families, communities and social change then and now.pptVIP

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 Outline The re-study and the baseline study that preceded it Theoretical assumptions Analytical categories such as gender, ‘race’/ethnicity, class 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 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 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 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 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, 1965:18) Focus on system and structure Asking this question found two forms of extended family – cohesive and mobile society Mr Griffith Hughes Loss of family solidarity, emergence of individualistic and self-centred attitudes ‘He is talking of two radically differen