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Social Change and the Joint Family: The Causes of Research BiasesAuthor(s): George H ConklinReviewed work(s):Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 4, No. 36 (September 6, 1969), pp. 1445-1448Published by: Economic and Political WeeklyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40739975 .

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ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY September , 1969

as it is intended. esides, incethepro-grammes re to be executedprimarilyby theStates, hepurposes nd applica-tion of fundswill varyfrom one areato another.Nor does the solution iein leavingfund-raisingntirely o theStates,

notwithstandinghe successesof

therecent apital issuesof the Mysoreand Tamil Nadu HousingBoards. Suchsuccesses,even if repeated,will meana piecemeal approach and will notbuild up an institutional frameworkwhich,by definition, as to integratethe fundneeds of the variousGovern-mentand other agencies interso.

An interesting suggestion maderecentlys to set up a long-termundunderthe aegis of the Reserve Bankof India on the lints of the NationalAgriculturalCredit (long-term pera-tions/stabilisation)unds.Contributions

to such a fundcould be builtup overa periodof 10-15yearsfrom he Cen-tre as also fromother ources ike theEmployeesProvident und. The pro-posed Housing Fund can be operatedby a NationalHousingCorporationndthepurposes o which hefundwill beapplied may be

(i) to subscribe to capital issuesfromState Housing Boards;

(ii) to provide oansto StateGovern-ments to enable purchase ofshare capital in Apex HousingFinance Societies;

(iii)to

providerefinanceo scheduled

banks givingadvancesfor hous-ing;

(iv) to operatea mortgage nsurancesystem o securebank advances;and

(v) to provide oan assistance o ma-jor housingschemes.

In Latin Americancountries uchnationalhousing oan funds have beenoperatingwithfair success. In Mexicoespecially, he Banco JnterAmericanohas been operating revolving undof $ 5 millionwhich is used mainlyto providerefinanceo scheduled anks

which, under Mexican law. are re-quiredto earmark30 per centof theiradvancesto housingprogrammes.

Before such a fund is set up. theNational Credit Council will have torecognisethe 'credit gap' in housingand treat it as one of the prioritysectorsas has been done with regard

to agriculture,mall-scale ndustry,ndexports. It will also be necessary oamend the BankingAct. At the Statelevel, institutional arrangements illhave to be toned up. States whichhave not yet set up Housing Boardsshould do so to ensure hatsuch fundsas are available are operated n a non-lapseable, continuing asis, freed frombudgetary ncertaintiesnd administra-tive delays.

Thoughthe struggle o find homeand the peace, comfort nd indepen-dence it implies, s centralto humanexistence, verthe decadesof Indepen-dence we have procrastinatedn thematter, n some measurethismay bedue to the fact that any emphasis nthe urban,ndustrial cene is interpret-ed as unawarcness f the problems fthe villages.But lack of housing, nd

worse, ack of a housing nvironment,is fast crippling he metropolises ndmajorcities.Even in medium-s;zed ewtowns, like Durgapur,a fifthof thjpeople live in }h m ries or withoutminimum menities. We can continueto neglectthe problemonly by risk-ing orderly ocial change.

Social Change and the JointFamilyThe Causes ofResearch

BiasesGeorgeH Conklin

Changing ocial structures uringeconomicdevelopment re of great interest o a variety f disci-plines. Yet researchon the topic is oftenbiased by a set of unexamined ssumptions.

Familystructurend its relationto change in India has long been misinterpretedue to severalsocial myths ound n India and by biases of Western ocial thought. The actual familytoday has beenuncriticallyomparedwith n idealisedpast ignoring he biological imitsplaced on family tructure.

Evidence is presentedhere from surveyof 26 villages n ruralMysore to supportthe argumentthattheconcept of thedecliningointfamily nd the relatedmyththat children re not as well behavedtodayas in the past is not the property f any one caste, family or economic grouping. The generalnatureof thesebeliefs, long withWestern ocial theorys seen as thecausal agentfor n absenceofneces-saryresearch n social change nd thefamilyn India.

[Research for thispaper was conductedwhilethe author was a JuniorFellow of The AmericanInstitute f Indian Studies,Poona. The authoralso wishesto thank heDeputyDirector,nstitute f Eco-nomicResearch,Dharwar,forhis co-operationn the field-work.]

THE changingfamily s of academicinterest o many fieldsof inquiry nIndia. Family plannersare interestedin, among othertopics,fertility oten-tial or attitudes, ociologists n socialstructure,nthropologistsn kin, andeconomistsin labour utilisation, tc,while all are interested n changingfamily structures.Yet, while therehave been many studies in the pastyearswhichcollectdata on the family,

manyof these studies, speciallythosecollected for various purposes otherthan the studyof the familydirectly,oftencollect and interpretheir datawithoutdelvingvery deeply into thevarious biases and built-in onclusionswhich nfluence nd even form hetypeof questions sked about social changeand development. It is the purposeof thispaperto (1) exanrrnehe effectsof one of thesebiases,and (2) present

data froma held surveyto illustratethe widespread nature of severalassumptions bout the Indianfamily.

What happens to the traditionalfamily n an era of social changehasbeen the object of researchfor overa hundredyears. Approachesto thesubject vary by the emphasisof thediscipline nd the theoreticalperspec-tivesof the individual nvestigator.etin describing ny social structure,ll

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September , 1969 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY

Table I Incomeand FamilyOpinions(Per Cent)

S

ι 1 §2 s x

Children:same 42.8 43.2 37.7Childrenworse 57.2 56.8 62.3N-297N=248N = 146

investigatorsmust take into accountthe social culture-specificormsof thesocial institutionnder tudy, nd thendifferentiatehese norms from theactual practicewhichpeople make ofthesepatterns o form heir ocial life.The two neverforma simple one-to-one relationship, ut both must be

clearlyunderstood.The general ulturalnormsgoverning

familylife in India are quite well

known, nd need not be repeatedhereexcept briefly.The joint family inIndia is most often thought of as

comprising residential nitof two or

morecouples,usuallya father nd hismarried sons, plus the unmarried

daughters nd all the sons of the

marriage. Married brothers can, of

course, ive on togetherfter he deathof the father, ut this does not receivethesamemoral anction s notseparat-ing from livingfather.As Manu putit, "Either let them [the married

brothers]. . thus ive together r [get)

apart if each desire[to gain} spiritualmerit; orby separate iving heirmerit

increases,nd henceseparations meri-torious."1 ropertys viewedas shared

by male members f the house underMitakshara succession, though thewidowed mother has the right of

maintenancefrom bsr sons for her

lifetime.Under traditional law thefemalesdid not inheritproperty,ndthis is most likely still the practiceamongmostvillagers.2

Opposedto the joint family, ociolo-

giets, nthropologistsnd othershave

usually posted tho "Western"nuclear

family onsistingf father,mother ndtheir unmarried hildren.This familydoes not recognisethe extendedkin

ties,and is based on the loyaltyof aman to his wife,not of the son to hisfather.

Nearlyeverystudyrevealsthat thenuclearfamilyof father,motherandunmarried hildren s actually statis-

tically the most common residentialform n India. Fromthe earlyCensusaccounts on upto the present day,this has not failed to draw notice.We read of the supposeddisintegrationof the familyn India in manystudies,

but seldom is there videncepresentedother than the statisticalminority flarge households. Statements uch as"The urban family at presentis intransition owards the natural familycomprising he couple and their un-marriedchildren"3 re fairlycommon

in the literature.These views are misleadingbecause

in any social systemthere is alwaysa difference etweennorms and theiruses. No social institutions perhapsinfluencedmoredirectly y biology ndpopulation cycles than is the family.Its very potential ompositions deter-minedbythecycleofbirthsnd deaths,given the constancyof a culture inwhichthe births nd deathstake place.Differentulturesorganisethe surviv-ingmembers ifferently,lacingvariousdegreesof stresson kin lines,but no

societycan obviously stress lines of

kinshipwhich are impossible o obtainbiologically.The demographicituationof any populationthus clearlylimitsthe applicabilityof cultural norms.

In India today there is gatheringevidence that the statisticalminorityof joint families n the populationisreallya limitation f demography,otof changingculturalnorms.4 Severalstudies have shown that not only isfamily size constant over time, butalso that no change is seen in theurban family structure.While suchevidence xists, he idea thatthe nuclear

householdbeing present t all still re-presents violation f traditional ormsis quite common. A man, however,living in a nuclearfamilywith onlyhis wife and unmarried hildren s inviolation f thenormof not separatingfromhis livingfather nly fhis fatheris still alive. Otherwise, bviously,heis a culturally anctioned xception. fthis man's sons are not old enoughto have married, r if he has no sons,in his case the rnle does not apply atall. The number f such cases at anyone time n thepopulations a functiondirectly f the birthand death rates,

given the culture-specificorm. Onlywhen nuclear structurerepresentsaseparationof father nd sons wouldthere be an exception. Thus nuclear

households n India may be mostlystage n thecycleof jointfamilies,ndthe situation hereforemaywell be un-changedthrough he ages.

It is not the purpose of this paperto examine n detail thefactual videncenow available which lends supportto

the demographic rguments, ut onlyto mention hat,giventhepresent on-cern with development nd change, tis curiousthat in most of the variousstudiesdone on the family n India,such an urgentmethodologicalpointhas not been discussed,nor has theproper demographic evidence beencollected o proveor disprove hopoint.Whyhas scholarship evelopedsuch ablind spot? What really is happeningto the social structure f the familyduring conomicdevelopmentn India?

Failure to collect evidencenecessaryto answer the problemsbeing askedabout social change is not due to anaccident. There are several reasonswhich offergood explanations, eitherof whichalone would have been suffi-cientto deaden interestn thequestion,but which workingtogether eem tohave supplied a ready answer evenwithoutproper evidence.The firstoftheseassumptionsies in the natureofthesocial sciences s theyhavedevelop-ed in the West.The second lies in thetraditionalview of mankind and ofthefamilywhich s widelyheld n India.

The argumentmay now be summa-

rised brieflyfor purposes of clarityas follows Modern ocial and economictheory has almost uniformly ositedthat as an economy advances andbecomes less and less based on thetraditional illageand agriculturalinesof work, the extendedfamily systemseem in societiesall over the worldwill tend to break down. Coming toIndia to test the theory,researchersfindnot only a statisticalminority fjoint families, ut also find an almostuniversalbelief that the joint familyis declining. Thus finding apparentagreementwiththe preconceptions,he

unexaminedconclusion is drawn thatthe joint family n India is breakingdown. I believe that if the averageman,peasant,urbandweller, r educat«

Table 2 Family Typesand Opinions(Per Cent)

Sub- ^T . Transi- Joint. .TNuclear . , Joint. .

Naclear tional,

Childrensame 39.1 43.6 41.2 39.5Childrenworse 60.9 56.4 58.8 60.5

N=42 N=323 N= 175 Ν=152

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ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY September , 1969

Table 3 Caste and Family Opinions(Per Cent)

AyfMaratha OtheFln- Kurbar Sched- Muslims,Lingayat AyfMaratha . τ , , , Jains,

termediate Halmath, uled, Christians

Children ame 42.6 53.0 48.9 44.6 31.6 43.9Childrenworse 57.4 47.0 51.1 55.4 68.4 56.1N= 303 N= 49 N= 45 N=47 N=136 N=105

ed personhad believed he jointfamilynot to be declining r was even morepopular now than in the past, thenproper demographicevidence wouldhave been collected.But both lines ofreasoning oming togetherhave lulkdthe scholar, East and West, into afals-e ense of security.The result ofthis sense of securityhas been thatscholarstoo often assumed what theyshould have set out to

prove.I will

now presentmoredetailedévidencetosupport heabove points.

Those who are familiarwith eco-nomics and its application o sociolo-gy and anthropologyealise that thereßra many schools of thoughton thenatureof the relationshipsetween heeconomyand social structure.Thereare some who see the social worldas dependentfirst on th-eeconomicfunctionof the society,while othersbuilta cultural-deterministodel. Thedominantschools of structure-func-tionalismall build logical cases for

the nterrelationshipsetween culturalformand economic structurey stres-sing how closely the two function.Structure-functionalismounds rea-sonable.A largeresidentialointfamily,for example,would, on a purely lo-gical basis, sound difficulto main-tain if a son is workingn a modernindustryr for Governmentnd is con-stantly being shiftedfrom one placeto another. A son with a large in-come would also be quite independentof inheritedwealthif he chose to be,and thus have quite a bit of freedomof action. Urbanisation, tressingvo-luntaryassociations over traditionalvillage ties, would also weaken thesystemof joint livingas affection e-placed bindingcustom n holding re-latives together.But while there aremanyvarieties of opinion on the re-lationship of social structureto de-velopment,here eemsto be a remark-able agreement mong the variousschools of thoughton the future ofthe joint family in various parts oftheworld.Even those who view ideal-typesas very mportantn social ana-lysis also see an agreementbetween

the economic state of a societyandits familystructures.5

When such social theoryhas beenappliedto India, the situation as beenviewed by many quite simplistically.Instead of testing he theory, he ap-parentstatisticalminority f joint fa-milies is often nterpreteds indicat-ing a decline fromsome unexplainedtime in the past when families were

larger.Functionalism easons

thus,"If

one lived jointly the cost of main-tenance was much less than if onelived separately.Thereforeoint fami-lies tendedto be large".1»While it hasbeen stated that much evidencecouldhave been had to counteract uch ar-guments, nd much more could havebeen gathered, his has not been done.The highly improbablesituation hasdevelopedwherethe actual practiceofa norm today is being comparedtoa very idealised patternof the past,and the necessary differencesnter-pretedas a chang-e ver time. Tha

fact that no social system has everoperated n a biologicalvacuumseemsto have been largelyoverlooked.

Such a situationprobablywould nothave come about exceptforthe oiningof two trends of thought.The pre-dictionsof the social scientists it nice-ly with the myth common to bothIndia and theWest, e,that theyoungergenerations not as moralas the older.From Aristotleto the present, hismythhas been common o th-e olkloreof East and West.How general s thisconcept to society in India? Actuallyhow does a villagerview the social

nature of the family?The evidence presented here was

collectedfrom sample of householdsdrawn at random from 26 villages inDharwar Taluka, Dharwar District,Mysore State. Each head of a com-mensal householdwas asked a varietyof questions on his opinions aboutfamilies n general nd his in particular.The purposeof manyof the questionswas to elicitresponses romthe house-hold head of his views of the presentstate of the joint familyand of hisperceptionsof its past history.Onlythe householdsheaded by males were

asked to completethe opinion ques-tions. In total, over 750 householdswere nterviewedy sevenpersons romMarch to April,1969.

The results of the surveybear outthepredictionsuite well. Whenasked,"Do you think here re moreor fewerjoint families oday as in the past?",676 answered hat theyfelt therewerefewer joint familiestoday, and only16 said there

were more.While "thesame'' was recordedf suggested y theinformant, his was practicallyneversuggested. he fewexceptions 16) wereevenlydistributedmongthe caste andeconomicgroupings,howingno trends.It would thus appear that the mythof the declining oint family s indeeda virtualstereotypen ruralareas.

Such a stereotypes not an isolatedcase, but is closely related to otheropinions.To examine a little further,the heads of household were asked,"Do you thinkchildren oday are aswell behaved as in the past?v This

questionfounda good majority f 58.4per cent believing hildrenwere morepoorlybehaved,while minorityf 41.6per dent believedthat thingshad re-mainedprettymuchhesame N = 694).The pictureof the "good old times"seemswell established,ven in relationto children.

To bear out thepredictionhat theseviews are a generalfolk myth, t isstill necessary to show that theseopinionsare not the property f anyone caste, economicor familygroup-ing,and are thus indeedgen-eralo thesociety.Tests were therefore erform-

ed and the resultsappear below.income groupswere formedby use

of a scale of 20 items7) to getaroundthe difficultyf -estimatingncomes.43.9 per cent of the entire amplewas

Table 4 Caste and Family Opinions(Per Cent)

Scheduled All Others

Children ame 31.6 44.4Childrenworse 68.4 55.6

N=136 N= 549

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September , 1969 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY

classified s "low" in income,35.6 percent as "medium",nd 20.5 percentas"high" N = 756). The resultsof theclassification f income with opinionsofchildrenppear n Table 1, and showno significantssociationbetween in-comeand opinion, singthechi2test t

the .05 level.Family types are given with their

relation o child behaviour n Table 2.The original28 family ypeswere col-lapsed down to four for purposesofanalysis. Sub-nuclearconsists of uni-member amilies, hosenuclear familieswho lack one parent, nd othercom-binationsof singlerelatives ivingto-gether.Nuclear is definedas father,motherand their unmarried hildren,while transitional onsists of nuclearhouseholdsplus any other single rela-tives.Most commonhere s the widow-ed mother f thehead, oint forms helast categorywithtwo or morerelatedcouples and any of theirchildren ndrelations.Again,there s no significantrelationshipt the .05 level shownbet-ween family ypesand opinions boutchildren,using the chi2 test.

Lastly, the relationof opiniontocastemaybe considered ingayats ormthe largestnumberof households.Theother caste groupswere brokendownas far as possiblewithout eavingtoofew n each cell foranalysis.Brahmins,formingnlya total of 10 out of theentire ample,were eftoutdue to their

small number n the rural areas. Theresultsappear in Table 3.Table 3 reveals hatScheduledCastes

are perhaps lightlymoreof the beliefthat children re a little worse todaythan is true of the othercastes. Thedifferencesetweencastes are not yetsignificantt the .05 level when allcastes are considered ogether. ollaps-ing down the categories o ScheduledCastes are compared gainstall others,and thus reducing he degreesof free-dom,the result s significantt the .01levelusingthechi2test.Table 4 showsthe results.t does notseemstrangehat

the lowest membersof societywouldfeel that thingsare now even a littleworse than is believedby the highercastes.ThoughMarathas ppearto havea differentattern, nalysis n a two-by-two able still reveals the differenceis not significant. hus the variationhere mustbe attributedo low samplesize.

Our preconceptions nd theoreticalframework,ither explicitly tated orsimply ssumed, hapethetypeofworkundertaken,s well as the typeof datacollected. n thefield f family esearchin India, a coming togetherof two

biases has resultedn a comparison f 1the actual presentwith an ideal past iwithout ttention eing paid to collect- :ing data on the prime opic, e, actual ichange and agreement etweennorms !and action in the living patternsof '.the family.Anthropologistsn intensive ]

village studieshave collected in great ιdetail the culturalnorms, nd for the ιreasons ndicated re usuallypredisposedto view the joint family s in a state :of decline.Yet, would this idea havebeen so widely unresearched f theaverage villager uestionedhad feltthefamilyndeedwas notdeclining?Wouldsuch a positionhave been held so longif the social myththat childrenarenot as well behaved today as in thepast (and by inferenceerhapsdraggingdown the joint family)had not beenheld in the village,or if it had beenmore common in any one economicor caste grouping?This paper suggeststhat it is just the widespreadbelief nthedeclining ractice f traditionirres-pective f actual practice) hathas leadto the ack of research n thequestion.If either Westerntheoryhad beendifferent,r the view that the familywas not declininghad been commonto the village,or that theview of theyounger generation s "going to thedogs'* had been the property f anyone social group,thenquestionsmighthave been raised earlier. The chancemeetingof all these factors has lead

to a dearth of knowledge f socialchange and developmentn relation othe familytoday.

This paper does not attempt toevaluate what evidence thereis onwhether r not the joint family s oris not declining n actual practiceasthe culturallysanctioned iving unit.The very paucity of this information,though, s no accident, ut can be seento be closelyrelated o severalhistoricaltrends n scholarship nd village life.It is hoped that once these socialmyths,both Indian and Western, rebroughtto the surfaceand examined

they will no longer hold powerover the social investigator, ho will

thenbe free to view the joint familyin India as a social and biologicalreality,not as an idealised past withan actual present.Mountingevidenceshowsthat the extentof jointness nIndia may well be up to its demo-

graphic potential. There is probably

therefore considerable egreeofagree-mentbetweenthe culturalnormsandthe practice of joint living - thisshouldnot be obscuredbecause of theissues indicated n this discussion.

Notes

1 Quoted in Kapadia, Κ Μ: "Marri-age and Family n India", London,OxfordUniversity ress, 1966, ρ221.

2 The survey eferredo in thispaperturnedup so few cases that thequestion could not be analysed.

3 Mukerjee, R, arid Singh, B:

"Social Profilesof a Metropolis",1962, ρ 37.4 See for examplethe evidencepre-

sentedby Orensteinn: Orenstein,H: "The Recent History of theJointFamily in India", in SocialProblems, pring1961,ν 8, pp 341-50; and Orenstein, and MichaelMicklin: "SomeAspectsof Methodin the Study of the Indian JointFamily, Part II", an unpublishedpaper presentedn 1966 at the an-nual meetingof The AssociationforAsian Studies n New York. Asummary f some of the evidencemay be seen in Shah, A M:"Changes n the IndianFamily", nEconomic and Political Weekly,

Volume III, Nos 1 and 2, 1968Annual Number,pp 127-134.5 Weber, Max: "General Economic

History",Glencoe,Free Press,1950.6 Derrett,J D M: "The Historyof

the Juridical Frameworkof theJoint Hindu Family", in Contri-butions o IndianSociology, olumeVI, December 1962, ρ 34.

7 The twentytem cale used to con-struct he income ndex s madeupof thefollowingtems brickhouse,tile or cementroof,separate tap,separatebatharea, separate atrine,house ownership,aluminium orstainless teelcooking essels, lock,radio, fan, kerosene stove, gasstove, bicycle, sewing machine,

telephone,teelcupboard, ableandchairs,wristwatch,motorcycle orcar.

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