Charlotte Aull Davies

Families in transition : social change, family formation and kin relationships

This book addresses the complexity of family change. It draws on evidence from two linked studies, one carried out in the 1960s and the other in the early years of the 21st century, to analyse the specific ways in which family lives have changed and how they have been affected by the major structural and cultural changes of the second half of the twentieth century. The book shows that, while there has undeniably been change, there is a surprising degree of continuity in family practices. It casts doubt on claims that families have been subject to a process of dramatic change and provides an alternative account which is based on careful analysis of empirical data. The book presents a unique opportunity to chart the nature of social change in a particular locality over the last 50 years; includes discussions of social and cultural variations in family life, focusing on younger as well as older generations; explores not only what happens within family-households but also what happens within networks of kin across different households and shows the way changing patterns of employment affect kinship networks and how geographical mobility co-exists with the maintenance of strong kinship ties. The findings will be of interest to students of sociology, social anthropology, social policy, womens studies, gender studies and human geography at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

My Family and Other Animals: Pets as Kin

The title of this paper gives a family-like character to animals and an animal-like character to the idea of family. It emphasises the close, family and friend-like relationships that can exist between human beings and the animals who share their domestic space. This type of relationship between humans and their pets emerged during a study of families and kinship and in this paper we draw on 193 in-depth interviews conducted in four contrasting areas of a South Wales city. Although our interview schedules did not explicitly ask about animals, a significant proportion of our interviewees spontaneously included their pets as part of their kinship networks. There were two points during the interview when the significance of pets became apparent: when interviewees were asked who counted as family and when they were asked to complete a network diagram. In studies of kinship it has been said that pets are substitutes for children, providing emotional satisfaction. Here we explore some of the other ways in which animals are constructed as kin and discuss whether such constructions confound the (socially constructed) boundary between nature and culture.

Studying the particular, illuminating the general: community studies and community in Wales

This article is inspired by Frankenbergs (1990) claim that the best way to understand general social processes is through the study of their manifestation in the details of social life. We look at how studies of community that have been carried out in Wales, particularly Village on the Border and The Family and Social Change (Rosser and Harris, 1965), have accomplished this link between the particular and the general. We then consider the findings of our own research, which is a restudy of Rosser and Harris, showing how they provide a counterbalance to grand theoretical claims about the transformations that are affecting community and family life. We find that although factors such as increasing geographical mobility and womens greater participation in paid work affect peoples experiences of community, people continue to place a high value on what they call communities. Such communities are spoken about and defined in different ways but all are based on local social networks of kin, neighbours and friends and/or locally-based associations. They are also gendered, with women playing a key role at both informal and formal levels of community. We suggest that the apparent resilience of local social relations evident in our research may help to explain the continued cultural and political resonance of community in Wales.

The Piano in the Parlour: Methodological Issues in the Conduct of a Restudy

Although re-studies are relatively rare in sociological research, they can be very valuable resources for understanding social change. However, they also raise methodological questions about the validity of comparison given the inevitable changes in both social and analytical contexts during the period between the original and the re- study. This paper considers such methodological issues with reference to a major restudy in the area of family and household research. By looking at some of the details of research design in this re-study, we argue that reflexive consideration of relevant changes makes possible an examined and modified research design that retains much of the original and alters the remainder in ways that still allow for meaningful comparison.