Irene Levin

Living Apart Together: A New Family Form

Traditionally, marriage has been the social institution for couples that have been together for a long period. Some decades ago non-marital cohabitation began to appear in the western world as a new social institution. ‘Living apart together’ – the LAT relationship – is a more recent phenomenon, which seems to have the potential of becoming the third stage in the process of the social transformation of intimacy. In contrast to couples in ‘commuting marriages’, who have one main household in common, couples living in LAT relationships have one household each. This article presents data on the frequency of LAT relationships in Sweden and Norway, and explores the variation which exists within LAT relationships. The article argues that the establishment of LAT relationships as a social institution requires the prior establishment of cohabitation as a social institution.

Social work and sociology: historical separation and current challenges

This special issue represents a continuation of work done in recent years in exploring the relationships between social work and sociology. Part of this work has been done at conferences around the world where historical as well as contemporary issues were discussed and where theoretical as well as practical areas became the focus of attention. During the World Congress of Sociology in Gothenburg in 2010, a group of persons interested in the relationships between social work and sociology gathered to discuss common areas of interest. Those participating in this gathering and others showing interest in its discussions shared educational backgrounds in either sociology or social work. The participants at this initial get-together included sociologists teaching in social work programmes and social workers teaching in sociology programmes and most of them published in journals known to ‘belong’ to the other disciplines. Common to all participants at this meeting was the feeling that their professional belonging was not solely related to one or the other of the disciplines. With this special issue, we wish to continue the discussion of how this relationship between these two disciplines can be looked upon today without deleting the historical experiences. Once upon a time, social work and sociology were one discipline and in this issue, we ask the question: What has happened with the division into two? Both disciplines focus on social problems, social structure, social integration and how individuals respond to and live within cultural and structural constraints. Today, both disciplines face a possibility of losing some of their most important characteristics to individualising trends, the disappearance of the importance of ‘the social’ and pressure towards solely evidence-based knowledge. Our aim here is not only to attend to disciplinary similarities and differences, but also to cast light on areas that have been in the shadows of the mainstream narrative. In addition, we hope that the articles in this special issue will raise new questions and will contribute to continuing discussions between and within each discipline. By defining one discipline as theoretical and the other as practical, shared achievements together with instances of interdisciplinary knowledge production become easily hidden or invisible. We hope that the articles will shed light on these, answer questions about interdisciplinary relationships and challenge predefined assumptions. First, let us look in the rear-view mirror and see what history can tell about this relationship.

Parejas sin domesticidad común

With this work refute the idea that couples just live together in marriage or cohabitation. Relations lat (Living Apart Together) • can be considered now as an alternative to traditional living arrangements. Shall present quantitative and qualitative information on the lat board relations and the possibilities that this phenomenon becomes an institution really social institutions such as marriage and cohabitation.

The theoretical foundation of social case work

Social work is often defined as a practical field with limited theoretical contributions as opposed to sociology that is perceived as theoretical. As a consequence, social work’s own researchers often tend to search outside their profession to find its scientific basis. Hence, social work’s own theoretical contributions have often been overlooked, diminished or even perceived as non-existent. In this article, we turn to one of social work’s founding mothers, Mary Richmond (1861–1928) and one of her most important texts, What is Social Case Work? (1922). Our aim is to show the theoretical contribution of her text, and thereby to highlight certain theoretical developments within social work itself. Through a hermeneutically close reading, we challenge some traditional and dominant interpretations positioning Richmond’s texts within pathological and individualistic perspectives. We demonstrate how the two key concepts ‘personality’ and ‘man and his environment’, together with the model of social case work, reflect a dynamic view of social interactions in which the individual is inextricably bound together with its social surroundings.