Families, communities and social change: then and now

1
Families, communities and social change then and
now

• Nickie Charles
• Centre for the Study of Women and Gender
• University of Warwick
• NCRM Community Re-studies
• April 12 2011, Nottingham

2
Outline

• The re-study and the baseline study that preceded
  it
• Theoretical assumptions
• Analytical categories such as gender,
  race/ethnicity, class

3
The baseline study

• Carried out in Swansea in 1960 by Colin Rosser
  and Chris Harris
• Urban community study
• Extended family
• Focussed on patterns of residence and frequency
  of contact between different categories of kin
• 2,000-household survey supplemented by
  ethnographic research

4
Findings

• Women at centre of kinship networks
• Grouping wider than elementary family of parents
  and children, 3-generational, somewhere between
  co-resident group and social network
• Modified extended family fitting a mobile
  society which was geographically, occupationally
  and culturally differentiated

5
Social change in 20th century

• Shift from cohesive to mobile society
• Social solidarity of 3-generational kin group
  weakened
• Increasing differentiation of the occupational
  structure, increasing cultural differentiation,
  changes in the means of communication,
  specifically phones and cars

6
The re-study

• Original data lost therefore no re-analysis of
  it possible
• Chris Harris one of the research team
• Replication of original study
• 1,000-household survey supplemented by
  ethnographic research in four localities
• Interviewed 122 women, 71 men, aged between 19
  and 92 years, 18 of whom from ethnic minority

7
What were their questions?

• Structural functionalism dominant paradigm in
  1950s and early 1960s
• Central question What are the effects of social
  and cultural change on the structure of the
  extended family? (RH, 196518)
• Focus on system and structure
• Asking this question found two forms of extended
  family cohesive and mobile society

8
Mr Griffith Hughes

• Loss of family solidarity, emergence of
  individualistic and self-centred attitudes
• He is talking of two radically different worlds,
  and describing in effect two distinct patterns of
  family behaviour. The first is that of his
  earlier years and is based fundamentally on the
  close clustering of kin in a limited locality,
  with a high degree of social and economic
  homogeneity and with close and complex ties of
  mutual co-operation between kin and neighbours.
  The second is that of his present family, a
  modified version of the former, continuing much
  of the older patterns but altogether looser in
  structure with a much wider scatter of relatives,
  and markedly heterogeneous in occupation and
  income and in social and cultural values (Rosser
  and Harris, 196515).

9
Conceptualising social change

• Focus on structure the way the family is
  structured and how this structure changes in
  response to changes in the wider social system
• Structural change (hence social change) is
  brought about by increasing differentiation
  occupational, geographical, cultural leading to
  a decline in social solidarity
• Shift from cohesive to mobile society

10
Structure and practice (agency?)

• Restudy explored effects of increasing
  differentiation on family solidarity
• Increased occupational and geographical
  differentiation now within elementary as well
  as extended family
• Despite this, extended family networks provide
  support (and include friends, animals)
• Suggests Durkheims assumptions not borne out in
  practice
• Survey analysis contrasts with analysis of
  ethnographic data family practices and
  fluidity

11
Cultural identities

• Definition of class included generational and
  cultural dimension as well as occupation
• Ethnicity addressed through Welshness also
  included generational dimension though no
  self-assessment
• Cultural identity important because of
  theoretical significance of increasing cultural
  differentiation

12
Why were we constrained?

• Need for comparison
• Loss of original data
• Assumptions about the family and its relation
  to society embedded in questionnaire
• One of original researchers carried out analysis
  of survey data
• Sociological habitus

13
Conclusions

• Methodology allowed us to see continuity as well
  as change
• Permitted historical depth
• Connections and solidarity maintained despite
  increasing differentiation implied critique of
  Durkheim
• Ethnographic data analysed differently, in terms
  of family practices