In Search of Resiliency in Families

Abstract

This study explores the process of relationship development in marriages that foster personal and relationship growth. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve individuals/six couples in marriages that promote individual and relationship growth. Grounded theory methodology was employed and “Empowering Connections” emerged as the core theme. Empowering connections are characterised by a process of growth captured by the following categories: “Connecting Emotionally,” “Loving Respectfully,” “Expanding One's Self,” and “Experiencing Empowering Connections.” The results of the study contribute to the understanding of marriage and provide insight to premarital couples, people who want to improve their marriage, and to therapists working with couples.     

When the Spirit Blooms: Acquiring Higher Education in the Context of Welfare Reform

ABSTRACT

Established within a political context greatly influenced by stereotypical assumptions of impoverished women of color, welfare reform codified a work-first philosophy meant to attack perceived “dependency” and spur “self-sufficiency.” This article describes the shortcomings of the work-first approach and highlights the importance of higher education for helping women, and especially women of color, achieve economic well-being. It then reports key findings from a study that examines the impact of higher education on the lives of welfare participants in California. Utilizing a mix of surveys, focus groups, and personal interviews, this study finds that despite the challenges associated with balancing parenthood, college-level coursework, and the bureaucratic demands of welfare reform, the stereotypical notions of the “welfare queen” do not apply. Instead, study participants exhibited a high level of ambition, persistence, determination, and hard work in pursuit of their educational ambitions; and in the process, improved their lives and the lives of their children.     

My Collection is Bigger than Yours: Tales from the Handcrafter's Stash

ABSTRACT

This analysis of how Bulgaria coped with socialist modernization in the field of housing takes the concept of “consumption regime” as its point of departure. Applying the lens of “regulated consumption” (as opposed to a laissez- faire regime) allows a differentiation between state care and state control. Bulgarian housing policy relied on the notion of the state as the main actor. The article argues that this state did not contradict traditional values in Bulgarian society but made concerted efforts to meet the essential wishes of the people vis-à-vis their own home. During the late 1940s and 1950s, this tradition was reflected in the way construction was organized as well as in the types of housing provided. By contrast, in the time of socialist large-scale slab building (from the 1960s to 1980s) this tradition was reinterpreted to cover favorable conditions of loans for housing—in the first place for building second houses (villas). The regulation of housing supply through the use of tradition explains the very high percentage of private housing in Bulgaria after the fall of socialism. Housing in socialist Bulgaria corroborates the argument that the appropriation of tradition is an important factor in the domestication of socialist modernization.     

A Qualitative Sociological Approach to Address Issues of Diversity for Social Work

ABSTRACT

This article identifies prevailing conceptual approaches employed to formulate issues of diversity for social work research and practice. It argues that the notions of “welfare” and “diversity” are customarily defined within unduly narrow realms. “Welfare” is normally defined from the ideological perspective of modern mainstream society, even though competing minority ideologies of “welfare” are both possible and evident. “Diversity” is normally organized around the central concept of “ethnicity,” even though the universality of this notion is questionable. In response a research approach to address these limitations is proposed which employs a sociological perspective and qualitative methodology to discern appropriate conceptual frameworks.     

Between Money,Morality and Masculinity

Abstract

This paper focuses on the supply-side of Chiang Mai's gay bars, that is, the male sex workers called dek bar or “bar boys”¹ in Thai. I formulate some explanations why these young men -more than half of whom do not consider themselves to be “homosexual” -take on a job as a male sex worker. In this analysis I focus on certain notions in traditional Thai society, trends in contemporary urban Thai society, the economics of work in a gay bar, as well as the sexual behaviour of male sex workers and the concepts they use to describe their work.     

Reconciliation in Remarriage to an Ex-Spouse: Individual Changes

ABSTRACT

Part of a broader investigation on remarriage to an ex-spouse, the present study aims to analyze how the main individual changes that occurred affect the reconciliation of that marriage. We conducted a qualitative study, interviewing 12 subjects, from 12 distinct heterosexual couples from Rio de Janeiro’s middle-class population, remarried to their respective ex-spouses, with children in common. To analyze the results, we employed the content analysis method, via categories, discussing the levels of change category and its two subcategories: expectations; and attitudes & behaviors. Findings indicate that greater empathy for one’s spouse and earnest willingness to take responsibility led to changes in expectations, as well as to greater respect, trust, dialogue, affection and security in the relationship, making it possible to confirm the commitment to the “new” marriage and demonstrating that reconciliation was a good choice.     

Family Social Work: The Past and the Present

SUMMARY

It is easy to blame the dysfunction of a family member on his or her behavioral patterns. I use the title, “It's the Relationship, Stupid!” not to talk down to family therapists, but to remind myself that the source of dysfunction is usually family relationships, especially the marriage relationship. This article gives several case studies for practical application of therapy techniques that focus on developing the “WE” of the family unit. One practical technique that I developed is a communication typology. The married couple (and family members) are divided into “Painters” and “Pointers.” This typology explains much of the conflict and mis-communication that leads to the breakdown of the “WE.” This article also presents dysfunction within the individual as a relationship problem and introduces the concept of the “spirit” of the individual as expressing the relationship the person has with self.     

Interpreting Home in the Transnational Discourse

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to present a selection of primary findings culled from empirical data collected in Dublin with post-European Union enlargement Polish migrants as the cohort in study. One aspect of the project was to investigate how that group interpreted home since they have left Poland. Based on the outcomes of interviews with thirty-one informants, the narratives reveal a group of individuals who continuously contest social constraints and push the boundaries of previously held notions of migration, identity, and home. This article situates their aspirations, preferences, and practices within discourses of transnationalism, thereby connecting their migration experiences with a consciousness of feeling at home in the world. This article breaks up “home” as interpreted by the informants into three categories—centered home, sentimental home, and transportable home. The wide range of perspectives held by informants and the inability to clearly define their position with regard to the notion of “home” reinforces the hypothesis of this article that, for a transnational cohort, the meaning of home is contested. In relation to the wider international literature regarding concepts of home, this article makes a contribution to the deepening scope of migration research in Ireland.     

Lagos in London: Finding the Space of Home

ABSTRACT

The term “home” is loaded with normative notions about insiderness, sociality, dwelling, spatiality, and tends generally to be associated with a particular architectural mode of dwelling, classically a house, and with a particular set of people related by blood and/or marriage. In keeping with the contemporary theoretical movements about what and where a home resides, this paper also questions the validity of limiting these modes of being and being among as the sole confine of the domestic sphere. It suggests that rather than searching for these only within the classic scenario, the elements of what constitutes a home can be found outside of that sphere, through particular social and spatial negotiations of public spaces. These practices and spatial negotiations in the public space can then be compared with similar ones in the domestic setting. Taken together they reveal much more about the process of home making than either one would individually. Thus what is proposed in this article is a definition of home that is seen less as a particular geographical and/or architectural entity, and more as a space where specific forms of sociality take place.     

Irregular Workers or Ethnic Kin? Post‐1990s Labour Migration from Bulgaria to Turkey

This paper addresses the invisibility of the post‐1990s irregular migration flows from Bulgaria to Turkey in the literature despite the increasingly significant number of such migrants. I suggest that this invisibility stems partially from a problem of classification that has to do with implicit suppositions about ethnicity and migration. The post‐1990s Turkish immigrants from Bulgaria are not specified in accounts of irregular migrant flows directed towards Turkey since they are assumed to belong to the category of ethnic “return” migrants: Because of their ethnic identity as Turkish, all Turkish migrants from Bulgaria tend to get considered as part of the intermittent “return” migration waves from Bulgaria, the most notable and well‐known of these being the fight of more than 300,000 Turks in 1989. However, while the ethnic affiliation of the post‐1990s migrants from Bulgaria renders them invisible as irregular migrants within scholarly migrant typologies, the same ethnic affiliation does not necessarily work to their advantage when it comes to their legal and social reception in Turkey. Based on ethnographic fieldwork that prioritizes micro‐level analysis from below, the paper demonstrates that the self designated ethnic affiliation of these migrants, counterpoised against their social marginalization as “the Bulgarian” domestics, heightens the paradoxes of belonging and affects migration strategies. The paper thus underscores the significance of ethnic affiliation as a factor that needs to be adequately taken into account in describing the present and in assessing the future of this particular migratory pattern.     

Change and Consistency in the Relation of Marital Status to Personal Happiness

Abstract

Several studies conducted in the late 1980s suggested that the effect of marital status on personal happiness was declining, meaning that the “happiness gap” between married and never-married persons was diminishing. Speculations about the causes of this diminishing positive effect of marriage ranged from changing values to the increasing role overload of married women. But there was some evidence that the decline in the “happiness gap” had reversed by the end of the 1980s. This paper uses General Social Survey data from 1972 through 2002 to show that this decline did indeed reverse, such that in recent years the difference in the happiness of married and never-married persons is as great as it has been since the inception of the GSS. Although women who are employed and/or have children in the home are slightly less happy than others, the positive effect of marriage on the happiness of these women is as strong as it has ever been.     

Three transvestites under hypnosis 1

Abstract

Interviews with the wives of forcible rapists and incest offenders at Atascadero State Hospital indicated that, among other things, the wives were more highly educated than their husbands. The women appeared to gain considerable satisfaction from the offenses of their husbands, perhaps because it put them in the role of martyrs, a role that may have been originally involved in their marriages to persons “inferior” to themselves. The wives, despite obvious cues, reported being surprised at their husbands' offenses, and not one indicated that her marriage had suffered as a consequence of her husband's behavior. The study concludes that, for this sample, rape and incest by the husbands served as a particular useful lever by which wives can further build positions of moral and social dominance.     

Debatable Marriages: Marriage and Child Marriage in Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT

This article examines marriage and the constitution of familial relationships in Saudi Arabia, with a specific focus on one form of marriage that has recently become an issue of public, political, and religious discussion, that of “child marriage.” The situation within Saudi Arabia is compared with gendered relationships in other countries, most notably those in Western Europe, with specific attention given to the United Kingdom. It is argued that policy developments in Saudi Arabia need to be seen in the context of wider Saudi culture, Sharia law, and religious interpretations of the Koran.     

A Landscape of Respect Relations: Television,Status, Houses

ABSTRACT

In this article, I focus on residents in predominantly East Indian villages in Guyana to bring out their contextual identities in relation to places, houses, and television. In the status transactions that occur, landscapes of respect relations are formed: place is made “open” for residents to appear in partial contexts which confirm or challenge their respect notions. The houses mark the boundary between inside and outside where those who are visible on dams and roads lose respect. The data illustrates how these boundaries are observed and/or changed vis-à-vis physical arrangements, liming (forms of hanging out), and television. The interactions demonstrate respect notions in practice as status entanglements in relation to the visibility of persons in different settings.     

Japanese Homes Inside Out

ABSTRACT

In studies about the Euro-American home, the creation of domestic boundaries is commonly associated with the need for privacy grounded in the supposed opposition between “private” and “public,” “individual” and “society.” The large number of physical barriers such as gates, fences, balconies, and barred windows that screen contemporary Japanese dwellings from the outside world might, therefore, lead one to conclude that the Japanese home is of an extremely private nature. Through an ethnographic investigation conducted over a one-year period in thirty homes in the Kansai region (Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nara), this article will challenge this view. It argues, firstly, that the specificity of Japanese notions of “inside” and “outside,” referring to close and distant networks of spatial and social relationships, need to be acknowledged, and, secondly, that boundaries between spaces are always fluid and constantly transgressed. More generally, this study also aims to demonstrate the strengths of anthropological research that examines how spaces are actually lived in, as opposed to studies that focus on visual and spatial divisions and tend to gloss over the complexity of every day social life.     

Young Women's Life Stories and Accounts of Parental Divorce

ABSTRACT

This article presents the results of an analysis of 7 young women's life story accounts of the experience of parental separation during adolescence. The young women took part in the Life Stories and Family Transitions Study conducted in New Zealand. The qualitative methodology used in this study allowed for an investigation of the ways that participants made sense of their experiences of parental separation within the life story. The narratives of parental separation were extracted from the interviews and analyzed for form and content. The analysis of form found that the stories progressed through a number of stages, titled “The Early Years,” “The Deteriorating Parental Relationship,” “The Climax,” and “The Aftermath.” A number of themes emerged from a process of interpretive thematic analysis. These themes were often associated with different stages of the story of separation, and were titled “Putting Together the Pieces,” “The Struggling Self,” and “Self-Determination and Competency.” As participants put together the stories of separation, they considered their parents' perspectives and integrated these with their own experiences of family events, developing their own personal theories. The stories of struggle, and of personal strength and self-determination, emerge from the analysis.     

The Meaning of Queer Home

Abstract

This article positions two proto-queer texts together in order to demonstrate how the development of American “queer subjectivity” arose as a discernible discursive and embodied notion related to “home.” Written before the arrival of the queer category, Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (The Crossing Press, Freedom, CA, 1982) and Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues (Alyson Press, Los Angeles, CA, 2003, original work published 1993) concentrate upon the home as a site conditioned by twin concerns that would become central to queer politics: “the home” as narrative metaphor and homes as real-world shelters. Queering the home stretches and scrambles the home category (“dyke bar as home,” “Black lesbian sisterhood as home,” “body as home”) while insisting upon self-defined, material structures of protection and comfort for queers. The article performs a “reading through skin” of queer scholarship and of sociological data. It argues that these queer-emergent texts helped establish notions of “queer home” via exploring metaphoric and empirical axes related to domestic space.     

Social and family patterns on the colonial Louisiana frontier

As the pendulum of historical scholarship swings toward the close of another century, momentum has propelled it toward the re‐establishment of a traditional relationship severed by professional historians at the turn of the last century. History and genealogy were inseparable until early 20th‐century humanists elevated the serious pursuit of history from the armchair to the university chair. In the generations since, a chasm of disdain has separated “real” history from so‐called family history in which untrained amateurs dabble with abandon.

Yet the family is the heart of society. To study a people's history without understanding the family structure from which it evolved is to confront a robot and pretend that one feels a pulse. Tardily, professional history is shifting from the “subjects' of broad national interest” to a study of society in microcosm, that is, the family, at the same time that academically oriented genealogists are upgrading their standards to prove that family history can be a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry.

This reunion of history and genealogy has produced outstanding re‐evaluations of society; but in the United States the emphasis to date has been on Anglo‐American culture. This article provides pioneer exploration of the nation's Latin heritage and finds significant differences in patterns of migration and settlement, marriage and morality. Such a study of French and Spanish borderlands in America upsets traditional, stereotyped conceptions of mobility, fertility, and family structure in colonial America.