Rita Gouveia

Changing meanings of family in personal relationships

Personal relationships are today less dependent on marriage and blood ties, with commitments going far beyond the nuclear co-resident family to include kin, non-kin and ex-kin. The aim of this article is to examine the meanings of family bonds by exploring the changing boundaries between kinship ties and a wider array of affinities, in a Southern European country with a specific pathway (Portugal). The authors begin by analysing the ties which individuals consider as ‘family’ within their personal networks and describe the main types of family configurations. They then examine the determinants of including non-kin as ‘family’ and excluding kin from the family network. Findings reveal the salience of kinship ties, as well as greater fluidity in the social construction of family bonds, in particular through friendship. Structural, life stage and family variables are shaping factors, but relational effects, linked to the quality of the tie, are of particular importance.

The Conservation of Biodiversity in Protected Areas: Comparing the Presentation of Legal Innovations in the National and the Regional Press

Legal innovation is responsible for major transformations in societies. Taking the press as a mediator between the national and local levels, this article addresses the role it plays in the presentation of new laws governing protected areas. A content analysis comparing the representation in the national and the regional presses of both the Natura 2000 laws and the conservation of the Iberian lynx shows two distinct and pragmatic reconstructions of these themes. The national press is more aligned with sustainability goals, while overlooking the difficulties of implementing the law in concrete contexts. The regional press emphasizes the practical difficulties the laws create for the protected areas, using emotionally charged arguments. The conclusions discuss how a social psychology of legal innovation may be relevant to understanding the psychosocial processes involved in the progress of legal innovation and how identity and group processes are involved in the re-signification and contestation of laws.

Coresidence as a Mechanism of Relational Proximity: The Impact of Household Trajectories on the Diversification of Personal Networks

For a long time, the household unit—that is, the ‘menage’—has been a privileged doorway to study family and personal life (Laslett 1972; Wall 2005). Yet, the transformations of family arrangements associated with divorce, informal cohabitation, migration, and ageing alongside the pluralization of the life course have been challenging the heuristic potential of the household unit to capture family meanings and practices (Bonvalet and Lelievre 2013). More recent approaches (e.g., the configurational perspective) highlight the importance of focusing instead on the networks of meaningful relationships in which individuals are embedded in their everyday lives that can go beyond the limits of the household (Widmer 2010).

The Impact of Coresidence Trajectories on Personal Networks During Transition to Adulthood: A Comparative Perspective

Over the life course, individuals develop personal networks that provide essential resources, sporadically or on a daily basis, such as instrumental, emotional, and informational support. Those personal networks are composed of family (i.e., primary and extended kin) and nonfamily ties (i.e., friends, colleagues, acquaintances) (Pahl and Spencer 2004). The prominence of specific ties varies across the life course depending on life stages, transitions, and events. Following the linked-lives principles (Elder et al. 2003), these transitions trigger changes in household composition, promoting different types of relational interdependencies. The level of interdependence with some household members may have a cumulative effect by strengthening the bonds, whereas with others the effect may be more ephemeral and lead to the exclusion of such ties in current personal networks. Thus, coresidence trajectories, such as the experience of growing up in a two or one-parent family, leaving the parental home early or late, moving in with a partner or living alone, becoming a parent, divorcing, and other events, will differentially influence the composition of personal networks.

Changing Meanings of Family in Personal Relationships: A Comparative Perspective

Family relationships in late modernity are considered to be embedded in wider processes of closeness and commitment, which go beyond blood and alliance principles. The aim of this chapter is to identify who is perceived as family in personal relationships and to examine the overlap between personal configurations and family networks. Despite some blurring of ties, findings show that there continue to be fairly clear boundaries between kin and non-kin ties in the predominant meanings of family. The salience of close kin ties emerges in all three countries, as well as the focus on long-lasting friendship; but there are country-specific aspects with regard to the categories and number of ties imbued with family meaning, the degree of overlap, and the types of family network.

Understanding Personal Networks as Social Capital

The main aim of this chapter is to compare the social capital structures produced by personal networks in Portugal, Switzerland, and Lithuania. On the one hand, we hypothesise that the type of social capital is primarily associated with the composition of personal configurations. On the other hand, we also expect that social capital structures are shaped by the constraints and opportunities associated with different welfare regimes, social policies, and level of social development in each country. Findings show that both Portuguese and Lithuanian networks are characterised by a bonding type of social capital, although in Portugal the interdependencies rely on the exchange of emotional support, whereas in Lithuania the interdependencies stem from face-to-face interactions. Switzerland, in contrast, is characterised by a bridging type of social capital.

Mapping the Plurality of Personal Configurations

The aim of this chapter is to map the variety of personal configurations by focusing on personal ties regarded as important. The configurational perspective emphasizes the inclusion of different kinds of close ties that go beyond kin, co-residence, and genealogical proximity in personal relationships. In order to identify the diversity of arrangements, we present a typology of personal configurations and compare their importance across three different countries, controlling for individuals’ position in social and family structures. Results show that while the family of procreation and parents are important overall, there are different patterns of sociability across countries: more inclusive of extended kin in Portugal, more inclusive of non-kin (friends) in Switzerland, and more focused on the nuclear family in Lithuania.

A First Portrait of Personal Networks in a Comparative Perspective

In order to understand how changing trends of individualization and pluralization have been affecting personal networks in the three countries, this chapter provides an overview of the core characteristics of personal networks in Portugal, Switzerland, and Lithuania. First, we compare the size and composition of personal networks across the three countries, by highlighting the commonalities and differences. Secondly, we examine how the characteristics of personal networks are shaped by individuals’ birth-cohort, structural conditions, and normative contexts. Findings show that the underlying mechanisms of proximity linked to kinship, friendship, co-residency, long-lasting acquaintanceship, and gender homophily are differently valued in the three countries. These differences are discussed in the light of individuals’ social context, but also according to national historical pathways, welfare regimes, and social-economic conditions.