Sara Eldén

Inviting the messy: Drawing methods and 'children's voices'

This article engages with the current debate in childhood research on children’s voices and representation in the research process. In this discussion, the frequent use of drawing techniques in childhood research is often highlighted as especially problematic. While agreeing that there is a need to critically examine the concept of ‘children’s voices’ and the production of ‘voices’ in research, the author argues for the possibility of and need for reflexive and creative research enabling the ‘voicing’ of others – such as children – and the possibilities of a sociological analysis of drawing methods. The argument is elaborated with a presentation and discussion of a current research project on children and care in Sweden. The author discusses two of the methods used in interviews with children – a draw-your-day exercise and concentric circles of closeness – which together help the child and the researcher narrativize practices and relationships of care that would otherwise be obscured. While the narratives that emerge cannot be viewed as providing ‘authentic’ insights into the caring situation of the child, they can be regarded as contributing to a more complex and multi-layered picture of care, which is a valuable contribution to the research field of family and interpersonal relationships.

Scripts for the 'Good Couple': Individualization and the Reproduction of Gender Inequality

Theorists of late modernity discuss the effects of individualization on heterosexual couples. Processes of individualization are understood in terms of the individualized framework of thinking about self and others permeating Western societies. Sociological analyses of therapeutic manuals appoint them as both a symptom and an effect of individualization processes. In popular therapy, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim encounter evidence of individualism and the disappearance of ‘scripts for a life together’ (protecting ‘me’ against ‘us’), while Anthony Giddens sees potentials for a democratic, pure and gender-equal couple. Their dispute can be settled by analysing constructions of ‘the couple’ when the therapy manuals are put into action. The case in question is Swedish popular therapy as it appears in TV programmes with ‘real’ couples. Analyses of the ongoing interactions demonstrate how new scripts for heterosexual couples are emerging, scripts that hold elements of both traditional and late modern societies and relationships. In these, a ‘normal fantasy’ of the couple is (re)produced, not in the form of traditional authoritarian scripts but in individualized notions of what is a good, normal and happy life, a fantasy that is the responsibility of the individual/couple to complete. Individualized assumptions enable (an indirect) reproduction of stereotypes and inequalities of the genders, e.g. regarding unequal divisions of domestic work, with reference to ‘what is best’ for a specific individual or couple. The author argues for the necessity of revaluing both understandings of individualization in sociological theories and the ‘workings’ of individualized narratives on cultural and individual levels.

The Threat or Promise of Popular Therapy? A Feminist Reading of Narratives of “the Good Couple”

Popular therapeutic culture—such as self-help books, TV programmes, and Internet resources—is growing rapidly and posing important questions for feminist research and politics. On the one hand, it can be seen as a challenge to the public sphere in terms of what can be shown and said and by whom, with the emancipatory potential of giving political credentials to the personal. On the other, it can be seen as exploiting, and thereby reproducing, stereotypes and inequalities, such as those related to gender. In this article, the discussion is advanced by the use of Swedish popular therapy for couples as a point of departure. It is argued that a cultural narrative of the “good couple” is constructed in self-help books and TV programmes on relationship issues, a narrative that seems to keep the unequal nature of this heterosexual institution from being challenged. However, in the individual narratives of consumers of this culture, apparent on web discussion boards, the cultural narrative of the “good couple” is being challenged, not least with reference to gender and gender inequality.

New ways of doing the ’good’ and gender equal family : Parents employing nannies and au pairs in Sweden

The last decade, Nordic families have started to employ nannies and au pairs to an extent previously never experienced. Political initiatives such as tax deductions for household services, together with global trends of ‘care chains’, have created a private market for care services, which have made it possible for families to hire cheap female, and often migrant, care labour. In the case of Sweden, this is an indication of a re-familializing trend in politics of care and family; a move away from a social democratic welfare regime, towards the privatized and marketized care/family solutions of other Western countries. This qualitative study of Swedish families who hire nannies/au pairs shows how the dual earner/dual carer ideal is being replaced by a dual earner/privately outsourced care ideal, a shift that requires particular forms of accounting for their practices on the part of the parents, related to the discourse of gender equality as well as narratives of what is ‘best for children’. This, we argue, indicates that gender equality and ‘good care’ for children is increasingly becoming a class privilege.

Book Review: Couple Relationships in the 21st Century

ever, rather than being imposed in top-down fashion, as suggested by this term, agency is formed in a ‘‘communicative space’’ at the intersection of many relations, not only upwards but also sideways and downwards. Her example is Nigerian state agents who constitute themselves as responsible agents in relation not only to aid donors and international institutions, but also to the population and the development community. This means that agency is molded not just through officially approved discourses, but also through a variety of alternative ones that potentially include counter-discourses. Pointing this out is, I believe, very fruitful since it provides a clear theoretical explanation for why self-government need not be harmonious with external technologies of government, and of how overt resistance against the latter can emerge. A second important contribution of the book consists of the many methodological reflections it offers on how to study agency. The editors point out that identifying technologies of the self and agency ‘‘may require methods and material that are not frequently made use of in governmentality studies’’ (p. 28). The chapters provide several illustrations of such methods, which include sociological intervention workshops (Thörn) as well as life-history interviews (Hansson, Hellberg). These methods are certainly a welcome addition to the study of official documents that one often sees in governmentality studies. At the same time, they have limitations, as the editors themselves point out. A major hurdle is that publicly available meaning is usually the product of the victors. How do we go beyond what is visible and get a feel for silences and omissions? A related difficulty consists of resisting the researcher’s desire to fill in the silence by discovering an agency that might not exist – with the risk of reinscribing the governed as agents in their own subordination or unwittingly furthering the development of more efficient techniques of government (p. 10). The classical ethnographic answer to these difficulties would be to spend sufficient time in the field to get beyond one-sided and superficial interpretations. However, as Spivak points out, not even this strategy will ever allow researchers to ‘‘slip into the subjectivities’’ of the governed. The other classical answer is that of critical hermeneutics – to question the text by placing it in the context of power and structure. Elements of such a critical strategy are indeed adopted by several of the authors. Clear examples include the method of asking provocative questions to get behind polite façades (Eriksson Baaz and Stern, Sylvester) and the use of sociological intervention workshops and discourse analysis to visibilize cracks, ambivalences and subdued forms of criticism in statements (Thörn). All in all, this is a stimulating book both theoretically and methodologically and should be of interest to all who are interested either in governmentality studies or larger issues of agency and resistance.