Families and Households - Postmodernism Flashcards
1
Q
What is modernity?
A
Modernity - modern societies are based around industrialisation (increase in science, tech, politics) and a more rational view on the world than in earlier times which are characterised by superstition and religion.
Sociology emerges to make sense of these new modern times.
- Perspectives such as functionalist and the New Right have been described as ‘modernist’; they see modern society as having a fixed, clear-cut and predictable structure. The best family type is nuclear and it slots into this structure and helping to maintain it by performing certain essential functions.
2
Q
The time periods of society
A
Pre-Industrial - (pre-1850)
- Extended families
- Rural economy
- Agricultural
- Predictable
- Slow pace of growth
- Low social mobility
- Low geographical mobility
Modernity (19th C)
- Stable
- Unified
- Growth
- Urbanisation
- Industrialisation
- Religious
- Growing social mobility
- Nuclear family
Post-Modernity (Now)
- Fragmentation
- Disintegration
- Instability
- Fluidity
- Diversity
- Unpredictable
- Secularisation
- Globalisation
3
Q
The two main characteristics of postmodern society
A
- Diversity and fragmentation
Society is increasingly fragmented, with a broad diversity of subcultures rather than one shared culture. People create their identity from a wide range of choices, such as youth subcultures, sexual preferences and social movements such as environmentalism. - Rapid social change
New technology such as the internet, email and electronic communication have transformed our lives by dissolving barriers of time and space, transforming patterns of work and leisure and accelerated pace of change making life less predictable.
As a result of these social changes, family life has become very diverse and there is no longer one dominant family type (such as the nuclear family). This means that it is no longer possible to make generalisations about society in the same way that modernist theorists such as Parsons or Marx did in the past.
4
Q
The impact of globalisation on family
A
- Trade - growth of transnational companies
Less family business, increased job market, need to travel, increased cultural capital (Bourdieu) which increases social mobility, need for geographic mobility (hard to have an extended family-loss of kinship), broadening of experiences, less manufacturing/industry based employment = crisis of masculinity! - Travel - time-space compression
Easy geographic mobility, quicker journey times allowing for LAT working away from home, cultural capital, social mobility, increased experiences which develop culture (e.g. food, music, fashion). Increase in inequality - M/C and U/C are more likely to travel and therefore inequality grows as W/C can’t afford it - Technology - electronic economy
Better connectivity but less socially integrated, decrease in good mental health and wellbeing, families can live apart but remain in touch which enables travel and LAT families. Better tech in the home enables women to explore careers outside the domestic sphere.
5
Q
Postmodernity and the family
A
- Declining importance of social structure; decline in gender roles and class based identities
- No dominant belief system; secularisation and decline of science and rationality
- Post-Fordist consumer economy; people identify themselves through consumption not production
- Post-modern society really ‘takes off’ in the 1970s
- Greater diversity of family forms
- Greater individual freedom
- Greater uncertainty, unpredictability, fear and ‘risk consciousness’
6
Q
Postmodern theories of family
A
- Anthony Giddens - the pure relationship; relationships only last as long as they work for both people, confluent love and high divorce
- Sociology should focus on exploring diversity and difference, like the theory of Weeks’
- Reject metanarratives or grand theories like Functionalism and Marxism, as they think it is wrong to focus on the nuclear family as it is no longer the norm
- Judith Stacey - postmodern family is more chaotic, constantly changing with no set structure, with individuals being ‘free’ not just shaped by socialisation in the family
- Ulrich Beck - individualisation - people have to make up the rules of family life as they go - the negotiated family
- Life course is no longer predictable (Hareven 1978) - Once ‘compulsory’ and enforced by social norms (Levin 2004), there is now greater choice and freedom.
- Less of a typical family and weaker public moral code enable diversity
- Sociology of personal life becomes more relevant than sociology of family (rules are less strict, secularisation, feminism, reproductive technology, legislations, families of choice, geographical mobility
- Two key concepts - individualisation and confluent love/pure relationships
7
Q
Anthony Giddens - Definitions
A
Confluent love: active and conditional love; emotional intimacy between people, only lasts as long as it is meeting the needs of both partners (think the opposite of romantic happy ever after ‘forever’ love)
Pure relationships: one where a couple chooses to stay together because their emotional/sexual needs are met and each partner sufficiently benefits. Not together because of external pressures, social expectations or norms.
8
Q
Carol Smart - The sociology of family life
A
2007 - Argued that the early sociology of the family concentrates on white, heterosexual nuclear families in the West, with these ideas gradually changing to accommodate families of choice and households and thinking of family in terms of practises rather than structures and institutions. She is a interpretivist theorist.
- However, a lot of emphasis is still on those who are connected by marriage or blood and/or those in one household
- Smart believes that people no longer see their family life in this way, with interpersonal relationships between those we are not related to being as strong, if not stronger and more central, than family relations
9
Q
The main features of family life - Carol Smart
A
- the ‘personal’ is different from the ‘individual’
- Personal - a part of the social life which impacts closely on people and means much to them, involving aspects of life which evoke significant feelings
- People’s agency is always constrained by their relationships with others, drawing on the work of symbolic interactionist George Herbert Mead to emphasise the importance of interaction of people in understanding personal life
- This idea of personal life does not necessarily see kin as necessarily more important than friends and allows for the idea of families of choice
- It also incorporates relatively neglected areas of social life such as emotions, bodies and sexualty into the study of family and other personal relationships
- Subjective aspects of social life such as emotions and memories are particularly important to the sociology of personal life
10
Q
Core aspects of the study of personal life
A
- Memory - the more meaningful an event, the more likely it is to be remembered, and it often involves personal relationships. Emotions are closely related to family history, with families providing the context which influences what we remember and shared memory is an important part of connections between family members
- Biography - life history, the story of an individuals life is important in understanding personal life as well as providing an in-depth description for the researcher and help in understanding movement through the life course. It is particularly useful to study the biography of different family members to appreciate how the same memory is experienced differently
- Embeddedness - Experiences of individuals are made meaningful through being embedded in webs of relationships; more meaningful relationships are formed in close proximity
- Relationality - how people relate to each other, with the nature of relationships being more important than a position of a person in a family structure and that emotional relationships are not confined to kin
- Imaginary - concerned with how people’s relationships and memories exist as much in the imagination as reality (hardest to study)
11
Q
Love, commitment and emotions - Smart
A
- Feminists - patriarchal ideology that persuades women to accept the authority of men
- Beck - sceptical about the possibility of love in an individualised society
- Smart used data from a study she conducted which involved in-depth interviews with 54 same-sex couples about their civil partnerships or commitment ceremonies to discuss love, commitment and emotions
- 12 saw the process as a way of bringing their love to a higher level, 37 seeing it as a culmination of growing commitment, with these couples being less likely to talk directly about love and relied more on a shared history rather than their future relationship to give the ceremony meaning
- 3 of the couples saw the ceremony as primarily in terms of how it listed recognition and support from wider networks of friends and family
- This research demonstrated the importance of personal meanings and emotional attachments, along with the centrality of networks beyond the immediate family and people’s households
- Smart also discusses family secrets and family stories in her research as being another aspect of personal life
12
Q
Evaluation of Smart
A
- All her research demonstrates the importance of connections between people, known as the connectedness thesis - this shows the limitations of individualisation theories of Beck and Giddens, and Smart believes that looking at personal life provides a much more in-depth understanding of families, making them more effective explanations that those of generalised theories; individual lives and social change can be understood
- Chambers (2012) welcomed this approach, as it did not prioritize relationships based on family and marriage over other relationships which may be equally or more significant - gets away from nuclear families being considered the norm of the ideal and acknowledges the impact of small-scale qualitative research that values the importance of meanings
- The relatively narrow focus of the research based on this approach loses patterns of wider social change, sometimes focusing on relatively marginal aspects of personal life
13
Q
Judith Stacey Theories
A
- Believes the modern US family is dated and potentially oppressive institution; her work has focused on the family, queer theory, sexuality and gender
- Detailed research of families in Silicon Valley, California, Stacey suggests that the family has undergone a radical shift due to the changing economic structure causing poverty and unemployment - marriage has also been weakened as women reject patriarchal relationships
- This has caused a move towards blended families, same-sex couples, cohabiting couples and single parents - the ‘postmodern family’
- Stacey insists that because of this, the work structure needs to ensure equal pay and universal health care
- The economic role of the family has declined as intimacy and love has become more important, and despite the decline of marriage, this does not mean that individuals no longer form meaningful social connections but rather complex ties continue to be formed as a result of divorce and marriage
- Because traditional roles and legal/blood ties within the family are less relevant today, family members now have greater choice and have more experimental intimacy, arguing that homosexual/heterosexual binary is becoming less stable and is being replaced by a ‘queering’ of family relations
14
Q
Judith Stacey - cont.
A
- These new families are endeavouring to fully embrace change and diversity and forge more unconventional and egalitarian relationships; these ideas of Stacey correspond to the work ofWeeks and Dunne, in suggesting that same-sex families are at the forefront of creating more democratic and equal relationships
- They represent an ideal postmodern kinship for which traditional roles are less applicable
- Anthony Giddens - agrees with Stacey, suggesting the contemporary family forms bring greater equality to relationships and undermine stereotypes and traditional gender roles
- In contrast, recent British studies have revealed that in heterosexual couples, women are lagely responsible for housework - some question the extent to which same-sex relationships are more equal (Ristock - domestic abuse is prevalent amongst same-sex couples)
- Beck and Beck-Gernsheim - there are many difficulties associated with living detraditionalised life
15
Q
Jeffrey Weeks
A
- Very influential British writer on sexuality - views it as a social construct that is ideologically determined
- Inspired by McIntosh, he argues that industrialisation and urbanisation consolidated gender divisions and increased that stigma of male same-sex relations
- He examined how Victorian society used the new ‘sciences’ of psychology and sexology (used to pass sentence on homosexuals)
- The growing interest in classfying sexuality assumed that women were naturally sexually passive and men were naturally sexually active without evidence for these assumptions - anything that contradicted these ‘essentialist’ views (sexuality relfects biology) was often considered abnormal, with new ‘sciences’ upholding existing patriarchal ideas
- Weeks observes that there was increasing tendency to view the institutions of marriage as essential to the maintenance of a stable, healthy society, which came with a concern to regulate men’s natural ‘lustfulness’ be steering them towards marriage
