“His impressive study promises to reorient population research in important new directions.”
Michele Rivkin-Fish's review of Reading History Sideways
From Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 2, April 2007.
Reproduced below with the Author's Permission.
Rethinking the Politics of Family Studies
Michele Rivkin-Fish
Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, U.S.A. 2 XI 06.
Reading History Sideways: The Fallacy and Enduring Impact of the Developmental Paradigm on Family Life. By Arland Thornton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Anthropologists interested in the history of the social sciences, the family, and international development will no doubt appreciate Arland Thornton's clever phrasing "reading history sideways" for capturing the "approach to history that, instead of following a particular society or population across time, compares various societies at the same time" (p. 4). His impressive study promises to reorient population research in important new directions.
Thornton examines the centuries-old practice of drawing conclusions about family life around the world on the basis of a developmental paradigm steeped in social evolutionary assumptions. Part 1 details how reading history sideways has been applied to the study of family changes from the 1700s through the mid-1900s. Part 2 demonstrates how the understandings emerging from this approach have themselves catalyzed substantial transformations in family life throughout the world. An introductory section describes the kinds of data that were available to family scholars, from classical sources such as the Bible and ancient Greek and Roman texts to observations from the time of the Crusades and the Age of Exploration and the cross-cultural comparative material published in the 1500s–texts that were sometimes considered problematic by those who used them but nonetheless seemed to provide usable material for scientific analysis. Thornton shows that cross-cultural data played a central role in the work of political theorists such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Robert Malthus, among others, thinkers who further normalized the classification of family behaviors on a comparative scale of civilization.
Reading history sideways from the 1700s though the mid-1900s resulted in a grand historical modernization narrative of family life and its transformations over time. This narrative posited that family life in Northwest Europe altered dramatically beginning in the 1700s: from extended families the smaller, nuclear household emerged; people entered marriage at later ages than they had previously, and some never married at all; the power and authority of older generations over younger family members waned, and arranged marriages ceased; younger people began choosing their own spouses on the basis of affection and love. One of the most significant changes that followers of the grand narrative of family change described was the increasing status of women. Yet these changes were not merely described; they were depicted as representing the most modern and civilized forms of family life. By the mid-twentieth century, evidence had accumulated to demonstrate that this distinctive configuration of family life had characterized societies in Northwest Europe long before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Thornton reviews evidence published from the 1960s on that challenged entrenched preconceptions by revealing that the nuclear (or a weak stem) family had been common in Northwest Europe since at least the 1300s, individualism and the autonomy of younger generations can be traced back to the thirteenth century in England, and late marriage and widespread celibacy had been practiced since 1000.
The debunking of the myth, however, did not lead to the demise of reading history sideways or the evaluation of family life around the world on a comparative scale of civilization. This is because the myth of family transformation was integrally linked to what Thornton calls developmental idealism: a vision that presumes that modernized family forms represent not merely change but moral progress. He summarizes the four key components of developmental idealism as follows: "(1) modern society is good and attainable; (2) the modern family is good and attainable; (3) the modern family is a cause as well as an effect of a modern society; and (4) individuals have the right to be free and equal, with social relationships being based on consent" (p. 8). Thornton argues that developmental idealism has been a major force catalyzing changes in family life throughout the world for the past 100 years because it has been integrally linked to agendas and desires for socioeconomic development. While recognizing that there has been resistance among some local communities, he claims that it is the belief in developmental idealism more than economic forces, technological inputs, or structural changes that has led people to alter when they create unions, how they relate to their spouses, children, and parents, and when they become parents themselves.
For anthropologists interested in kinship, reproduction, and development, these arguments will not be surprising. The value of the text for this audience lies in the vast amount of material Thornton has assembled and carefully synthesized on the ways in which what anthropologists would call social evolutionism has dominated Western thought and development work on issues related to the family. The text is also interesting for anthropologists who study population science itself as an increasingly contested epistemological field: I found it fascinating to trace the lines of critique the author took and the assumptions he left undisturbed in targeting the grand historical narrative of family modernization. Thus, while Thornton is adamant about his rejection of the developmental paradigm as both intellectually and ethically bankrupt for contemporary social science, he remains sanguine about the viability of developmental idealism: "The values and beliefs of developmental idealism can be accepted without a belief in the developmental paradigm, reading history sideways, and the conclusions of generations of developmental scholars. More explicitly, such values as equality, consent, freedom, independence, and mature marriage can be maintained entirely independently of developmental models and methods" (p. 12).
Thornton's own case studies, however, demonstrate the immense difficulty of this proposition. For example, Chapter 10, "Fighting Barbarism in the United States," details governmental campaigns against family forms that contravened dominant notions of civilization and equality in the nineteenth century, including Mormon polygyny and group marriage in the Oneida Community. The promotion of the "modern family" and women's equality through coercive measures underscores the multiple forms of inequality at stake in global relations. This is where Thornton's minimal engagement with anthropological debates becomes evident. Recent anthropological research has documented how campaigns for gender equity in global settings often suffer from a lack of historical understanding and draw cross-cultural comparisons on the basis of a developmental model. Without abandoning the goal of equality, these critics highlight the need for a reflexive awareness about the use of power by activists for women's rights. And this means pushing harder against the modernization paradigm than this book seems willing to do.
Despite this possible area of debate, Thornton's research agenda is salient for our discipline. He encourages study of the distribution of developmental idealism, the forms it takes in different contexts and changes in it over time, and its use and impact on ordinary people. He also advocates researching links between developmental thinking and changing family forms, including resistance to developmental ideas. Anthropologists will no doubt find such agendas quite agreeable.
Publication details for Reading History Sideways: The Fallacy and Enduring Impact of the Developmental Paradigm on Family Life.
