Family clubs and kinship theory

Since WWII the spread of industrialization has relentlessly accelerated, and urbanization, even in such outposts as Papua New Guinea (cf. Rew 1974), is an increasingly important social phenomenon. For the first time in world history, as Goode (1963a:238) observes, the focus of industrialization and urbanization affect all human societies. An outgrowth of these often cataclysmic changes in the world's cultures is a deepened interest and concern by social scientists in the relationship between the combined forces of urbanization and industrialization and the family. More broadly stated (cf. Fried 1967), the problem is an evolutionary one of examining the connections between economic systems and kinship systems.