School Of Social SciencesSociology of the FamilyWestern Sydney University Unit Code: 400510.2
Discipline: SOCIOLOGY
Student Contribution Band: 1
Level: 2
Credit Points: 10
Unit Enrolment Restrictions
Successful completion of 40 credit points or 101336 - Introduction to Sociology.
About this Unit
In this unit we will critically examine sociological perspectives on the family, building on the approaches and theories introduced to you in your first semester of sociology study. The familiarity of family life will be thrown into question and students will be asked to examine their beliefs, decode the meaning, and discard the myths of the ‘naturalness’ of family life. The family will be viewed as part of the wider social structure, its constitution shaped by history, economic factors, and cultural systems.
The unit will primarily focus on Australia, but we will also consider material from other Western and non-Western societies in order to demonstrate the historical specificity of the nuclear family and the many different forms of the family as they occur in different cultural contexts.