Globalization and the Family

Contents: 1. Introduction/Nazli Kibria. 2. Transnational family based social capital: remittances and the transformation of Cuba/Susan Eckstein. 3. Father presence in rural South Africa: historical changes and life-course patterns/Nicholas W. Townsend, Sangeetha Madhavan and Anita I. Garey. 4. 'As mother made it': the cosmopolitan Indian family, authentic food and the construction of cultural Utopia/Tulasi Srinivas. 5. Family reorganization in a context of legal uncertainty: Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants in the United States/Cecilia Menjivar. 6. Money and masculinity among low wage Vietnamese immigrants in transnational families/Hung Cam Thai. 7. The refugee "Family": child fostering and mobility among Sierra Leonean refugees/Lacey Andrews Gale. Index.

From the introduction: "Each of the chapters in this volume offers important insights into the family as a mediating structure of globalization. In their work on father presence in South Africa, Townsend, Madhavan and Garey describe the changing role of fathers in relation to the South African labor market and its emerging position in the global economy. And in a study of refugee families in Sierra Leone, Andrews notes the critical role played by children in how families cope with the dislocations of war and conflict. Children serve as cultural nodes for these families, serving to maintain a sense of cultural continuity and tradition for them. The theme of cultural transmission also runs through the paper by Srinivas on packaged food consumption among middle-class Indian families in Bangalore, India and in Boston, United States. She describes how food consumption in these families is grounded in a larger project of asserting and maintaining authentic "Indian-ness" in the face of the cultural challenges of globalization. The chapters in this volume, while certainly distinct in focus, all affirm the value and importance of a renewed focus on family in globalization studies."