Reviewed By: Elizabeth Barragan, Andrew Ho
Link to article: https://journals.openedition.org/samaj/4365#quotation
Synopsis
The article Family Realties in South Asia: Adaptations and Resilience by Parual Bhandari and Fritzi-Marie Titzmann examine the changes in family structures they asses how norms and values have changed in relation to gender, technological intervention media and process of individualization have affected family structures in South Asian. Family dynamics are an important in South Asian families even with the shift in technology, migration they continue to be at the heart of people’s lives. The families play a major role in the life of South Asians families are considered in most aspects of life and the influence that a family has on and individuals life remains very much dominant in decision making. The goal is to analyze research, literature, empirical details, and diverse theories corresponding to some for the reasons why there have been changes in family norms in South Asian societies in the past decade with a main focus on how technology, gender roles, and migration are factors to the changes.
The article first discusses the role that families play in society and individual and how they families are shaped by social, cultural and technological changes. “Family and the idea of family exist in multiple forms in South Asian.” By taking a look as how relations, gender, diversity in geographical setting and urban spaces (big and small cities).
Research Questions
What are the relationships between variables gender roles, migration, technology, socialization and modernization and the shift in how families are structured in South Asia? The article analyzes three main factors in correlation to family structures (1) Individual family community nexus, (2) gender roles agency and (3) technology and media. “What is the significance of the family in contemporary times?”
Methods
Several methods are used to analyze family as well as the variable that contribute to the changes in the restriction of families in recent years. The Alliance Theory by Louis Dumont bring to attention that even though there are differences between north and south kinship. Despite the diversity, “India’s unity may be located in the existing of the joint family and the Hindu caste system through the subcontinent.” (Bhandari, Titzmann p.2)
Conclusions
Research indicates that even though changes are happening in migration, gender roles, and the increased use of technology families are adapting but are also resisting the changes mentioned. With the industrialization and urbanization of South Asian there has been a large shift and migration into large cities to seek employment. This has shifted families with the separation of a family member into the city to work and provide for their family. Yet with the separation the family still holds control over the individual The work of Uberoi’s ”The Family in India provides insight by stating that ”the process of nuclearization of households due to urbanization in India, this does not necessarily indicate a decline in the joint family but simply a change in household composition”. The study also found that the household structure does not overpower the structure of family values and norms. Media’s representation has shifted in Hindi family films families are portrayed as clean and morally uplifting. TC is also showing family as they change by portraying them as happy joint families.
The oppression of gender roles have slightly shifted with more women entering the workforce in IT. The exposure is a key change in women’s lives with increasing opportunities, adding skills, and large knowledge of life explores. Women in India today have opposites their mother never dreamed about. Yet the oppression of the cost factors in the roles women play outside of the home and within their families. “Women’s agency in dealt with the struck and norms of various forms of oppression” There has been an uprising in women emotionally with family suppression
What American libraries can learn.
American libraries can learn from the global practice of this research by understanding the impact of different family’s dynamics across the globe. In the case of South Asian families there is still a large influence in being a family unit even when starting one’s own family. It seems like the structure of families are to please ones partners and be obedient even with the changes in migration, gender roles, and media and technology representation. There is still a predisposition of patriarchal cultural practices that often affect how a family integrates into American society and we should be cognizant of that. We will need to navigate a fine line between respecting while still helping those with radically different cultural norms.
References
Parul Bhandari and Fritzi-Marie Titzmann, « Introduction. Family Realities in South Asia: Adaptations and Resilience », South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal[Online], 16 | 2017, Online since 02 August 2017, connection on 02 November 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/samaj/4365 ; DOI : 10.4000/samaj.4365
Titzmann, Fritzi-Marie. 2013. “Changing Patterns of Matchmaking: The Indian Online Matrimonial Market.” Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 19(4):64–94.
DOI : 10.1080/12259276.2013.11666166
Uberoi, Patricia. 2001. “Imagining the Family: An Ethnography of Viewing Hum Aapke Hain Koun … !” Pp. 309–51 in Pleasure and the Nation, edited by R. Dwyer and C. Pinney. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.