1.5 GLOBALIZATION AND AFRICAN FAMILY
Globalization not only affects politics, economics, and religion, culture, etc., but also families, i.e., the nucleus of every society. Family is considered a basic cell of the society. All social and cultural practices find their connection with a notion of family, either supporting or distorting it. Family plays a crucial role in Africa. Mbiti says that “each person in African traditional life lives in or as a part of the family”. It is true in African culture because every new born child is linked to the tribe of father or mother. So, it less possible to find a child is being orphan. Relatives of the child accept it as part of their family. Kisembo asserts that “the family community was the fundamental element of the African, this basic sphere of action, through which he became integrated with the larger, human community… he always acted from within the sphere of the family”.
An African family is never understood as consisting of father, mother and child. It is more than that. It includes relatives to all degrees on both sides and also those who become members of the family by covenant and alliance. Therefore it is meaningless to consider it as an extended family than one big family.
In African tradition, the families are well rooted in God and creation. The life style of an individual is determined by his/her relation with God and his creation. Africans have a threefold understanding of family. They are living, dead and unborn.
Families are large, interconnected networks of kinship that frequently comprise entire communities. Furthermore, it is an Indigenous ideology that the extended family must take responsibility for a child if they are orphaned or if their biological parents are unable to do so. This is exactly what happens in the book, the only difference being that they are not even extended family. Everyone is a stranger
Often families were separated too for the same reason or were unfamiliar with their relatives. Like Douglass, who has two sisters and one brother but didn’t have much of a relationship with them due to being separated with their mother from such a young age. Family was whom you work and struggled with, they were the ones who were your brothers and
With any culture, knowing where you come from and your family is a critical aspect when defining identity. The word ‘family’ has a range of uses among Noongar people. Family can denote to the children of the person speaking. Family can even refer to a large kin group from which the kin network is enlisted to as ‘our lot’, or ‘mob’ or ‘that part of the family’. Noongar families are different from the Western ‘nuclear family’ so commonly perceived in our western episteme.
When the Europeans began their invasion of the Americas, the Cherokees were an agricultural people whose villages could be found throughout the American Southeast. Cherokee families were based on matrilineal clans. Matrilineal clans are extended family groups with names, tradition, and oral history. Membership in each clan is through the mother: you belong to your mother’s clan. To be without a clan was to be without human identity.
The history of African American’s family structure during slavery which were every member of a family was sold to individual owners. Family structure is important to develop and cultivate in the African American culture. The tradition of hospitality in the southern African American culture implies the cultural values of the principles of the Christian faith. Everyone should show respect toward authority figures, parents, elders, and others.
Family gives everyone the love and support needed to have more meaning in life. Every family does not have to be connected by blood. Family can be created by caring strongly for one another. Ishmael Beah had a big family that consisted of his birth parents, two brothers and his friend Talloi. During the war, Ishmael was separated from his family.
Thomas, Deborah and MKC. 2013. Globalization and Race, in Annual Reviews I- Introduction Main point: In the past two decades, anthropologists have put much of their focus on globalization.
Cherokee sense of family is also quite different from European family structure. European styles uses direct blood connections, Cherokee uses clan.
Families have many different ways they could be defined. I would describe my family as being blended. My brother has a different father than me, and he is still considered family. This aspect is important in my concept of family because even if I do not talk to them everyday, I still have this connection where they will support the decisions that I want to make even if it is not an opinion that everyone agrees with. On the contrary, there is definitely diversity by having a blended family, especially since they have been a part of most of my life.
The family can be defined as ‘any combination of two or more persons who are bound together by ties of mutual consent, birth and/or adoption and who, together, accept responsibility for the care and maintenance of group members through procreation or adoption, the socialisation of children and social control of members’ (UN, cited in McDonald 2003:80). However, the ‘family’ is
The role and function of the family in society is fundamental. Indeed, family is the basic and natural unit of society. Being the building block of society, family represents the most important social group that can influence individuals' development. The lack or the instability of a traditional family structure can have deep impacts on individuals' growth and well being. The importance of the role of the family is emphasized in three of the works that we have studied this semester, namely Things Fall Apart, Tartuffe and The Narrative of The Life of Frederic Douglass.
The attachment that each member has with each other shows how much they value each other. African Americans of the time banded together in organizations similar to this, creating a brand for themselves. These institutions set forward their own principles that each brother or sister followed. People clung to these to an extent where they manipulated their own actions to follow them. The gravity at which family is valued during the time period truly consumed most people.
“Family” is a hard word to create a concrete definition for. If one were to ask three random people on the street, it is likely they will receive three completely different answers to defining a family. The textbook definition of family according to the etymology dictionary is: “Origin in early 15c. “servants of a household” from Latin familia “family servants, domestics collectively, the servants in a household.” The traditional dictionary describes family in a more narrow fashion stating, “a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not.”
According to Dictionary.com, family means a group of persons who form a household under one head, including parents, children, and servants. According to Google family means, all the descendants of a common ancestor. As one can see, there are many different meanings to family. To me family means support, dysfunctional, love, and friendships. Family is the most important influence on a child’s life.
Family Family is one of the greatest gift and blessing from the Lord. Without family you can not feel love, care , satisfaction and happiness. They are the most treasured blessing that no one can take away from us. It is also like a fragile thing you consider as the most precious gem in your whole life. Family is a basic unit in the society traditionally consisting of parents and children.