Reading History Sideways - 9780226798608

The University of Chicago Press

Reading History SidewaysThe Fallacy and Enduring Impact of the Developmental Paradigm on Family Life\nAuthor(s): Arland Thornton\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: The University of Chicago Press, United States\nImprint: University of Chicago Press\nISBN-13: 9780226798608, 978-0226798608\nSynopsis\nEuropean and American scholars from the eighteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries thought that all societies passed through the same developmental stages, from primitive to advanced. Implicit in this developmental paradigm - one that has affected generations of thought on societal development - was the assumption that one could \""read history sideways.\"" That is, one could see what the earlier stages of a modern Western society looked like by examining contemporaneous so-called primitive societies in other parts of the world. In Reading History Sideways, leading family scholar Arland Thornton demonstrates how this approach, though long since discredited, has permeated Western ideas and val.