Reading History Sideways
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€32.50
1800s
1900s
20th century
A01=Arland Thornton
academic
aid programs
america
american
Author_Arland Thornton
Category=JHBK
colonialism
communication
data
developmental paradigm
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
european
fallacious
fallacy
families
family
fertility
gender roles
historical
history
life
marriage
methods
public policy
relationships
research
scholarly
sexuality
society
sociologist
sociology
united states
usa
western
Product details
- ISBN 9780226104461
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 17 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 02 Aug 2013
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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European and American scholars from the eighteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries thought that all societies passed through the same developmental stages, from primitive to advanced. Implicit in this developmental paradigm - one that has affected generations of thought-was the assumption that one could "read history sideways." That is, one could see what the earlier stages of a modern Western society looked like by examining contemporaneous so-called primitive societies in other parts of the world. In Reading History Sideways, Arland Thornton demonstrates how this approach, though long since discredited, has permeated Western ideas about the family. Further, its domination of social science for centuries caused the misinterpretation of Western trends in family, marriage, fertility, and parent-child relations. Revisiting the "developmental fallacy," Thornton traces its central role in changes in the Western world, from marriage to gender roles to adolescent sexuality. Through public policies, aid programs, and colonialism, it continues to reshape families in non-Western societies as well.
Arland Thornton is professor of sociology and a research professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Marriage and Cohabitation and Social Change and the Family in Taiwan, both also published by the University of Chicago Press.
