"Using a survey of a set of households in a village community in Moorea (Society Islands, French Polynesia), the author examines family transformations using a 'substantive' approach. Analysis of the resources of each household in the context of the recent opening up to the consumer society gives information on the evolution of incomes, the subsistence level, the building up of surpluses and the degree of 'equipment'. Analysis of the social form of households reveals the multiplicity of family types and variable cycles of transformation from one type to another. This information, which cuts across the social form and mode of management of the households, leads the author to identify five distinct types of household, each with a coherent model of operation. Far from observing a uniform evolution of the extended family towards the nuclear family, the author shows that the opposite evolution is just as possible. The plural, fluctuating nature of the family institution in Polynesia today is noted above all." (SUMMARY IN ENG)
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