Band 3

This book wants to draw more attention to the fact of national and cultural differentiation within the field of family life. The form of comparison we chose takes serious the different historical tradition and specific sociocultural situation of countries in a globalized world, avoiding comparing different things on standardized categories. The common idea of the papers is to deal with new qualities of family life, in the semantic of the specific nation and to give us insights in the change of the family system within regional cultures and societies. So it comes out that it is not at all accidental that the issue of children is raised specifically in Europe, the issue of the elderly people is reported in the paper from Taiwan, and issues of changing family system generally in the countries in Eastern Europe which underwent a fundamental political change in the last decade. In the same way it is not surprising that the question of young adulthood is raised in countries where traditional family life cycle is destandardized. This exactly shows the cultural differences concerning the family. The order of the papers follows mainly the idea of life ages and generations, starting with children, ending with old age.
The papers in this book can lead to a fruitful dicussion in very different ways. First of all, they help to understand a specific aspect of family in a specific society. Secondly they highlight burning issues of a changing family system globally and thirdly they could be an input to a more theoretical and methodological discussion about international comparison. We let outstanding scholars report with their expertise about their own country thus change can be seen as cultural and regional specific reaction to globalization.

Johann Bacher, Germany / Martina Beham, Austria / James E Davis, USA / Martin Gomilschak, Austria / Carolyn Grasse-Bachman, USA / Max Haller, Austria / Daniel III Hanks, USA / Clare Holdsworth, UK / Franz Höllinger, Austria / Annette Kohlmann, Germany / Ivo Molný, Czech Republic / Bernhard Nauck, Germany / Rosemarie Nave-Herz, Germany / Barbara H. Settles, USA / Peter Somlai, Hungary / Olga Tóth, Hungary / Tone Schou Wetlesen, Norway / Liselotte Wilk, Austria / Chyi-in Wu, Taiwan / Chin-Chun Yi, Taiwan / Wei Zhangling, China