Micro, Macro, and meso definitions

The argument

A macro approach would examine the relationship between a family and wider society. Macro sociologists will define a family by its impact on wider society. For example, Durkheim would argue that a family is a stabilizing force in wider society. A micro approach would look more closely at the power relations and dynamics within a family. They might deduce that a family is defined by the relationships between those within the family. A meso approach concerns itself with the sociology of mate selection. A meso-level approach may determine that a family is defined by the romantic relationship between two individuals.

Context

Depending on the sociological approach, the definition of a family will be difference.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The argument shows that different levels of analysis emphasise different aspects of family life, not that the definition of a family varies. Micro, macro and meso are distinctions of analytical scale, and all three descriptions offered can be readings of a single underlying object: Durkheim's claim that the family stabilises society is a claim about what families do, which the sibling position that families are defined by what they do captures as one definition rather than as a plurality of them. The examples are also not equally adequate, which undercuts the claim that it simply depends on the approach. Defining a family through the romantic relationship between two individuals — the meso example — excludes single-parent households, extended and multigenerational families, adoptive and fostering arrangements, and siblings raising each other, all of which the micro and macro descriptions include. That is not a different definition of the same term but a narrower and demonstrably inadequate one. And the position risks yielding no definition at all: if what counts as a family depended entirely on the approach taken, researchers using different levels could not be studying the same families, whereas in practice they compare findings across levels precisely because they take themselves to be describing one institution.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Durkheim's claim that the family stabilises society describes a function a definition might cite; it does not make "family" mean something different at the macro level. [Rejecting P2] The three levels differ in what they examine rather than in what counts as a family, and the meso example — a romantic bond between two individuals — excludes single-parent, extended, adoptive and sibling households, so the levels are not equally adequate definitions but one narrow and several broad ones.