Sasha Roseneil

Cultures of Intimacy and Care beyond ‘the Family’: Personal Life and Social Change in the Early 21st Century

The authors argue that if sociologists are to understand the current state, and likely future, of intimacy and care, we should decentre the ‘family’ and the heterosexual couple in our intellectual imaginaries. In the context of processes of individualization much that matters to people in terms of intimacy and care increasingly takes place beyond the ‘family’, between partners who are not living together ‘as family’, and within networks of friends. The first section of the article provides a critique of family sociology and the sociology of gender for the heteronormative frameworks within which they operate. It proposes an extension of the framework within which contemporary transformations in the realm of intimacy are to be analysed, and it suggests that there is a need for research focusing on the cultures of intimacy and care inhabited by those living at the cutting edge of social change. In the second part of the article, the authors draw upon their own research on the most ‘individualized’ sector of the population – adults who are not living with a partner. They explore contemporary cultures of intimacy and care among this group through a number of case studies, and argue that two interrelated processes characterize these cultures: centring on friendship, and decentring sexual relationships.

Disarming patriarchy: Feminism and political action at Greenham

The origins of Greenham the making of Greenham the ethos of Greenham - theorizing practice and practising theory the internal mode of action the external mode of action boys against girls, girls against boys - the dynamics of Greenhams challenge transgressions and transformation - experience, consciousness and identity at Greenham conclusion - disarming patriarchy.

On not living with a partner: unpicking coupledom and cohabitation

The contemporary normative model of sexual/ love relationships assumes a teleology in which some time after getting together two people instantiate their state of coupledom by moving in together. As a consequence, those who do not cohabit with a partner are generally thought not to be coupled. Social researchers have largely shared this understanding of intimate relationships, operating with a tripartite model of relationships in which people are single, cohabiting or married. This paper seeks to unpick the assumed contiguity of coupledom and cohabitation, and to deconstruct the category of ‘single’. It draws on data from an intensive investigation of the relationship experiences, practices and values of people who are not living with a partner. It starts with a discussion of the prevalence of not living with a partner, offering a commentary on recent demographic data and quantitative research. It then sets out the methodology used in research, and describes the sample, before exploring the diverse practices of partnership and orientations towards (non) cohabitation of those interviewees who were in non-residential couple relationships. Three main orientations are identified amongst the partnered (living apart together, or LAT) interviewees: living apart regretfully; living apart gladly and living apart undecidedly. The individual and relational contexts of these orientations are then discussed.

Queer frameworks and queer tendencies: towards an understanding of postmodern transformations of sexuality

This article aims to extend the theorization of postmodernity to consider social changes in the realm of sexuality. It offers a discussion of recent developments in queer theory, which, it is argued, can contribute significant new theoretical frameworks for the analysis of sexuality. It then traces some of the shifts in the organization of sexuality in the second half of the twentieth century, the emergence of modern sexual identities, and the changing relationships between ‘the homosexual’ and ‘the heterosexual’, as categories, identities and ways of life. The article then outlines what are conceptualized as the ‘queer tendencies’ of postmodernity, which it is suggested characterize the contemporary re-organization of relations of sexuality. These queer tendencies are: queer auto-critique, the decentring of heterorelations, the emergence of hetero-reflexivity, and the cultural valorizing of the queer.

Why we should Care about Friends: An Argument for Queering the Care Imaginary in Social Policy

This paper sets out an argument for the re-imagining of care in social policy on three interrelated grounds: epistemological–theoretical, substantive socio-historical, and normative political–philosophical. It takes up the epistemological challenge offered by queer theory to propose a different gaze be cast on care which recognizes the practices of care which take place outside normative heterosexual couples and families. Following on from this, it suggests that the care that has been the object of study in social policy has failed to keep up with transformations in the realm of sociability which characterize the contemporary world. It outlines findings of research which show the increasing importance of friendship to those at the cutting edge of processes of individualization. Finally, it points to the new and valuable lens that the study of caring practices of friends might cast on the ethics of care, and it ends with some pointers to what it might mean for social policy to take friendship seriously.

The ambivalences of Angel's ‘arrangement’: a psychosocial lens on the contemporary condition of personal life

The aim of this article is to explore the potential of a psychoanalytically informed psychosocial approach to extend understandings of the contemporary condition of personal life. It argues for the theorization of the intertwining of the social and the psychic, in order to take seriously the realm of the intra-psychic and the dynamic unconscious, without engaging in either psychological or sociological reductionism. The article offers a detailed case study of an interview with one individual (‘Angel’), highlighting three themes in his narrative which resonate with wider findings about changing patterns of intimacy and sociability: the experience of relationship break-up and psychological distress, the centrality of friendship, and de-centring and re-imagining the sexual relationship. Particular attention is paid to the story Angel tells of his unconventional partnership, and to the analysis of his self-presentation, in the light of the thematic analysis. The psychosocial approach attends both to sociological themes and unconscious psychodynamics, and presents an analysis of the particular character of the disappointments, loss, psychic conflicts and ambivalences which are part of the experience of contemporary personal life. The paper concludes with some critical reflections on conducting psychoanalytic psychosocial readings of interview data.

Practising identities: power and resistance

Book synopsis: Questions of identity - individual and collective - confront us at every turn at the end of the twentieth century. Practising Identities is a collection of papers about how identities - gender, bodily, racial, ethnic and national - are practised in the contemporary world. Identities are actively constructed, chosen, created and performed by people in their daily lives; identities are complex, multiple, fragmented and always changing. This book focuses on a variety of identity practices, in a range of different settings, from the gym and the body-piercing studio, to the further education college and the National Health Service. The question of power and the possibilities of creating identities of resistance are to the forefront throughout the book. Drawing on detailed empirical studies and recent social and cultural theory about identity, this book makes an important contribution to current debates about identity, reflexivity, and cultural difference.

Editors’ introduction: beyond the conventional family

I the West, at the start of the 21st century, ‘the family’ is a sociological concept under severe strain. Processes of individualization are rendering the romantic dyad and the modern family formation it has supported increasingly unstable, and the normative grip of the gender and sexual order which has underpinned the modern family is ever weakening. As a result more and more people are spending longer periods of their lives outside the conventional family unit. Recognizing these tendencies, Ulrich Beck (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002: 203) has recently, rather provocatively, described the family as a ‘zombie category’ – ‘dead and still alive’. The weight of opinion within the discipline of sociology might well disagree with Beck on this, given the effort which has been expended researching the ways in which the category lives on in changed and diversified forms – lone-parent families, stepfamilies, lesbian and gay ‘families of choice’ (Weston, 1991), ‘brave new families’ (Stacey, 1998). The move by family sociologists to pluralize the concept, to speak of ‘families’ rather than ‘the family’, emphasizes the ‘still alive-ness’ of the category, and seeks to maintain attention on family practices (Morgan, 1996). While we would not wish to deny the ways in which the family remains a central social institution and a key trope in the cultural imaginary, our intention in this issue of Current Sociology is not to inject a further shot of adrenalin into the category in the hope of restoring it to full and vibrant health. Rather we aim here to address the ways in which the category of the family is increasingly failing to contain the multiplicity of practices of intimacy and care which have traditionally been its prerogative and its raison d’etre. The impetus for this collection of articles came from the Friendship and Non-Conventional Partnership Project,1 which is part of the British-based ESRC Research Group for the Study of Care, Values and the Future of Welfare (CAVA).2 CAVA is a research programme investigating changing practices of partnering and parenting, and the implications of these for future

‘Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em’: Backlash and the gender politics of the underclass debate

This article is concerned with an aspect of the ‘underclass debate’ which has, thus far, been largely neglected by British social scientists—its gender politics. It examines the discourse that links lone mothers, juvenile crime, and the fiscal crisis of the Welfare State, tracing the development of the discourse, in its various forms, through 1993. The article argues that a high degree of consensus developed, uniting politicians and commentators in hostility to never married mothers. It is suggested that this discourse can be understood as part of a wider backlash against feminism, and that it locks into the restructuring of the Welfare State.

Queer Individualization: The Transformation of Personal Life in the Early 21st Century

This article explores what happens to understandings of social change in the realm of personal life when an empirical investigation is carried out that begins from rather different ontological and epistemological premises from those that have underpinned recent debates. It draws on UK‐based research that was framed by an engagement with sociological theories of individualization, psychoanalytically informed psycho‐social studies and queer theory, and that was designed to explore the psychic and affective dimensions, and the unconventional, counter‐heteronormative practices, of contemporary personal life. The study used the free association narrative interview method to examine the practices and ethics of personal life of people living outside conventional couples. It found considerable levels of psychic conflict and emotional distress, and some mental illness, amongst the people interviewed. Many interviewees told stories of experiencing a fracturing of self as they faced lives in which they felt alone and in which they were expected to be self‐responsible. These experiences, it is suggested, can be understood as tied up with losses contingent upon processes of individualization. However, the research also found evidence of a set of interrelated, counter‐heteronormative relationship practices that served reparatively to suture the selves undone by these processes of individualization: the prioritizing of friendship, the decentring of sexual/love relationships, and the forming of non‐conventional partnerships. The article proposes the notion of queer individualization to capture this set of transformations in the organization and experience of personal life, and suggests the necessity of understanding contemporary personal life as involving both the pain of loss, and new, reparative non‐conventional connections.