Canadian Journal of Sociology Online September-October 2006
Arland Thornton's thesis "is that developmental ideas and frameworks have motivated and guided much of social-science research for centuries, influenced the actions of governments and international bodies, affected world history, and guided the motivations and behaviors of numerous individual actors around the world" (3). By developmental thinking, Thornton means the European belief that every society progresses through rigid stages (e.g., savagery, barbarism, civilization) and that Northwest European societies represent the apex of this invariant developmental arc. Thornton claims "developmental idealism" first appeared in the early Modern period and has influenced — perhaps structured — all social scientific theory about society and family for the past several centuries. Thornton believes this is a fallacious argument because he believes the developmental history created by Northwest Europeans never happened. Instead, supporters of the argument have utilized cross-cultural evidence ('reading history sideways') to create a fictitious history which remains current in academic, governmental, and cultural spheres throughout the world.
The book is divided into three sections. First, Thornton gives a general introduction to the field of developmental thinking about the family. Second, he argues the Northwestern European family did not develop from large extended and communal families and into small nuclear families as a consequence of the industrial revolution, but that the nuclear family has existed in Northwest European societies since at least the 13th century. Third, he suggests the fallacy of the development of families from extended to nuclear families was (and continues to be) utilized by the agents of Western culture to shape the constitution of families throughout the world since the nuclear family is now viewed as essential for modernist societies. Hence, for a nation state to claim to be 'developed' it must have as one of its central characteristics the presence and acceptance of nuclear families as a teleological necessity.
This is a large and ambitious project especially for a text of three hundred pages. Thornton's method is twofold. First, utilizing the tradition of the Cambridge historians of the family, Thornton seeks to establish an empirical history of the particularity of family functioning and structure in Northwestern Europe; the nuclear family did not develop because it was always characteristic of Northwest Europe. Second, Thornton gives an intellectual history of developmental theory, its dissemination throughout the world, and its effects on global family life.
Thornton utilizes the term "Northwest European" to make it clear he is not talking about Europe as a whole. Yet, the term is unsatisfactory because when he claims the Cambridge historians have "proven" the nuclear family has always existed for this area, he is actually referring to England and possibly northern France. The purported generalized individualism, gender equality, choice in marriage and so forth may be supported by Macfarlane, Laslett, and others for England, but it is by no means as straightforward for France or even elsewhere in the British Isles. Unfortunately, the size of the task Thornton has set for himself does not allow for the kind of subtlety and detail one finds in Flandrin for example. This lack of subtlety also leads to a conflation of terms. What is a family? For Thornton, the family is largely conflated with household. None of the varieties of meaning which Flandrin is careful to enunciate (and Laslett is aware of) are to be found in Thornton.
Further, using the term "reading history sideways" does not make the argument innovative. One can find it in Boas, and literature on "Third World" development and First Nations is littered with critiques of the developmental metaphor. For example, Harry Hawthorne was particularly scathing of the metaphor in his 1966 report to the federal government on the conditions of Canada's First Nations.
While Thornton is careful to acknowledge that developmental ideology is not the only ideology at play in history, he is given to large statements such as "developmental idealism has been one of the most powerful influences on the lives of ordinary people both in Northwest Europe and elsewhere around the world" (240-241). Yet, there is no convincing argument showing why this influence is so effective. For example, Marx is casually dismissed as yet another misguided developmental theorist, so no attention is paid to Marx's observation that the valorized nuclear family form was the bourgeois family form; able to paint itself as both normal and good. True, Thornton discusses the repression of alternative marital forms such as those of the Mormons and the Oneida community, but he does not address the larger question of why working class families were such a widespread concern for bourgeois reformers during the 19th and 20th century. If the nuclear family was prevalent prior to the industrial revolution, and if changes in families are capable of being motivating forces in history, as Thornton claims, why did the European working class family need so much intervention through tutelary and coercive mechanisms controlled by the newly ascendant middle class?
The lack of attention to class is symptomatic of the problems created by isolating the developmental thesis from other significant historical developments. Where, for example, is Elias and Foucault's concern with state formation and the decline of the warrior class? What role did the appearance of the scientific method play and how does this relate to the study and professionalizing of family advice? Where are the landed gentry enthusiastically building workhouses? Most surprisingly, where is developmental psychology? (It gets a sentence or two on page 15.) Thornton may wish to limit his study (as he claims) to only one ideological strand and its effects on family, but a book purporting to enlighten us on "world history" needs to describe how this 'ideal' interacts with other social conditions. Either that or it needs a more modest goal.
In the meantime, readers unfamiliar with the Cambridge historians' work will find the first half of the book a useful introduction to their general arguments. Readers seeking a broad treatment of the history and philosophy of developmentalism and its influence on European and global practices will find themselves disappointed. The argument is there to be made, but for the argument to be convincing it needs a much broader grounding in European epistemology and the disciplines and practices it engendered. It also needs a more sophisticated theoretical framework capable of supporting what amounts to a 'grand narrative' of families around the globe.
Gerald Cradock
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Windsor
http://www.cjsonline.ca/reviews/sideways.html
September 2006
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