Change, Barriers to Change, and Contradictions in the Arab Village Family¹

While changes in the Arab village in Israel have been extensive over the last few decades, they have not been sufficiently radical to transform family structure completely. This article considers processes of structural change and of changes in interpersonal relations within the Arab family and tries to explain the meaning of such changes when the structure nevertheless maintains a semblance of formal continuity. Formalist and equilibrium interpretations are inadequate since the only changes they consider are those of form. A historical and dialectical approach, however, takes into consideration, among other things, the direction of the processes of structural change; the accumulated effects of change; contradictions between the existing economic, political, and cultural forces that have created the structure over time and the forces present but not brought to bear on the structure or manipulated so as to contain it; and the awareness people have of the forces involved.