Researching Families and Communities

Social and Generational Change

Rosalind Edwards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781134090822
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Recent years have seen a concern with how family and community relationships have changed across the generations, whether for better or worse, and particularly how they have been affected by social and economic developments. But how can we think about and research the nature of the present in relation to the past and vice versa?

Researching Families and Communities: Social and Generational Change explores the concepts and perspectives that guide research and the methods used to explore change during the last half of the twentieth century and into the new millennium. It highlights the complexities of continuities alongside change, the importance of the perspectives that shape investigation, and the need to engage with situated data. This edited text includes contributions from experts in their field who:

• address these overarching trends
• explore the possibilities and practice of secondary analysis or replication studies, as well as longitudinal large scale data sets
• discuss varied aspects of family and community life, including sexuality, ethnicity, parenting resources, older people, intergenerational family life, solo living and many others.

This book will appeal to academics and students interested in family and community across a range of social science disciplines, and to those in the social research field.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Rosalind Edwards

Recent years have seen concerns expressed about the nature of transformations in family and community relationships, including how they are affected by and affect social and economic developments. But how can we think about and assess the nature of the present in relation to the past, and vice versa? What are the methodologies involved in enabling such assessments? This edited volume highlights an important area where knowledge can be contradictory and uncertain, in terms of the concepts employed to guide research and perspectives shaping understanding of family, community and generational change. Further, new methodologies are emerging alongside established ones in researching the topic.

This collection is organised around the two key themes of concepts and methodologies. Contributing authors look at these issues in relation to various aspects of family and community life over time, across generations. They are concerned, as Jeffrey Weeks neatly puts it in this volume, with ‘the historic present and living past’. Contributions run from those addressing concepts and understanding trends, through those exploring concepts and the possibilities and practice of ‘revisitation’ study, to those looking at concepts and longitudinal large-scale data sets.

The time period covered is the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. This span encompasses a number of important social shifts. These shifts include the collectivisation of life risks through to the creation of the modern welfare state, followed more recently by the individualisation of life risks through their increasing privatisation and marketisation. Large-scale immigration has led to a plurality of cultures and affiliations. Sex and reproduction were further unhooked with the introduction of the pill as a reliable birth control method. There has been increasing diversity and fluidity in family forms, not least through rising rates of divorce, cohabitation and lone parenthood. Challenges to established gender relations have been bolstered by increasing numbers of women, especially mothers, entering the labour force. And the period of childhood has been extended as young people remain in education and are economically dependent (Brannen et al. 2004; Lewis 2007; Wadsworth et al. 2003). While the substance of the chapters is framed within the British context, the considerations of concepts and methodologies in exploring change have a wider relevance beyond the nationally specific.

This collection begins with reflective pieces by Graham Crow on discernment of levels of change and continuity in relation to communities over time; David H. J. Morgan on the contemporary potential of concepts developed in classic community studies of the late 1950s and 1960s, such as boundaries and identities; Jeffrey Weeks on shifts in the ways sexuality has been regulated and experienced since the mid-1940s; and Harry Goulbourne on recurring themes in how the integration of minority ethnic communities and families has been understood since the late 1960s.

Following on these conceptual and trend overviews and critiques, this volume continues by looking at revisitation research, either in terms of revisiting and re-analysing original data or revisiting and replicating previous studies. Quite often the studies revisited were themselves conducted in the context of a sense of being on the cusp of social change. In terms of revisitation through re-analysis, Val Gillies explores the knotty methodological issue of context in secondary analysis of available in-depth data from studies conducted in the 1960s in order to trace shifts in parenting resources over time. Joanna Bornat and Gail Wilson discuss the practice of, and findings concerning discourses about family from, a re-analysis of oral history interviews about the development of geriatric practice before and after the establishment of the National Health Service collected in the early 1990s. In terms of revisitation through replication, Chris Phillipson, and Nickie Charles and colleagues reflect on the methodological issues they faced in conducting contemporary versions of classic studies (which were conducted during the late 1940s and 1950s, and the early 1960s, respectively), involving both quantitative and qualitative analyses, and their findings on older people and on intergenerational family life from these endeavours.

The focus on various sorts of ‘revisitation’ methodology as part of attempts to research change over generations is followed by pieces on large-scale statistical data sets specifically concerned with tracking change in individual and family life over time. Denise Hawkes reviews long-standing and new cohort studies, with a particular focus on the potential of the recent UK Millennium Cohort Study illustrated by the example of early motherhood; and Malcolm Williams and colleagues assess the strengths and weaknesses of working with large-scale longitudinal data sets, specifically looking at solo living from the early 1970s. Finally, Teresa Smith turns to the concepts and investigations underpinning policies in reviewing interactions and shifts between ideas of community and notions of local area in identification of problems and interventions in the preschool field from the 1960s on.

Background to the collection

Before elaborating on the chapter contributions in conceptual and methodological context in this introduction, it is important to note that a volume such as this cannot cover all possible ways of exploring social change over generations. This is especially the case given the recent burgeoning of interest in charting changes and continuities in family and community life. Notably – although there is discussion of a recent large-scale survey data set that will be charting changes into the future (the Millennium Cohort Study) – as the collection was being put together a new initiative in the field of qualitative longitudinal research began: the ‘Timescapes’ study. This multi-project study will shed light on the dynamics of personal relationships over the life course into the future. Various small-scale qualitative projects following individuals over extended periods of time also exist (see review in Holland et al. 2006).

Further, this collection is missing one contribution in particular. The majority of the chapters have been developed from presentations as part of a series of seminars that was held in 2005–6. The seminar series was organised by the Families & Social Capital ESRC Research Group at London South Bank University in collaboration with the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. One important contribution to the series came from Professor Dennis Marsden, who unfortunately was not able to develop his paper into a chapter because of ill health. He is one of Britain’s ‘pioneers’ of qualitative sociological research, conducting several classic studies in the 1960s and continuing to produce influential work into the new millennium (Thompson and Corti 2004).

Marsden’s seminar paper reflected on whether or not two of his classic studies, Education and the Working Class (Jackson and Marsden 1962) and Mothers Alone (Marsden 1973), could either be repeated or the original data re-analysed. He pointed out that a variety of changes have made it increasingly difficult to replicate these studies of social class bias in education and the poverty of lone mothers in their original form. For example, there are now fewer grammar schools (albeit alongside new forms of educational selection), greater geographical mobility, fewer intact families, changed social security arrangements, tighter official control on granting access for research, and so on. Nevertheless, he felt that official statistics about the contemporary situation underline the continuing need for sensitive qualitative research into the issues identified in the original studies. For example, continued class gradients in education mandate further research focusing on selectivity. Education and the Working Class found a group differentiated along lines such as ‘rough and respectable’, but also a ‘sunken middle class’, and evidence that middle-class culture was not opened up to working-class grammar school boys. Marsden argued that research on education has continued to point to the need for awareness of the role that certain kinds of cultural and social capital play in gaining access to privilege and the reinforcement of social exclusion. Selectivity now operates in different, often hidden, ways including streaming in schools and the operation of parental choice and middle-class cultural capital.

Turning to archived data from his classic studies, Marsden argued that, rather than providing a raw resource for the research community, the material is inevitably personal and produced in context. He felt that such archived data would perhaps be better understood with the help of a detailed commentary by the researchers involved, giving their account of the conception, context, processing, and production of the data for the final report. Interviews were not audio-recorded in the classic studies, so the archived material constitutes a three-level filter between the original individual accounts given during interviews, the data ‘recovered’ from the interviews, and the final publication. Finally, Marsden called for the reappearance of social class in policy as well as academic discussion, alongside greater government appreciation of small-scale qualitative studies.

Marsden’s discussion thus touched on recurring and common themes in the contributions to this edited collection. Such themes include issues of changing social and political context, as well as some crucial continuities, and the importance of acknowledging the perspectives that shape researching family, community, and generational change.

Family and community across generations

The definitions and meanings of ‘family’ and ‘community’ are contested, as is the relationship between them. The terms conceptually shift over time and in their understanding of the constitution of everyday life.

A functional concept of family puts an emphasis on the structure of families and the structure of the roles undertaken by its members, creating an adaptive fit between families and the societies in which they are located. Thus ‘family’ is about the production of new members of society, their socialisation into society’s culture, and their everyday maintenance – with some family forms, notably the nuclear family, seen as most fit for these responsibilities (see discussion in Charles and colleagues’ chapter). In contrast, alternative conceptions of family have recently been concerned not with a static category or structure, but with a more dynamic understanding of family as diverse in a complex and fluid society. Family is said to have become disassociated from prescribed kin relations and roles, and more associated with individualised and contingent personal, intimate relationships. People, it is argued, create their own sorts of relationships and commitments in the endlessly fluid form of what some have called ‘families of choice’, rather than following handed-down, unquestioned and permanent roles and obligations (e.g. Giddens 1992; Weeks et al. 2001).

A similar trajectory, from stasis to fluidity, is evident for the concept of ‘community’. Community as a body of people who are conscious of having something in common, leading to a sense of shared interests, identity, and solidarity, has traditionally been thought of as integrally situated in local geographical context. While this understanding of where community is located continues, there are also arguments that these local supports and homogeneous groups are eroding, marked by disruption and contingency. Community is said to have become ‘disembedded’ and lifted out of social relations in a particular location (e.g. Giddens 1990). Rather, the form of those social relations is now envisaged as fragmenting and proliferating into a variety of ‘symbolic’ or ‘imagined’ communities, personal communities of interest and attachment, and virtual communities (e.g. Anderson 1993; Bauman 1998; Cohen 1985).

Traditionally, there has been a close conceptual relationship between family-as-kinship and community-as-locality; families are part of the constitution of communities, and communities form a context for living family life. These interpenetrations provided a link between the individual and the larger social structures (see Driver and Martell 2002 on policy linkage). Classic community studies, such as those discussed by Crow and Morgan, and those revisited by Phillipson, are often interwoven with accounts of family life, and vice versa, as in the revisitation by Charles and colleagues. The recent unhooking of family from blood and law, and of community from locality, however, has problematised the relationship between the two – family may be tangential to what is considered ‘community’ in contemporary individualised and globalised society.

The concept of generation is also bound up in this, as change is often understood as the dynamics of the sequence of generations. As individual members of families move through the life course, are born, grow older and die, new families are formed and the communities of which they are part are socially reproduced. On the one hand, these generational dynamics are understood as a source of stability over time, in providing links between the past and present and the ‘handing down’ of social mores. On the other hand, they are viewed as a major engine of change over time as established and ‘handed down’ practices and values are revised and reshaped or overturned and ousted by new ones.

Perspectives on change and continuity

The idea of change over generations – rather than attention to continuity – has become a preoccupation of the contemporary focus on family and community life. Debates about families and communities are largely structured around the premise that social and economic changes have influenced and/or been driven by changes in the way people relate to each other, and that the state of families and communities are connected (Gillies 2003).

There are two dominant perspectives on such changes, both often citing the same data about families and communities, but with quite different implications. One perspective sees a breakdown of established social ties and cohesion (e.g. Coleman 1990; Davies 1993; Dennis and Erdos 1992; Etzioni 1993; Fevre 2000; Murray 1994; Putnam 1993, 2000). The other perspective suggests that greater diversity and plurality of populations and lifestyles generates new opportunities for democratic and reciprocal relations (e.g. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995, 2002; Giddens 1991, 1992; Stacey 1996; Weeks 1995; Weeks et al. 2001). The 1960s are often identified in both these perspectives as the historical point at which either decline or renewal began to take hold. Thus the field has become positioned around a somewhat polarised framework for understanding family, community, and generational change.

A third perspective, however, questions the extent of demise or regeneration in family and community life (e.g. Crow 2000; Jamieson 1998). There are arguments that a preoccupation with documenting change means that cyclical patterns are mistaken for linear transformations (Stanley 1992), and that social divisions cutting across families and communities may have been ‘disembedded’ but there is a form of continuity in that they then become ‘re-embedded’ in revised ways (Adkins 2002). Moreover, as indicated earlier, as concepts, both family and community may have quite different, or even contradictory, meanings within a given time period as well as across time (e.g. Anderson 1993). And notions of change usually speak to contemporary concerns, retelling the past in relation to the present, and constituting the present through differences between a remembered past and images of the future (Adam 2004; Zerubavel 2003).

Debates about linear progression, functionalist adaptation, turning points, or cycles of growth and decay have long characterised discussions of social change generally, and it is evident that whether or not change is identified is dependent on the standpoint of observation. The approaches taken in this volume, mainly focusing on looking back in order to understand the present, vividly illustrate the importance of aspect and context in making substantive judgements about the trajectory of family and community life across generations, integrally allied to the perspectives provided by the concepts and methodologies that researchers utilise.

Continuity alongside change is evident across and within the range of chapter contributions, and in turn this highlights the importance of the aspect of families and communities under consideration. For example, in looking at sexuality then it may be possible, as Weeks argues, to discern a world of new possibilities since the mid-1940s, albeit with some enduring ‘downsides’. When it comes to minority ethnic families ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Thinking about families and communities over time
• 3 Are community studies still ‘good to think with’?
• 4 Rewriting sexuality and history
• 5 Families in black and minority ethnic communities and social capital: past and continuing false prophecies in social studies
• 6 Secondary analysis in investigating family change: exploring substantive and conceptual questions
• 7 Recycling the evidence: different approaches to the re-analysis of elite life histories
• 8 The family and social change revisited
• 9 Capturing locality change: the family and community life of older people
• 10 The UK Millennium Cohort Study: the circumstances of early motherhood
• 11 Using longitudinal data to examine living alone in England and Wales: 1971 to 2001
• 12 From educational priority areas to area-based interventions: community, neighbourhood, and preschool