LAMANNA, Mary Ann, EMILE DURKHEIM ON THE FAMILY. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 2002, 287 pp., $34.95 softcover, $74.95 hardcover.
The goal of this book is to present a comprehensive review of Emile Durkheim’s work on the family. Going beyond Emile Durkheim’s infamous remarks on women in his study of family life and suicide, Mary Ann Lamanna has sought out a wide range of sources in order to integrate Durkheim’s fragmentary writings on the family. Chapter topics include: Durkheim’s life and times; his evolutionary theory of the family; methodologies for studying the family; the relationship of kin, conjugal family and the state; the interior of the family; family policy; gender; and sexuality. The book concludes by reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of Durkheim’s sociology.
This book is erudite, well researched, and shows an evident love of the subject. The book is especially strong in presenting the historical and intellectual context of Durkheim’s work on the family. Despite her reservations about Durkheim’s work, especially his reluctance to endorse the equality of women, Lamanna clearly respects Durkheim’s intellectual ambitions and achievements. She conveys an image of Durkheim as moderate and liberal, someone who combined the roles of scientist and moralist. According to Lamanna, Durkheim’s views on gender are too complex to be contained in an antifeminist box. However, she also states that if feminism is defined as seeking increased autonomy for women, then Durkheim’s position was antifeminist. Lamanna takes the position that it was Durkheim’s systematic approach, rather than any patriarchal tendency, that accounts for his gender theory. His theory of structural differentiation and solidarity required an assumption of interdependence between men and women based on difference. Durkheim’s commitment to theoretical abstraction was stronger than his liberal political philosophy, and his liberal instinicts came up against barriers posed by his theory of the family. At the same time, Durkheim was definitely conservative on the question of divorce, which he thought undermined the security of marriage. Too great availability of divorce undercuts the antianomic function of marriage. Durkheim opposed divorce by mutual consent, but did not rule out divorce altogether.
In each chapter of the book, Lamanna outlines Durkheim’s theory of the family and she compares and contrasts it with more recent developments in family life and in family studies. For example, in the discussion of evolutionary theory, Lamanna shows the continuity between Durkheim’s approach and Parsonian structural functionalism. Less successful is the attempt to characterize Durkheim as a systems theorist. Some of the comparisons, such as that between Durkheim and conflict theory, are rather forced.
Lamanna states that she is surprised to find problems that we think of as novel being dealt with by Durkheim. For example, Durkheim engaged in discussion of policy issues, such as the availability of divorce, and he was interested in reviewing the literature on the outcomes for children in different family settings. However, there is no doubt that today Durkheim’s work suffers by comparison with the changes that have occurred since his time. What, for example, are we to make of Durkheim’s claim that the family is a social institution, in the face of increased cohabitation without legal marriage? It is true that cohabitation has come under increasing social regulation, but legal marriage remains more institutionalized. Should we think of families today as being more or less institutionalized, and if so where does this leave Durkheim’s conceptualization of the family as a social institution? Similarly, what do we make of Durkheim’s theory of evolutionary stages culminating in the conjugal family in an era when single parent families have become prevalent? Durkheim’s theory of stages is derived from his law of contraction, according to which the family circle becomes progressively smaller. Perhaps Durkheim has simply mistaken the end point of evolution, and we are evolving toward a family form that is smaller than the conjugal family. Lamanna has done an excellent job of reminding us of Durkheim’s wide- ranging mind, but it may be that his work is more important today for the questions it raises than for the answers that Durkheim provided.
Reviewed by: DAVID CHEAL*
* Department of Sociology, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 Canada
Copyright University of Calgary, Department of Sociology Winter 2005
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