book chapter
West Indian family structure
University of Washington Press • Seattle • Published In 1962 • Pages: i-vii, 1-23, 125-311
By: Smith, M. G. (Michael Garfield).
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This source is a demographic study of household composition and patterns of sexual union in West Indian societies. The survey sample is comparative and includes rural and urban households on the islands of Carriacou, Grenada, and Jamaica. All those sampled are rural peasants or urban lower class. The author finds three types of family structure including: extra-residential sexual unions, consensual co-habitation (common-law marriage), and marriage. Individuals tend to cycle through these types as they age, however the urban areas of Grenville, Grenada and Kingston, Jamaica are considered to be more disorganized and, although all three forms coexist, they do not form a developmental series. The analysis integrates historical data from the period of slavery as well as comparative data on other Caribbean and African societies.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Composition of population
- Comparative evidence
- Urban and rural life
- Age stratification
- Gender status
- Marriage
- Family
- Grandparents and grandchildren
- Illegitimacy
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Jamaicans
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Middle America and the Caribbean
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Caribbean
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- book chapter
- EvaluationIn this alphanumeric code, the first part designates the type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on. The second part is a ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- Ethnologist-5
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Martin Malone ; 1976
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1955
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1804-1955
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Jamaica; Grenada; Grenville, Grenada; Kingston, Jamaica; Carriacou, Grenada; Nigeria
- NotesAdditional notes
- by M. G. Smith
- At head of title: The American Ethnological Society, Viola E. Garfield, editor; a monograph from the Research Institute for the Study of Man
- Extraresidential mating has been marked for Category 836. The statistical tables referred to in the text are located at the end of each chapter, on pp. 145-162, 181-197, and 226-242.Only the sections dealing with Jamaica have been processed for the Files. In the processed sections, material specifically on the other societies has been zeroed out, but where it is employed in comparison with the Jamaican data, it has been marked for Category 171.
- Only pages i-vii, 1-23, 125-311 have been processed for the Files
- Includes bibliographical references(p. 303-305)
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 61014502
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Family--West Indies, British