The female family core explored ethnosociologically

Abstract

Extended family households of South Asia distinguish their core female personnel as sexually active or inactive, junior or senior, and own or other. (i) Noting similar variables in the region's classical theories and elsewhere in its ethnography, and constructing from these a paradigm to assist fur ther questioning, this paper finds (ii) eight major societal qualities generated by the same paradigm, (iii) eight corresponding domestic role-types, (iv) a common female life-course through those role-types, (v) characteristic relations of worship complementing that female life-course, and (vi) diverse related perspectives on male—female differences. So many results from questioning with this one paradigm make the common and congruent female family core a likely source of the civilisation's diversity as well as of its underlying assumptions.