Family history and world history: from domestication to biopolitics

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139194662.010

9 - Family history and world history: from domestication to biopolitics

from Part I - Historiography, method, and themes

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015

Mary Jo Maynes and

Ann Waltner

Edited by

David Christian

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David Christian: Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney

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Summary

Two concepts that are helpful in making connections between the history of the family and global history are "domestication" and "biopolitics". In the contemporary world, biopolitical programs have become standard techniques of rule. Family relations have long played a role in accounts of human origins, but those accounts have been changing over the last several decades. The focus of recent work by social archaeologists on early child nurturance is of special interest for making connections between family history and the development of early human societies. Family life-cyclical practices such as burial produced material reminders of connections between ancestors and descendants, and thus past, present, and future, providing a link between family life and the production of cosmologies and eventually religious systems of thought. Trans-oceanic explorations of the fifteenth century widened the range of cross-cultural encounters. Domestic intimacies and family reorganization resulted from and helped to build early modern commercial networks and empires.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge World History , pp. 208 - 233

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139194662.010 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2015

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