Chapter 9 is about kinship and love.
Important
distributions are made within the family or an alliance of famlies.
Dowries, gifts, inheritances, alimony and mutual aid are all subject
to conventional rules that reflect deep, but not permanent,
understanding. They vary from place to place and historically. Such
rules do not encompass the social world, but mark off the first set of
boundaries within it.
The family is a
sphere of special relationships. Within the family, there is
considerable altruism and considerable inequality. The most radical
egalitarian proposal is the abolition of the family, such as children
being considered communal. Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist
Manifesto that communism will bring about the abolition of the
bourgeois family. In contrast, trade unionists and other reformers
wanted to “save” existing families, at least those of the working
class.
The distributive
principle of romantic love is free choice. Of course, that’s not
the only distributive principle for marriage. After all, there are
arranged marriages. Walzer calls parents tyrants if they try to use
their economic or political power to thwart the desires of their
children. It is sometimes called “emotional tyranny.”
If children are free
to love and marry as they please, there must be a social space for
their choices. The specific spaces vary from place to place and have
historically. In today’s Western world, the “date” is the most
common form of courtship. If the case of a promenade, it is a sort of
“market.”
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