Jane Ribbens McCarthy

The powerful relational language of ‘family’: togetherness, belonging and personhood

This article examines the notion of ‘family’ to consider how it may be understood in peoples everyday lives. Certain recurrent and powerful motifs are apparent, notably themes of togetherness and belonging, in the context of a unit that the person can be ‘part of’. At the same time, there may be important variations in the meanings given to individuality and family, evoking differing understandings of the self and personhood. I consider these ideas further through globally relevant but variable cultural themes of autonomy and relationality, suggesting the term ‘social person’ as a heuristic device to distinguish the sense of ‘close-knit selves’ that may be involved in some understandings of personhood. I argue that this version of personhood may be powerfully expressed through ‘family’ meanings, with a significance which can be at least provisionally mapped along lines of inequality and disadvantage within and between societies around the world. These forms of connectedness may be hard to grasp through those theoretical and methodological frameworks which emphasize the (relational) individual. I argue that, in affluent English speaking societies, 1 there may be little alternative to the language of ‘family’ for expressing such forms of relationality and connection.

‘They all look as if they're coping, but I'm not’: The Relational Power/lessness of ‘Youth’ in Responding to Experiences of Bereavement

Experience of significant bereavement is reported by the majority of young people in contemporary western societies, but it receives little attention from mainstream services or academics, and this marginality is paralleled in young peoples everyday bereavement experiences. Existing academic and professional work concerned with children and young peoples experiences of bereavement largely centres on cognitive understandings of death, and individual intra-psychic processes and responses in the context of relevant ‘developmental tasks’. And yet some writers suggest that the key feature of young peoples experiences of bereavement is their relative powerlessness, rather than any particularities of cognition or affective responses. At the same time, the meanings that young people themselves attribute to their experiences may be crucial to any explanations of ‘risk’ for negative ‘outcomes’ that may be associated with bereavement. Furthermore, as exemplified by new case studies discussed in the paper, it is c...Experience of significant bereavement is reported by the majority of young people in contemporary western societies, but it receives little attention from mainstream services or academics, and this marginality is paralleled in young peoples everyday bereavement experiences. Existing academic and professional work concerned with children and young peoples experiences of bereavement largely centres on cognitive understandings of death, and individual intra-psychic processes and responses in the context of relevant ‘developmental tasks’. And yet some writers suggest that the key feature of young peoples experiences of bereavement is their relative powerlessness, rather than any particularities of cognition or affective responses. At the same time, the meanings that young people themselves attribute to their experiences may be crucial to any explanations of ‘risk’ for negative ‘outcomes’ that may be associated with bereavement. Furthermore, as exemplified by new case studies discussed in the paper, it is clear that young people are active agents in their family and peer group contexts. This article offers a discussion of bereavement in the context of ‘youth’ as a relational and institutionalised social status, and explores some theoretical issues potentially raised by the themes of death and bereavement in the context of youth studies generally.

Embodied Relationality and Caring after Death

We explore contested meanings around care and relationality through the under-explored case of caring after death, throwing the relational significance of ‘bodies’ into sharp relief. While the dominant social imaginary and forms of knowledge production in many affluent western societies take death to signify an absolute loss of the other in the demise of their physical body, important implications follow from recognising that embodied relational experience can continue after death. Drawing on a model of embodied relational care encompassing a ‘me’, a ‘you’ and an ‘us’, we argue that after death ‘me’ and ‘us’ remain (though changed) while crucial dimensions of ‘you’ persist too. In unravelling the binary divide between living and dead bodies, other related dichotomies of mind/body, self/other, internal/external, and nature/social are also called into question, extending debates concerning relationality and openness between living bodies. Through an exploration of autobiographical accounts and empirical research, we argue that embodied relationality expresses how connectedness is lived out after death in material practices and felt experiences.

Interpreting ‘grief’ in Senegal: language, emotions and cross-cultural translation in a francophone African context

Abstract This article reflects on the profound complexities of translating and interpreting ‘grief’, and emotions and responses to death more broadly, in multilingual, cross-cultural contexts. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in urban Senegal, West Africa, we discuss the exchange of meanings surrounding grief and death through language, including the process of translation, in its broadest sense, between multiple languages (Wolof, French, English). Our experiences demonstrate the crucial importance of involving interpreters and field researchers throughout the research process, to gain fundamental insight into the cultural nuances of indigenous languages and how these are translated and potentially re-framed in the process. We reflect on our iterative process of discussing emerging interpretations with participants in follow-up workshops and with our interpreter. This approach helped shed light on language use surrounding ‘grief’ and how this is bound up with wider socio-cultural norms which make particular emotions surrounding death and experiences/meanings of death and bereavement possible and ‘speak-able’. Our research calls for greater recognition in death and bereavement studies of the cultural specificity of conceptual frameworks developed in minority European socio-linguistic contexts and demonstrates the need for greater engagement with theoretical, empirical and methodological insights gained in diverse cultural contexts in the Majority world.

Producing emotionally sensed knowledge? Reflexivity and emotions in researching responses to death

Abstract This paper reflects on the methodological complexities of producing emotionally-sensed knowledge about responses to family deaths in urban Senegal. Through engaging in ‘uncomfortable reflexivity’, we critically explore the multiple positionings of the research team comprised of UK, Senegalese and Burkinabé researchers and those of participants in Senegal and interrogate our own cultural assumptions. We explore the emotional labour of the research process from an ethic of care perspective and reflect on how our multiple positionings and emotions influence the production and interpretation of the data, particularly exemplified through our differing responses to diverse meanings of ‘family’ and religious refrains. We show how our approach of ‘uncomfortable reflexivity’ helps to reveal the work of emotions in research, thereby producing ‘emotionally sensed knowledge’ about responses to death and contributing to the cross-cultural study of emotions.

Understanding family meanings: a reflective text

Family Studies is a key area of policy, professional and personal debate. Perhaps precisely because of this, teaching texts have struggled with how to approach this area, which is both ‘familiar’ and also contentious and value laden. This innovative and reflective book deals with such dilemmas head-on, through its focus on family meanings in diverse contexts in order to enhance our understanding of everyday social lives and professional practices. Drawing on extracts and research by leading authors in the field of family studies, Understanding Family Meanings provides the reader with an overview of the basic concepts and theories related to families using readings with questions and analysis to encourage reflection and learning. The book centralises the question what is ‘family’ and focuses on family meanings as the key underpinnings for academic study and professional training. It explores the shifting and subtle ways in which individuals, researchers, policy-makers and professionals make sense of the idea of ‘family’ and in doing so considers issues of power, inequality and values which are integral to any understanding of family meanings. Audio discussions with leading authorities in the field are also available online to enhance the content and key concepts of the book. It therefore provides an excellent foundation for any module in family studies, as well as all professional training modules that include attention to families and close relationships, and for further learning in the area of families and relationships.

Past/Present/Future: Time and the Meaning of Change in the ‘Family’

Flux is an essential characteristic of ‘family’ life. The inevitable passage of chronological time, characterized by constantly evolving circumstances and life experiences, mean that change and transition are major features of every individual’s life. But such themes are most commonly associated with ‘youth’ as a particular phase of life and studied within the context of the move from childhood to adulthood. Studies tend to focus exclusively on the young person’s experience of change, underestimating the significance of the embedded, relational nature of transitions to adulthood. Consideration of the young person’s social context in the form of ‘family’ relationships is generally confined to a psychological analysis of variables influencing developmental outcomes (Gillies et al. 1999). Yet, such a one-dimensional focus on young people as the sole object of change risks obscuring the important turning points and continuities experienced by other ‘family’ members, concurrent with the process of ‘growing up’.

Step-fathering: comparing policy and everyday experience in Britain and Sweden

Step-fathering is becoming increasingly common in contemporary western societies, yet it has received little research attention from either social policy or sociological perspectives. In this article, we draw on our empirical studies of step-families in Britain and Sweden to argue that social context is important in shaping step-fathers’ understandings of their position. Policy and legislation in these countries emphasise the importance of ascribed, biological parenthood, marginalising step-parents. There are, however, notable class differences in both our British and Swedish samples concerning whether step-fathers see their relationship to their step-children as the same as biological fathering, supplementary to it, or as disengaged from fathering. The analysis also reveals that policies simultaneously emphasise achieved contemporary involved fathering alongside promoting ascribed biological fatherhood. Such policies contain a contradiction for step-fathers’ understandings of their everyday relationships with their step- children.

Troubling children's families: who's troubled and why? Approaches to inter-cultural dialogue

This article draws on multidisciplinary perspectives to consider the need and the possibilities for inter-cultural dialogue concerning families that may be seen by some to be ‘troubling’. Starting from the premise that ‘troubles’ are a ‘normal’ part of children’s family lives, we consider the boundary between ‘normal’ troubles and troubles that are troubling (whether to family members or others). Such troubling families potentially indicate an intervention to prevent harm to less powerful family members (notably children). On what basis can such decisions be made in children’s family lives, how can this question be answered across diverse cultural contexts, and are all answers inevitably subject to uncertainty? Such questions arguably reframe and broaden existing debates about ‘child maltreatment’ across diverse cultural contexts. Beyond recognizing power dynamics, material inequalities, and historical and contemporary colonialism, we argue that attempts to answer the question on an empirical basis risk a form of neo-colonialism, since values inevitably permeate research and knowledge claims. We briefly exemplify such difficulties, examining psychological studies of childrearing in China and the application of neuroscience to early childhood interventions in the United Kingdom. Turning to issues of values and moral relativism, we also question the possibility of an objective moral standard that avoids cultural imperialism but ask whether cultural relativism is the only alternative position available. Here, we briefly explore other possibilities in the space between ‘facile’ universalism and ‘lazy’ relativism. Such approaches bring into focus core philosophical and cultural questions about the possibilities for ‘happiness’, and for what it means to be a ‘person’, living in the social world. Throughout, we centralize theoretical and conceptual issues, drawing on the work of the philosopher François Jullien to recognize the immense complexities inter-cultural dialogue entails in terms of language and communication.

Childhood, children, and family lives in China

In this chapter we bring into focus those aspects of family lives in China that are concerned with children’s family relationships, and the ways in which such issues are part and parcel of the broader institutionalisation of childhood. We draw on theoretical frameworks in the sociology of childhood and childhood studies (e.g., Prout, 2004; Qvortrup, 2000; Smith and Greene, 2014). Since these theoretical perspectives have developed predominantly in Anglophone literature, some researchers have considered their relevance to, and utility for, China and Chinese childhoods (Goh, 2011; Miao, 2013; Wang YY, 2011, 2014a, 2014b; Zheng, 2012a, 2012b; Ribbens McCarthy et al., 2017). In engaging with existing theories, and applying them to, Chinese children’s family lives, we seek to go beyond any tendency to just ‘add in the missing children’ to existing discussions (Kesby et al., 2006: 186), and give consideration to a variety of cultural and local contexts that characterise China and illuminate why it is necessary to decentre universalist thinking (Jullien, 2008/2014)