Friends, Neighbours and Distant Partners: Extending or Decentring Family Relationships?

Friends, Neighbours and Distant Partners: Extending or Decentring Family Relationships?
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朋友、邻居和远方的伴侣:扩大还是分散家庭关系?

DOI:
10.5153/sro.1421
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发表时间:
2006
影响因子:
1.6
通讯作者:
G. Allan
G. Allan
中科院分区:
法学4区
文献类型:
--
作者:
L. Jamieson;D. Morgan;G. Crow;G. Allan

文献摘要

被引文献

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引言 1.1 人们长期以来认识到,要理解任何特定人际关系的含义和意义,就需要理解人们所嵌入的整个人际关系。例如,要理解亲属关系,同样需要理解友谊(Allan,1979)。这个特别的收藏汇集了研究,这些研究提供了对工作年龄成年人的个人关系的深入了解,这些关系超出了有或没有孩子的同居夫妇的传统家庭背景。与对夫妻关系和亲子关系的大量研究相比,其他成人人际关系的研究相对较少,希望这个问题能够鼓励进一步的工作。这里考虑的关系类型的例子包括家庭之外的成年人之间的性关系和伙伴关系(霍姆斯、罗森尼尔、雷诺兹)、不与伴侣同居的人的友谊(巴吉恩)、单身女性的整个个人关系(辛普森)以及她们对“单身女性”身份的谈判(麦克瓦里什)、邻居(博伊斯、斯托科)以及与付费者的关系。 进入家庭环境的照顾者(波克尼)。1.2 这些关系都超出了既定的伙伴关系、父母身份和家庭关系,尽管它们都代表了亲密关系的某些方面:身体、情感和对他人的特权了解。它们与家庭实践有一定的相似性和重叠性,同时也有自己独特的特点。使用各种方法对这些不同的实践进行详细的探索,可以帮助我们理解它们特定的逻辑和基本原理,以及它们与更常见的家庭和亲属关系的区别或连续性。这些个人研究还可以提醒我们,围绕和塑造这些关系以及限制个人享有的自由程度的不平等和外部结构因素的重要性和根源。1.3迫切需要对整个人际关系有一个更完整的了解,以便为个人生活中的社会趋势的有争议的解释提供信息。对社会变革的一种特殊解释是,本集中讨论的一些非家庭关系的重要性正在超越家庭关系。 Jamieson(1998,1999)在对二十世纪末人际关系研究的回顾中指出,尽管理论上友谊被认为是理想的亲密关系,但情侣仍然是成人个人生活中心的普遍选择。然而,在本书出版时,越来越多的研究人员,包括该问题的贡献者,表明成人友谊的重要性日益增加(Pahl 和 Spencer,2004 年,Spencer 和 Pahl 2006),并相信他们正在看到个人生活的焦点从夫妻,特别是性别不同的、异性恋的、同居的、建立家庭的夫妇,转向更流动的亲密关系网络,包括朋友、爱人和邻居(Budgeon,本卷;Roseneil,本卷;Roseneil and Budgeon,2004,Savage,Bagnall & Longhurst,2005)。我们的建议是,这种更加流动的网络可能会在实际和情感上成为人们生活中的重要关系,并破坏传统家庭关系作为我们所渴望的理想化关系的文化主导地位。本书中的许多贡献补充了最近的一系列研究,这些研究表明“家庭”和“非家庭”关系之间的界限在日常生活中越来越模糊。描述这一点的一种方式是,随着人们指定为“家庭”的星座变得越来越多样化,构成“家庭”的边界具有弹性和不断延伸。另一种描述方式是,家庭的观念和理想正在因对生活方式的不同理解而失去立足点。这些对相同趋势的不同解释方式对于实际实践发生的根本性转变存在分歧。
Introduction1.1 There is a longstanding recognition that grasping the meaning and significance of any specific personalrelationship requires an understanding of the whole constellation of personal ties within which people areembedded. So for example, to understand kinship it is equally necessary to understand friendship (Allan,1979). This special collection brings together research which offers insight into personal relationships ofworking-age adults beyond or outside of the conventional domestic context of a co-resident couple with orwithout children. In comparison to the wealth of research on couple and parent-child relationships, otheradult personal relationships are relatively under-researched and it is hoped that this issue will encouragefurther work. Examples of the kinds of relationships considered here include sexual relationships andpartnerships between adults outside the family-based household (Holmes, Roseneil, Reynolds), thefriendships of those not living with a partner (Budgeon), the whole constellation of personal relationships ofsingle women (Simpson) and their negotiation of the identity ‘single woman’ (MacVarish), .neighbours(Boyce, Stokoe), and relations with paid carers who enter into family contexts (Pockney).1.2 These relationships are all outside the established package of partnership, parenthood and householdalthough all represent some aspects of intimacy: bodily, emotional and privileged knowledge of the otherperson. They have some affinities and overlaps with family practices while also having their own distinctcharacteristics. The detailed exploration of these different sets of practices, using a variety ofmethodologies, may help us understand their particular logics and rationales, as well as how they aredistinct from or have continuities with more regularly understood relationships of family and kinship. Theseindividual studies can also remind us of the significance and sources of the inequalities and externalstructural factors surrounding and shaping these relationships and limiting the degrees of freedom enjoyedby individuals.1.3 Having a more complete picture of the whole constellation of personal relationships is urgently neededto inform contested interpretations of social trends in personal life. One particular line of interpretation ofsocial change is that some of the non-familial relationships discussed in this collection are eclipsingfamilial relationships in their significance. In a review of research across personal relationships at the endof the twentieth century, Jamieson (1998, 1999) noted that although friendship was claimed theoretically asthe ideal intimate relationship, the couple remained the popular choice at the centre of adult personal life.However, at the time of this collection, a growing number of researchers, including contributors to thisissue, suggest the growing importance of adult friendships (Pahl and Spencer, 2004, Spencer and Pahl2006) and believe they are seeing the focus of personal life shift from the couple, and particularly thegendered, heterosexual, co-resident, family-founding couple, to a more fluid network of intimates includingfriends, lovers and neighbours (Budgeon, this volume; Roseneil, this volume; Roseneil and Budgeon, 2004,Savage, Bagnall & Longhurst, 2005). The suggestion is that this more fluid network may be taking over,practically and emotionally, as the important relationships in people’s lives and undermining the culturaldominance of conventional family relationships as the idealized relationships to which we aspire. A numberof contributions in this volume add to a body of recent research which suggests that the boundary between‘familial’ and ‘non-familial’ relationships is increasingly blurred in everyday lives. One way of portraying thisis in terms of the elasticity and constant stretching of the boundary of what constitutes ‘family’ as theconstellations that people designated as ‘familial’ become increasingly diverse. Another way of portrayingthis is to say that the idea and ideal of family is losing ground to different understandings of how life shouldbe lived. These different ways of interpreting the same trends disagree about how fundamental a shift inactual practices has taken place.