National Forum: The Value System in the Algerian Family between Local Heritage and External Challenges Organized by the Laboratory of Anthropological Studies and Social Problems
The phenomenon of change is a natural occurrence in society, stemming from the adage: “No generation can be an absolute replica of its ancestors and their ways; hence, cultural changes and transformations happen constantly.” However, the novelty lies in what beset society at the end of the second millennium and the beginning of the third: a period of acute uncertainty about the future, as society began changing faster than ever before. These transformations constituted a crucial turning point in the lives of nations, making them realize, phase after phase, that they are entering an era whose changes and shifts defy much of one’s perception and comprehension.
In this context, Anthony Giddens illustrates the speed of change, stating: “… If the lifespan of human existence were calculated in hours per day, we would say that agriculture was born four minutes before midnight, civilizations three minutes before midnight, and modern civilizations developed thirty seconds before midnight. Yet, the changes that have occurred in human society generally during the last thirty seconds, in terms of volume, intensity, and type, are equivalent to what happened in the entirety of human history.”
The symbolic implication that can be drawn from this statement is that the transformations and changes impacting humanity and modern civilizations are progressing at an extremely rapid pace, to the extent that the change witnessed during the last thirty seconds of civilizational evolution is equivalent to the change in all of history.
This speed and radicality are bound to pose a series of challenges, especially value-based challenges, to the social institutions primarily responsible for producing and preserving the local family values that represent the local heritage and “constants”—allowing for flexibility in judging the concept of “constants” generally.
From some viewpoints, the giant shock absorber, “The Family,” has been deeply affected by the changes brought by globalization, the information revolution, and modernity. It began losing more of its capacity to produce family values in the face of the emergence of powerful and diverse sources of penetration that compete with it in this function. This is the duality that makes synthesis difficult: The Inherited vs. The External or Foreign.
The reason is that every society has a hierarchy where values are situated chronologically in a pyramid reflecting its preferences and philosophy of life. This relative positioning, where local social processes primarily play the significant role (the constant—relatively), is counterbalanced by the dominance or active participation of a cultural market that imposes its products through mechanisms that carry the modern, contemporary, and external (the variable), forming a necessary part of life.
The theoretical outcomes of these two processes are either:
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A new value synthesis where the old (inherited) and the contemporary (external) run side by side, forming an acceptable social and normative image of fusion.
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One digests the other, quantitatively and qualitatively.
The latter possibility, regardless of its outcomes, presents either a first scenario where it is impossible for the original or inherited element to find answers in isolation, or a second scenario where a modern society is formed whose value components are composed of the dominant element that exerts its capacity for control, management, and regulation.
Mentally, this element—“Family Values”—seems to exist in almost any society in terms of its quantity and its classification into preferred, desirable, undesirable, and disfavored. The difference appears to be in its hierarchical placement across an axis extending from the desirable to the undesirable, while taking into account the particularity and priority of preference, which differ according to the element of time, culture, religion, belief, and ethics.
These potential answers, and perhaps others, the way they occur and are reached, and the image that is intellectually and practically closest to reality, require deep study and analysis in a field where theorization is rare and a clear scientific vision to form a strategy for dealing with them is almost absent. These are the justifications for
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