Kinship and Modernization in Developing Societies: The Emergence of Instrumentalized Kinship
Author(s)
Al-Haj, Majid
Abstract
The effect of modernization on kinship structure and the extended family in developing societies is a controversial issue. For a long time this field of research was dominated by the “convergence approach”, which postulates that “as countries are industrialized, they increasingly resemble highly developed societies in their family, kinship ties and other basic institutional arrangements.” The social forces of modernization affect every known society, thus creating a remarkable phenomenon in the development of similar patterns of family behavior and values among much of the world’s population, even if the family systems in different areas of the world move from very different starting points. Modernization and kinship systems are inimical to each other in many respects. Therefore, kinship structure is either a victim or a barrier of modernization, since extended kinship relationships cannot be adapted to modern industrialized society.
