the Church influenced many of the intimate details of
family life — from marriage to sexuality. Historians have also learned a great deal about the
treatment and rearing of children within European families. In the past, scholars assumed that
parents of the medieval period viewed their children as small adults. Recently, however, scholars
have used medical texts, art, and literature to demonstrate that medieval parents in fact had a
great deal of affection and love for their children. European families changed in many ways
between the Roman and the medieval period as a result of economic changes. Indeed, by the
thirteenth century, capitalism, urbanization, and the use of cash were all on the rise. As a result,
the role of the household as a hub of economic activity declined as families moved from rural
areas to cities and became more dependent on local markets.
Perspectives on the Past: The Challenge of Historical Interpretations of
Family and Household
How have historians interpreted the nature of childhood within European families in the past?
Historian Jerry Bentley argues that historical scholarship has varied widely on this matter: Some
scholars believe that families have treated children the same way through the ages, giving them
special attention and affection. Others believe that until the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries,
parents treated children as small adults and made no effort to shield them from life’s difficulties.
Video Details
Who Is Interviewed
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Jerry H. Bentley
Linda Walton
Richard Bulliet
Primary Source Materials Featured in the Video:
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Christoforo Fioravanti, Italian traveler
Ban Zhao, Chinese woman scholar
Li Qingzhao, Chinese woman poet
Gu Ruopu, Chinese woman
Sakhawi’s, Muslim biographer
Program Contents
Begins
00:00
01:33
05:32
Ends
01:32
05:31
11:44
11:45
18:28
Contents
Show tease, show opening credits
Program overview/introduction
Video Segment 1. Confucian Views of Family and Household in
China
Video Segment 2. The Early Islamic Family and Household
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18:29
24:54
24:55
26:03
26:04
28:25
Video Segment 3. The European Family and Household from Ancient
Rome to Early Modern Europe
Perspectives on the Past: The Challenge of Historical Interpretations
of Family and Household
Show close and program credits
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