Here, There, Nowhere

Family as a basic unit of social structure reflects the dynamics of societal change on a micro level. This thesis aims to study the positive and negative affordances of modern communication (such as social media, SMS, facetime, and email) in comparison and contrast to traditional communication methods within family interactions. This research will investigate the interpersonal dynamics across generations, space and time through the insights of my own family ethnographic research. Moreover, the study seeks to examine the refractory impact of communication in relations to technological, political and cultural forces, and speculate from the existing knowledge on how future family complexes may mutate and evolve.