Misconceiving the ‘Indian family’: the politics of family-based discourse

The idea of ‘the family’ or ‘the household’ as having fixed, clear boundaries and functions is a figment of the imagination. After over a century of family research in India the central sociological question that needs addressing is not what are the trends in family and household formation but what functions do definitions of family and household serve? Whose interests are advanced by particular definitions? What erasures are required to set a definition and what are their effects on public discourse, public policy and individual rights to and within households and families? Most importantly, do household definitions stigmatise and constrain lives while pulling the determinants of family and household relations out of the frame of analysis? If the answer is yes, then should definitions of family and household be seen as a key tool in the structural violence toolkit? At the heart of the issue raised here is the failure to acknowledge that definitions are cultural and cultures are political. Rather than being long established ways of being and thinking, cultures are a contingent negotiation, navigation and manufacturing of ideas underpinned by unequal power relations. This chapter makes an innovative contribution to family studies by examining the consequences of family definitions found in public and private discourse in India.