Persistence, Continuity, and Change in the Jamaican Working-Class Family

Abstract

One of the most difficult prob lems facing the student of culture is that of deciding whether two corresponding pat terns, separated by time and/or space, are continuous, or whether they resemble each other purely by coincidence. The problem is quite familiar to students of cultural transmission and cultural change ( see Steward, 1972:88-92; Social Science Re search Council, 1954:973-1002; Heine- Geldern, 1968:169-173). Historians and sociologists concerned with social change in a general way, how ever, tend to overlook the extreme impor tance of this problem, operating, instead, within an implicitly dogmatic criterion of continuity. The object of this paper is to attempt to clarify this problem and to indicate its importance to all students of social and cul tural change. Toward this end, we propose to define and distinguish between three closely related concepts centering on the problem of correspondence, to establish reasonably rigorous criteria for using them, and finally, to indicate their importance by applying them to a case study of social change in the familial patterns of lower- class Jamaicans.

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