To what extent has theory and research on families been successful in transcending the individual-society dualism?

The family can be seen as central to an individual’s social and psychological life. From the earliest inception of social science disciplines, the family has therefore become a much researched topic to study. As psychologists and sociologists attempted to establish their respective disciplines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ‘positivistic’ notions of the use of scientific principles of research and methodology became dominant, in order to gain credibility in academia against the established ‘hard’ sciences and humanities. This dualism between the subject disciplines aided the establishment of research into family life that often separated its individual and social aspects. Developing concurrently with positivist methodologies and the growing gap in individual-society dualisms, was the rise of dissenting voices to this dualism that recognised this tension in the production of knowledge and the lives people inhabited.