A world view study of the Chinese family in Nairobi with specific reference to Dyad relationships

Abstract

A worldview approach in studying culture is one of the most effective ways of understanding a people whose culture is different from one's own. This study describes the contemporary Chinese family living in Nairobi. From that dimension, this thesis attempts to understand and describe the worldview of Chinese people. A qualitative research design employing ethnographic interview and participant observation was used to carry out the research. The findings indicated that the Chinese family living in Nairobi has significantly departed from the ideal traditional Chinese family values. Whereas such a traditional family would be held together by communal identity, today's family in Nairobi is deprived of such an identity by changes that have occurred in China and by the demands of modern life. This family is unique in that the individual still finds his or her identity by belonging within the unit of three family members comprised of father, mother and child. But the members of this family are all busy trying to be successful, such that other subsections of culture, namely economics and educational, have assumed a higher significance than the family substratum of the culture. As a result, Chinese people are becoming more individual than kin oriented.