Family group conferences: from Maori culture to decision-making model in work with late modern families in Norway†

Models and methods within social work and child protection services are disseminated across cultural and national borders. The family group conference (FGC), with its origins in traditional Maori culture, is one example of this. The application of this model presupposes an ‘extended family’. Based on sociological theory, we highlight and problematise the explicit inattention to relevant cultural differences. The assumed existence of the extended family is implied in the direct translation of the term. The family in late modern society is often described as diversified, elective and shifting. We argue that FGC is relevant to such families. In our conclusion, we point out that despite changes, the family remains associated with traditional family values as solidarity and joint obligations, responsibilities and continuity. FGC vitalise traditional family values and facilitate for modern families performing traditional family practices. From our exploration of discourses and analyses on how FGC may be transformed from supporting Maori traditional culture to become a decision model in a CPS of a society such as Norway, we find there is a compliance with two fundamental factors: the late modern family's negotiating practices and the revitalisation of traditional family values.     

Producing Family Time: Practices of Leisure Activity Beyond the Home

Family life is conducted in public as well as at home, but the public aspect of family activity is seldom studied (a pattern that tends to reproduce privatized notions of family life). This observational study examines one site for public family activity, the community zoo. I show that visiting the zoo involves the group in a routinized activity that reinforces significant social boundaries, including those of family membership. Conceptually, the analysis identifies parental work practices—based on mostly implicit ideologies of family life—whose skills are treated at some moments as unremarkable and in other circumstances as key signifiers of good parenting. My aim is to bring into view the settings and circumstances within which parents pursue such activities with children, thereby illustrating an analytic approach that locates these practices within a broader social landscape.     

The Family Strengths in Greece Then and Now

Abstract

Family has a long historical course in Greece. The turbulent periods of Hellenic history and the fluctuations of the political, social and economic life have influenced Hellenic family strengths. Nevertheless, there have been some basic elements on which the family has been based and acquired a continuous stability and homogeneity. These features are: religion, language, a rich cultural heritage, tradition and customs. Roles in the family are strongly influenced by the above, though they have been readjusted and redefined in contemporary society.     

Drawing Family Boundaries: Children's Perspectives on Family Relationships in Rural and Urban Ethiopia

This article explores how children conceptualise and practice family relationships in two social settings in Ethiopia. Based on ethnographic data, it discusses (i) how urban and rural children construct family; (ii) what family activities children do and which social positions they assume; and (iii) the convergence and divergence of meanings and practices of family relationships between urban and rural Ethiopia. The analysis demonstrates how ‘normative family’ and actual ‘family practices’ are shaped by socio‐cultural, material and spatial contexts. Insights drawn also reveal the complex ways in which access to material resources, geographical distance, rural‐urban locations and cultural traits such as patterns of marriage and child relocation practices shape family relationships.     

Family Strengths in Romania

Abstract

Romania is situated in the southeast of Central Europe with more than two millennia of agitated history. The main dimensions of the Romanian cultural model are represented by Latinity and Christianity and have involved very consistent principles. This article is focused on the specific aspects of the Romanian family and its present transformation under major structural changes in the socio-cultural context. In Romanian contemporary society there are two main types of effects that were generated by communism in the middle of the 20th century and by the rediscovery of democracy in 1989. The Romanian family has supported the consequences of these events, first by the abusive insertion of state control into the domestic sphere and second by the necessity of redeveloping self-reliant capacities for family survival. Under the pressure of continuous change in the social context, the contemporary family has valuable resources inherent in traditional Romanian culture and in the family's internal strengths.     

Socio-historical paths of the male breadwinner model - an explanation of cross-national differences

It is often assumed that in the historical transformation to modern industrial society, the integration of women into the economy occurred everywhere as a three‐phase process: in pre‐modern societies, the extensive integration of women into societal production; then, their wide exclusion with the shift to industrial society; and finally, their re‐integration into paid work during the further course of modernization. Results from the author's own international comparative study of the historical development of the family and the economic integration of women have shown that this was decidedly not the case even for western Europe. Hence the question arises: why is there such historical variation in the development and importance of the housewife model of the male breadwinner family? In the article, an explanation is presented. It is argued that the historical development of the urban bourgeoisie was especially significant for the historical destiny of this cultural model: the social and political strength of the urban bourgeoisie had central societal importance in the imposition of the housewife model of the male breadwinner family as the dominant family form in a given society. In this, it is necessary to distinguish between the imposition of the breadwinner marriage at the cultural level on the one hand, and at the level of social practice in the family on the other.     

Growing Up in A Single Mother Family and Student’s Tardiness: A Cross-National Study Exploring the Moderating Role of Family Resources

Research shows that growing up in a single-parent family has a negative effect on children’s educational level, whereas the relationship between family structure and test scores is less consistent or even nonexistent in some countries. Some authors suggested that something besides cognitive ability is responsible for the poorer school outcomes of children from nonintact families. In this study, we focus on a noncognitive outcome, in this case student tardiness, which is one of the components of problematic absenteeism. Using PISA 2003 data from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we find that children who grow up in a single-mother family have greater chances of arriving late for school in 16 of the 17 countries analyzed. Some studies have analyzed the extent to which the effect of growing up in a single-mother family is compensated by a high level of family resources. However, these yield mixed findings, which can be attributed to the differences between the countries studied. With the exception of Bernardi and Radl (2014), to our knowledge no study analyzes the heterogeneity of family structure effects using a cross-national approach. We find that in most of the 17 countries analyzed, a high level of family resources, such as home possessions, cultural resources, mother’s occupational and educational level, and mother’s type of work, do not compensate for the harmful effects of growing up in a single-mother family on children’s school tardiness.     

The State of Family Theory and Research in Finland

The history of family research in Finland dates back to 1889, when the famous sociologist Edward Westermarck published his doctoral thesis "The Origin of Human Marriage." After World War II the old anthropological and socio-historical research tradition was effectively superseded by the emerging school of American sociology. By 1952 the focus of attention in sociology was already shifting to the problems of modern society. There appeared hardly any texts during the 1950s that seriously challenged the traditional family institution. Family research invested virtually all its energies in studying the housewife and assuring people that family was alive and well. The entire field of sociological research saw some significant changes in the late 1970s. A new category-way-of-life-took the social sciences and sociology by storm. The arrival of this concept provides one example of the growing influence of Marxist research during the 1970s. Since the 1980s the attention of family researches has been shifting more and more towards individualism and the search for new types of permanent relationships. Feminist research has been drawing critical attention to the understanding of the family as a unit, observing that this understanding contains various simplifying implicit assumptions. A recurring argument in feminist research is that the family does not have one voice, and that the family does not mean the same thing to all its members. Lately the perspective of social constructionism has been rapidly gaining ground in Finnish studies. At the same time, some critics are now saying that instead of trying to uncover cultural meaning from different types of discourse, family research should instead be investing its energies in serious theorizing that is devoted to uncovering the truth.     

The Link Between the Marital Bond and Future Triadic Family Interactions

This study examined how the marital bond, as indexed through the Oral History Interview (OHI), is related to future triadic family interactions. Families (N = 108), with a 7–9‐year‐old child, participated in a longitudinal study (the Family Health Project) examining children's emotional development throughout the transition to adolescence. Parental cohesion and family cohesion, warmth, structure, and problem solving were assessed via behavioral observation during family problem‐solving discussions and parent‐child teaching interactions 18–24 months after the OHI. Results indicated that the marital bond was predictive of parental cohesion, family cohesion, warmth, and structure during teaching interactions. The marital bond was not significantly predictive of family problem solving or parental cohesion in problem‐solving interactions.     

Keeping the Farm in the Family Name: Patrimonial Narratives and Negotiations among German‐Heritage Farmers

Sociologists tend to view rural culture as an inertial force, committing members to past cultural patterns which, in turn, inform their present courses of action. By emphasizing such cultural stasis, we obscure how members of cultural enclaves negotiate, recommit to, or revise certain cultural traditions. This article explores how rural culture is in dialogue with changing external contexts. Drawing on interviews I conducted among a small group of German‐heritage farmers in southern Wisconsin, I find that farmers select legal arrangements, entrepreneurial actions, and traditional male succession in order to fulfill the “yeoman” goal of keeping the farm in the family name. I explore how the narratives farmers develop about the cultural priority of transferring the home‐farm to a new generation allow sociological insight into their creative negotiations between cultural traditions and a greatly altered context of agricultural production. I argue that this dialogue between a historically persistent cultural tradition and very present pressures of agricultural production makes a significant contribution to the dynamics of modern rural life.     

Political theater and student organizations in the 1989 Chinese movement: A multivariate analysis of Tiananmen

Social movement research has often been divided between organizational and cultural analyses of collective action. Organizationally oriented theorists have viewed indigenous organizational structure as the critical variable in the emergence of collective action. Political culture and cultural frame theorists have focused instead on the cultural frames that resonate with audiences, mobilizing them to action. But social movements cannot be the result of one or the other of these factors. An analysis of the 1989 Chinese movement illuminates the multivariate aspects of this social movement. This movement was a two-tiered movement with an organized student leadership tier and a mass audience. Enmeshed in university organizations and student networks, the student leaders relied on an organizational structure that had been emerging since the mid-1980s. This organized leadership tier employed cultural symbols and acts to mobilize mass audiences that were beyond the scope of the students' organizational linkages. The political theater of the organized student leaders was complemented by institutional changes that had been occurring over the decade of reform in China and a political opportunity that allowed wide coverage of the students' activities.     

Family Therapy: Out from Behind the Hero Narrative

Schools of family therapy have been highly selective in their presentation of the theory/practice nexus. Family therapy's method of teaching (the infamous workshop format) has hampered it's growth as a practice and academic discipline. An inadvertent, unhelpful legacy of Gregory Bateson has been that lesser scholars have aped his capacity to draw on other fields of knowledge without his rigour, or his propriety. Family therapy's cavalier dealings with bodies of knowledge and its reliance on miraculous case studies has resulted in the bypassing of individual suffering. The heroic narrative that has dominated family therapy has precluded other styles of stories for therapists, theorists and clients. Family therapy has been dominated by the myth of the hero, with its accompanying motif of the puer eternus (the eternal youth). Family therapy has been forever reinventing itself, forever the ‘new kid on the block’. This fascination with newness has interfered with family therapy's capacity, at times, to consolidate its genuine value as a therapeutic entity.     

Family networks and solidarity: continuity and change

At the end of the 1960s it had become obvious that the family as an object of analysis could not be reduced to the nuclear family. During the following decades, the focus of analysis has shifted from the statistical concept of household, implicitly related to the nuclear family to ties between households and intergenerational relationships. At present, it appears that the individual would shape her entourage of parents and significant others by combining affinities, space, distance, and proximity. This opens a new way of looking at the family with new tools for observation and new definitions. This themed section includes six articles based on surveys on the family networks conducted by researchers from different European countries and Quebec, where some fundamental questions related to this new approach are discussed. It appears that family networks play an important role in supporting social change and that they reveal the crucial role played by women hidden in the household and nuclear family paradigm. Finally, the question of continuity of the generational chain is analyzed in the change-oriented baby-boom generation.     

The Critical Shapes of Body Image: The Role of Culture and Family in the Production of Eating Disorders

Although research has pointed to the influence of culture and family in the etiology of eating disorders, few studies have examined how these influences conjoin in this process. This research explores how the family mediates cultural ideas about thinness and how the family conveys these messages to family members. Using a grounded theory approach, open‐ended interviews were conducted with 32 White, middle‐class women (with and without eating disorders) on the topic of body image and eating problems. In conjunction with this method, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) was also performed to identify family characteristics, and their specific combinations, that were associated with eating disorders. The findings indicate that a critical family environment, coercive parental control, and a dominating discourse on weight in the household are salient conditions, and their specific configurations are discussed in relationship to current theoretical conceptualizations regarding the influences of culture and family in the production of eating disorders.     

An Integrative Approach to Teaching Family Resource Management

Abstract

Family resource management is one of ten substance areas that are required for certification in family life education (National Council on Family Relations, 2005). Unfortunately, few discipline-specific resources are available for faculty assigned to teach the family resource management course. A rich tradition of theory and practice in the field has stalled, with little conceptual development since the 1980s to guide faculty teaching the course. In response, we offer a new conceptual framework for teaching family resource management that extends previous models by integrating management with other functions of the family. Specific course objectives, methods of evaluation, classroom activities, recommended materials, and teaching strategies are provided.     

Family Foster Care,Kinship Networks,and Residential Care of Abandoned Infants in Egypt

While infant abandonment has occurred in all segments of society, on all continents, and across all generations, the motivations for this practice are varied and depend upon the social norms of a specific geographic region at a given point in time. Western approaches addressing the care of abandoned infants focus on terminating parental rights and placing the child in an adoptive home. The child assumes the family name and is privy to all rights and responsibilities as biological children. In Egypt, Islamic family law does not allow for adoption of an infant by a nonbiological individual. Nor does the country of Egypt allow assignment of guardianship or fostering of a child by a non-Egyptian parent. Therefore, models of care cannot simply be transferred from one context to the other, although they may learn from each other. Egypt's system of family foster care, kinship networks, and residential (institutional) care are models that are consistent with the cultural values and customs of this population. The family foster care model and kinship networks have been shown to provide the most positive psychosocial outcomes for the child. The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast culturally acceptable approaches to caring for abandoned infants in Egypt.     

Intellectuals in Contemporary Social Theory: A Radical Critique

Contemporary social theorists have been remarkably consistent in advocating an analytically defined ideal-type of the modern intellectual. This ideal-type presents the intellectual as a politically autonomous critic pursuing knowledge for its own sake. I argue that this concept rests on the presupposition of specific empirical and historical conditions concerning the social organization of intellectuals. To the degree that these presuppositions are "falsifiable" by a historically grounded framework of intellectual "action," one may challenge the "epistemological" claims of modern intellectuals with a "class conscious" sociology of knowledge.     

EXAMINING FRAME FORMATION IN PEER GROUP CONVERSATIONS

Frame analysis has been used to examine the ways in which movement groups articulate their goals, recruit participants, and respond to the counterframes of their opponents. But, with the notable exception of William Gamson's Talking Politics , theorists have not paid serious attention to the conversations of peer groups. This essay revisits some of Gamson's observations in an attempt to extend the scope of existing theory on frame analysis and peer group conversations. I begin with the premise that collective action frames are not only the product of shared, cultural narratives and personal experiences; they are also shaped by behavioral expectations, that are specific to the group, that regulate how the group "talks politics", and that delimit the boundaries of group-belonging. In exploring these group-specific dynamics, I draw attention to the relationship between "interaction frames", that are used to structure the dialogue of the group and "speaking positions", that are used to align new action-demands and political ideas with the preexisting frames of the group. My intent, in introducing these concepts, is not to provide a finished methodology but to present a beginning framework for future research and discussion. As I suggest here, the most promising answer to the questions posed by this essay lies in expanding the dialogue between the Goffmanian undercurrents of frame analysis and aspects of systems theory.