Family member engineers crucial uprising with energy (8)
I believe the answer is:
relative
'family' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'member engineers crucial uprising with energy' is the wordplay.
'member engineers' becomes 're' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'crucial' becomes 'vital' (I've seen this before).
'uprising' shows that the letters should be reversed in order.
'with' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'energy' becomes 'e' (physics symbol as in E=mce).
'vital' in reverse letter order is 'lativ'.
're'+'lativ'+'e'='RELATIVE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for relative that I've seen before include "Correspondent" , "Kinsman" , "Considered in proportion to something else" , "Corresponding" , "Grandad perhaps" .)