Urbanization, the Extended Family, and Kinship Ties in West Africa

Recent urban studies in western Europe and the United States have shown the continued importance of kinship ties, contrary to the hypothesis that they tend to disappear in the city. To test this hypothesis on different types of societies, an examination of research done in the West African cities of Brazzaville, Congo; Dakar, Senegal; Lagos, Nigeria; and Leopoldville and Stanleyville, The Congo, was made. It showed that here too kinship ties continued to exist. The extended family served as a source of shelter as well as providing for the economic, religious, legal and recreational needs of its urban members. T HE effect of urbanization upon extended family relations has been extensively investigated within the last 10 years. The starting point for many of these studies has been Wirth's analysis of urbanism as a way of life written in 1938. According to Wirth, the city is a social organization that substitutes secondary for primary group relationships. Though dependent on more people for the satisfactions of his wants, the urbanite, ullike his rural counterpart, is not dependenlt upo11 particular persons, and his dependence is limited to a "highly fractionalized" part of other persons' activities. Contacts are segmental and of secondary character; no group can claim the complete allegiance of the inclividual. The city's effect on the family, coisequently, is *to strip it to its bare essentials. The nuclear family of father, mother ancl children replaces the extended family. "The family as a unit of social life is emancipated from the larger kinship group characteristic of the country," so that relationships basecl *The preparation of this paper was carried out during the tenure of a predoctoral fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health, United States Public Health Service. The author is indebted to Dr. Reuben Hill for his critical reading of a previous draft of the paper. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.255 on Tue, 24 May 2016 06:13:23 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms URBANIZATION AND THE EXTENDED FAMILY 7 on the extended family disintegrate in the city.' Recent urban studies, however, have shown that kinship ties continue to exist. Using a sample representative of the Detroit area, Axelrod found interaction witlh relatives as manifested in friendship networks and mutual assistance to be important in all age and socioeconomic status groups.2 Greer's sample of two middle-level census tracts in Los Angeles indicated that 73 percent of the high urban families and 76 percent of the low urban families were a part of family friendship networks.8 The San Francisco study of Bell and Boat reported a similar finding. In their probability sample of adult males drawn from four census tracts representing different social types, six of ten men had a close friendship tie with at least one relative.4 Seventy-six percent of the low income and 84 percent of the high incomle respondents, in addition, expected assistance from relatives even for prolonged illnesses.5 Of the 195 parent-child relations Sussman studied in his New Haven research, 154 maintained mutual assistance patterns.8 This was a white, Protestant middle-class sample, but Young and Willmott found much the same thing in London with their working class sample.7 The same investigators' study of a middle-class London suburb showed that 25 percent of parents in their seventies lived with married children and the percent increased to 41 for those 80 and over.8 Childless couples also turned to the extended family in old age; 53 percent of those of pensionable age lived with relatives.9 In contrast to these results, Michel concluded that among the segment of the Parisian working class living in furnished hotels, that she studied, kinship ties were disintegrating.10 Data, therefore, collected from widely varying samples in such disparate cities as Detroit, London, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New Haven have not confirmed the disappearance of kinship ties in the urban milieu. Only in Paris did a study of a small part of the population appear to uphold the hypothesis. Relevant African studies provide comparative data from different societies on the fate of the extended family in the city. Some variation of the extended family appears in all the basic culture areas of Africa-Mediterranean littoral, Sahara Desert area, western and eastern Sudan, the West Coast, CentralSouthern and the East Horn, and the East African cattle area. In fact, the concept of the extended family itself developed from studies of African peoples. Life in the tribal villages follows a traditional pattern. The person is important only as he contributes to the extended family unit. In return he is given the security of not one but several fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles and grandparents. Such a social organization results in strong group solidarity with an attendant communal spirit. The purpose of this paper is to examine how this "powerful cementing framework" is affected by urbanization.11 The analysis will center on the Negro cities of West Africa.12 Their social organization differs to a considerable extent from that of European and United States cities. Another advantage in using these cities for compara1 Louis Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life," Americatn Joutnral of Sociology, 44 (July 1938), p. 21. ' Morris Axelrod, "Urban Structure and Social Participation," Americait Sociological Review, 21 (February 1956), p. 17. 'Scott Greer, "Urbanism Reconsidered," Anwrican Sociological Review, 21 (February 1956), p. 23. 'Wendell Bell and Marion D. Boat, "Urban Neighborhoods and Informal Social Relations," Amnerican Journal of Sociology, 62 (January. 1957), pp. 394, 396. 'Ibid., p. 396. 'Marvin B. Sussman, "The Help Pattern in the Middle Class Family," American Sociological Review, 18 (February 1953), p. 23. 'Michael Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London (Glencoe, Ill.: The. Free Press, 1957).. 'Peter Young and Michael Willmott, Family and Class. in a London Sutbuiirb (Londotn: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1960), p. 40. "Ibid., p. 51. 10 Andree Michel, Famille Induistrialisation Logement (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1959). 'Hugh H. Smythe, "Social Change in Africa," American Journtal of Econtomics anid Sociology, 19 (January 1960), p. 202. 'The Department of State classification system is used which includes the Congo and the Republic of the Congo in West Africa, as well as among others, Nigeria and the Mali Federation, consisting of Senegal and the Sudanese Republic. See G. Etzel Pearcy, Africa: Natiies atd Cotncepts (Washington, D. C.: Department of State Publication 7129, January 1961), p. 9. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.255 on Tue, 24 May 2016 06:13:23 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms