What is Family? by Jaber F. Gubrium; James A. HolsteinReview by: Marjorie L. DeVaultContemporary Sociology, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Jul., 1991), pp. 623-624Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2071872 .

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REVIEWS 623

unpaid caregivers in the home setting and paid caregivers in both the home setting (day-care providers, midwives) and formal organizations (nursing homes, mental institu- tions). The book's final section contains three chapters that are less well integrated and pertain to "dual responsibilities," women with both informal and formal caregiving responsibilities and contexts combining infor- mal and formal caregivers.

While the introductory chapter by Abel and Nelson provides a thoughtful overview and good orientation to the text, the components, models, and modes of caring from a feminist perspective set forth in the second chapter by Fisher and Tronto bear little relationship to subsequent chapters. Although half of the remaining twelve chapters are revisions of previously published materials, their skillful incorporation into this volume provides a valuable resource for those seeking to under- stand the experiences of women as informal and formal caregivers.

Confessing Excess: Women and the Politics of Body Reduction, by CAROLE SPITZACK. Albany: SUNY Press, 1990. 200 pp. NPL cloth. ISBN: 0-7914-0271-1.

DIANE E. TAUB Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

Spitzack's study concerns the social and political meanings of women's body reduc- tion. The author counters statements from both prodiet biomedical professionals and rebellious antidiet experts with women's disclosures on body issues, including their confessions of excess. One of Spitzack's major arguments is that the antidiet position, despite its discouragement of adherence to the thinness norm, effectively advocates wom- en's appearance changes through such means as exercise and eating modifications. This irony is one of the many contradictions that become motifs of Spitzack's work. For example, she demonstrates that both attractive (thin) and unattractive (fat) women are scrutinized and objectified, the former for being vain and deceptive and the latter for not laboring to be acceptable.

Spitzack derived data from fifty open- ended interviews, conducted over five years, with female volunteers representing a fairly

broad range of demographic characteristics. Unfortunately, she provides no indication of respondents' ethnicity. Primary interview topics were cultural standards for female appearance, body alteration activities, and the influence of others (such as family, friends, and male romantic partners) on body percep- tion. Appearing extensively throughout the book, interview quotations and excerpts are quite illustrative and valuable.

In discussions of the cultural and medical connotations of body shape, overeating and obesity are depicted as deviance and disease, with dieting symbolizing a confession of wrongdoing. Individuals who fail to maintain their weight loss are guilty of "recidivism" to habits of overconsumption. Among Spitzack's substantive and methodological recommenda- tions are that women and men progress from objectification of the female body and inde- pendence to interdependence and reciprocity of involvement, and that women's experi- ences as a counterpart to the opinions of "experts" be legitimized as a source of knowing.

This work should be a stimulating and welcome addition to graduate courses in sociology, women's studies, psychology, and communications. Because Spitzack's writing is complex and sometimes esoteric, this text is not advisable for most undergraduate audiences.

Social Psychology, Socialization, and the Life Course: Aging, Family, Education, and Sexuality

What is Family? by JABER F. GUBRIUM and JAMES A. HOLSTEIN. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1990. 178 pp. $15.95 paper. ISBN: 0-87484-878-4.

MARJORIE L. DEVAULT Syracuse University

Family sociology, perhaps even more than most of the discipline's subfields, bears deep imprints of cultural assumptions that many researchers, like most others, accept as common sense. In this social constructionist approach to family studies, Gubrium and Holstein investigate the foundational assump- tions that many others take for granted.

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624 REVIEWS

Relying on a strategy based in ethnomethod- ology-they label it "listening in order to see" -the authors examine "family dis- course" in a variety of forms, ranging from face-to-face talk to institutional rhetoric about "family values." They argue that "family" is not merely, or even necessarily, a specific set of social relationships, but is produced through people's activities and their interpre- tations of those activities.

Gubrium and Holstein introduce the "pri- vate image" of the family in order to discuss and critique a complex of assumptions that pervades family discourse and much family scholarship. This most common way of "framing the facts" of family life includes three related ideas: that family is sharply bounded and distinct from nondomestic life (or, to use my students' favorite term, is "special"); that household is the locus for "genuine" family behavior; and that members of a family have privileged knowledge of its character. The authors take up each of these ideas in succeeding chapters, showing how the elements of the private image provide interactional resources with which family members and others build and shape social ties. They also discuss how understandings of family are embedded in institutional contexts and they consider family ideology as social control.

Lively, well-chosen data from several eth- nographic studies illustrate the authors' ap- proach. Gubrium and Holstein find and ana- lyze family discourse in their studies of nursing homes, a residential treatment center for emo- tionally disturbed children, a physical rehabil- itation hospital, support groups for family caregivers, and involuntary psychiatric com- mitment hearings. This strategy reveals as- pects of family life and organization missing from most household-based studies, focusing attention on the very consequential points of connection between families and the institu- tions outside their homes. These atypical data also work fruitfully against the tendency in family scholarship to treat family "troubles" as exceptional rather than ordinary.

Gubrium and Holstein explain their ideas clearly, in a style intended to make the book accessible to general readers and useful as a textbook. My undergraduate students find the book somewhat difficult, but I think they experience it as such because it does not read like a typical textbook: it develops a sustained

argument rather than surveying research results. Precisely because of its unique approach, the book supports teaching that makes the taken-for-granted visible as social process, and allows consideration of the complexity of family life as actually lived in particular settings. It would be particularly valuable for students in education and the human services, for whom examples would be especially relevant.

This book does not purport to provide complete coverage of family sociology. It neglects several key topics, including sexual- ity, gender in family relations, reproduction and parenting, and links between paid work and family life. Theoretically, as well, What is Family? begs for extension in several directions. Despite the authors' emphasis on process and diversity, they do not analyze gender, race, or class as significant structur- ing elements in family discourse, and while they stress the importance of "local cultures," they do not attend to cultures of ethnicity. Their discussion shares the uneasy tensions characteristic of social constructionist projects in general, with the analysis of interpretive autonomy occasionally running up against the intransigence of at least some material conditions. In addition, the heavy use of evidence from self-help groups has the effect of understating the coercive force of family ideology. Overall, however, the authors illustrate a stimulating direction for family analysis that looks beyond prevailing cultural beliefs.

The Mexican American Family: Tradition and Change, by NORMA WILLIAMS. Dix Hills, NY: General Hall, 1990. 170 pp. $34.95 cloth. $16.95 paper. ISBN: 0-930390-25-3.

DIANA TORREZ University of Arizona

The Hispanic population is not only the second largest ethnic group in the United States, it is also the fastest growing. As a result, it is estimated that by the year 2020 it will be the largest ethnic group in the country. Accompanying this rapid growth are signifi- cant changes in cultural traditions. Although many of these changes are particularly evident in the Mexican American family, few researchers have systematically documented

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