Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

460 Chapter 16
TABLE 16.5
Family History of Haitian Migrants to Miami
Marc Hughes &
Anna Lucie Charles (adopted Helen Valerie Number in
Year Jeanne (mother) (sister) (brother) son) (aunt) (cousins) Household
1968 1
1971 4
1975 5
1976 3
1978 * 4
1979 * 5
1982 * 4
SOURCE: S. M. Fjellman and H. Gladwin, ‘‘Haitian Family Patterns of Migration to South Florida’’ Human
Organization, Vol. 44, pp. 307, 1985. Reprinted with permission from the Society for Applied Anthropology.
shows the founding of the family by Jeanne. Jeanne’s father died in 1971, and
her mother, sister, and brother joined her in New York. Jeanne adopted Marc
in 1975, and in 1976 she and her mother moved with Marc to Miami. Lucie
and Charles remained together in New York. The two minus signs in the row
for 1976 indicate that Jeanne’s sister and brother were no longer part of the
household founded by Jeanne.
Two years later, in 1978, Lucie got married and Charles joined Jeanne’s
household in Miami. Also in 1978, Jeanne began saving money and applying
for visas to bring her cousins Hughes and Valerie to Miami. The asterisks
show that these two people are in the process of joining the household. In
1979, Anna’s sister, Helen joined the family, and in 1982 Charles went back
to New York to live again with Lucie.
There is a lot of information in this chart, but the detail is gone. We don’t
know why Jeanne went to the United States in 1968; we don’t know why
Charles left Jeanne’s household in 1976 or why he rejoined the group in 1978.
Fjellman and Gladwin present seven of these family history charts in their
article and they provide the historical detail in vignettes below each chart.
Their purpose in reducing all the historical detail to a set of pluses and
minuses, however, is to allow us to see the patterns of family growth, development,
and decay.
Presenting Results: Causal Flow Charts
Causal maps represent theories about how things work. They are visual
representations of ideas that emerge from studying data, seeing patterns, and