Culture in Action: Family Life, Emotion, and Male Dominance in Banaras, India

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State University of New York Press, Jul 1, 1995 - Social Science - 232 pages
In Culture in Action Derne explores the interconnections between male dominance, joint-family living, Indian emotional life, and a cultural focus on group pressures. Derne emphasizes the Hindu focus on the social group, but shows that men often distance themselves from group culture by marrying for love, separating from their parents, or embracing closeness with their wives.

Derne's suggestion that Indian men's cultural focus on the group limits men's and women's strategies for breaking cultural norms offers a new approach to understanding how culture constrains. He shows how the child-rearing practices and emotional tensions associated with joint-family living shape Indians' group emphasis. This approach suggests that the Hindu focus on the group is intimately connected with male dominance.
 

Contents

True Believers Cowed Conformers
105
Family Structure Ethnopsychology
155
Fieldwork in Urban India
175
Notes
181
Bibliography
199
Index
221
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About the author (1995)

Steve Derne is Assistant Professor of Sociology at State University of New York, College at Geneseo. He received the Society for Psychological Anthropology's 1991 Stirling Award for his work on family structure and self-conceptions.

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