ABSTRACT
These five chapters suggest the expanding intellectual universe within which we live and the expanded context within which researchers on the family are newly challenged to operate. That universe includes anthropological relativism wherein the “traditional” western family is only one form among many (Stack and Burton, De Vos); the historicity of the contemporary family (Skolnick); the problematic reflexivity whereby we are confronted by the social consequences of our theories (Aerts); and the vast terrain of epistemological and ontological questions in which our traditional modes of inquiry (objectivist and positivist) has been questioned and assaulted (Hanson, De Vos). Thus the methods of our inquiry, the nature of our judgments and evaluations, and the societal consequences of our theories are in the process of acute and complex investigation.
