Emerald Handbook of Family and Social Change in the Global South

Aylin Akpınar is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Studies Faculty of Social Sciences at Linnaeus University, Sweden.Nawal H. Ammar is Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Rowan University, USA.

• Foreword: Southern Voices of Change and Their Formidable Challenges; Göran TherbornIntroduction: The Family as a Gendered Site of Continuity and Change; Nawal H. Ammar and Aylin AkpınarSection I. Dynamics within Gendered HouseholdsChapter 1. Social Capital and Meeting Household Needs: A Study of Male- and Female-Headed Households in Ghana; Albert Kpoor and Sylvia Esther GyanChapter 2. Determinants of Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture in Botswana: The Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI) Approach; Masa V. Motaung and Martin BosompemChapter 3. ‘Although Food is Not Always on the Table, I Feel Happy with My Family’. The Life Satisfaction among Mayan Families; Lukasz CzarneckiSection II. Understandings of Caregiving and Gendered AgencyChapter 4. The COVID-19 Border Closure as an Opportunity for New Gender Roles: Moroccan Women Trapped in the Spanish Enclave of Melilla; Lucía Granda, Rita Sobczyk, and Rosa M. Soriano-MirasChapter 5. Gendered Subjectivities of Care among Street Trading Women in Rural Venda: Negotiations and Resistance to Norms and Stereotypes; Pfarelo MatsilaChapter 6. Who Cares for the Carers of People with Disabilities? Stories, Solutions and a Model from South Asia; Mary Wickenden and Ruth PatilSection III. Changes and Challenges in Sexuality, Reproduction and Kinship PracticesChapter 7. Reproduction as a Form of Aspiration: Medicalised Childbirth and the Case of Chinese Birth Tourism in the United States and Canada (1980-2017); Brandon Folse, Arafaat A. Valiani, and Bo YangChapter 8. Redefining Adoptive Family Practices in Contemporary India; Sushri Sangita PuhanChapter 9. The Discursive Frontiers of ‘Sacred Familialism’ and Islamist Gender Nativism in Authoritarian Populist Politics in Turkey; Didem UnalChapter 10. Constructing Sexuality as Shame: Turkish Women’s Emotions in Marriage; Aylin AkpınarSection IV. Challenges in Heterosexual SystemsChapter 11. LGBTQ+- Headed Families in Brazil and Chile: An Examination of Policies, Social Initiatives and Social Challenges; Kate Luxion, Diego Castro, and Bruno de Brito SilvaChapter 12. LGBTQI+ Social Change in the Global South: Repositioning Resistance Risk, Equality and Wellbeing in Fiji; Mark Vicars, Ann Cheryl Armstrong, Peter Sipeli, John Tenamo Mānoa Erasito Teaiwa, Ratu Manoa Rokotavaga, and Mark Shaheel LalChapter 13. A Family with Fluid Boundaries and Possible Ruptures: An Ethnographic Study of a Transgender Parivar in South India; Nimisha JohnSection V. Domestic Worlds, Political Struggles: Gender at the Nexus of Family and StateChapter 14. Dismantling ‘Gender-Appropriate’ Scripts: Young Jordanians’ Practices of Creative Agency within Family Contexts; Ivana CosmanoChapter 15. Mundane Violence and Gender Politics: Young Women’s Narratives from Northern Nigeria; Máiréad Dunne, Dauda Moses, Safiya Adamu, and Barbara CrossouardChapter 16. Politics of Gender and Resistance in the Arabian Gulf: A Feminist Theological Reading; Jihan ZakarriyaChapter 17. Mothers’ and Daughters’ Relationships in the Aftermath of the Salvadoran Armed Conflict: A Strenuous Relationship; Paula Cuellar CuellarEpilogue – The Family as a Frontier of Hope: Gender, Agency, and Transformation in the Global South; Nawal H. Ammar and Aylin Akpınar

This edited volume offers a groundbreaking rethinking of the family as a dynamic, gendered site of both continuity and transformation across the Global South. Moving beyond Western-centric paradigms, it brings together rich case studies that illuminate how care, kinship, and resistance are negotiated under shifting social, political, and economic conditions. By centring relationality, collective survival, and feminist praxis from the South, the book expands the theoretical landscape of gender and family studies, offering an indispensable contribution to global feminist scholarship and to the ongoing redefinition of what constitutes family, power, and care.