The Abolitionists: The Family and Marriage under Attack / Edition 1

by Ronald Fletcher

Overview

In The Abolitionists (a companion volume to The Shaking of the Foundations) Ronald Fletcher turns his attention to those critics who have advocated the abolition of the family. Blaming the strength of the family for all discontents, they see the family as the deeply entrenched last bastion of an exploitative capitalist society - an obstacle to social progress and a prop for patriarchy. These new critics have exerted a growing influence throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and this is the first book to subject them to a systematic critical appraisal. The Abolitionists is a controversial and impressive defence of the modern family shaped by a century and a half of humane reform.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415008754
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/01/1988
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction New and radical criticisms: a strange reversal; Chapter 1 ‘The source of all our discontents’: Edmund Leach; Chapter 2 The family as destroyer: Laing, Cooper and Esterson; Chapter 3 The abolition of the family: Marxism and the New Left; Chapter 4 The family as prison: The New Feminism; Chapter 5 An alternative to the family: The commune; Chapter 6 Conclusion;