The concept of relationality has recently found widespread favour in British sociology, particularly in the emergent sub-field of the sociology of personal life, which is characterised by its attachment to the concept. However, this 'relational turn' is undertheorized and pays little attention to the substantial history of relational thinking across the human sciences. This paper argues that the notion of relationality in the sociology of personal life might be strengthened by an exploration of the conceptualization of the relational person and relational processes offered by three bodies of literature: the process oriented thinking of American pragmatism, specifically of Mead and Emirbayer; the figurational sociology of Elias; and psychoanalysis, particularly the object relations tradition, contemporary relational psychoanalysis and Ettinger's notion of transubjectivity. The paper attends particularly to the processes involved in the individuality, agentic reflexivity and affective dimensions of the relational person.
The article examines the relational organization of close relationships. It identifies 'the intimate couple' as central in organising close relationships. The analysis draws from 35 configurations of intimates and personal narratives of heterosexual Finns, examining who they cite as intimate and how their intimacies are organized and narrated. The analysis shows how living with a partner in 'the family setting' generates 'exclusive family intimacies' pushing other intimates, such as friends and wider families, further. Alternative, more inclusive intimacies are examined both within and outside the family setting. Those living without a partner often cite friends, parents and/or siblings as intimates. Outside the family setting there is no other structure for close relationships than 'the individual' and her or his capability to construct relationships. This leaves some in isolation. The article analyses the interplay between structure and agency in the contexts of intimacy, family and the contemporary organization of close relationships.
In this paper, we present a figurational approach to studying family relationships drawing from Norbert Elias's notion of figuration that combines insider and outsider perspectives to complex relational dynamics. In recent discussions on intimacy and personal lives, the family has been viewed as a subset of any personal relationships despite the structural dynamics of, for example, gender and generation that are at play within families. On the other hand, it has been claimed that a family has a special dynamic of its own that requires a ‘language of family’. In this paper, we present a figurational approach for studying family relationships both as personally lived and as embedded in wider webs of relationships. The proposed approach combines qualitative insight drawn from interviews and a systematic mapping of significant webs of relationships that both constrain and enable people. Combining these two aspects highlights the complex family dynamics and lived ambivalences between personal affinities and relational expectations. The paper draws from empirical studies in which significant life events, including marriage and biographical disruptions, such as loss, divorce and illness, reconfigure people's lives and selves, highlighting the contemporary complexity of families and personal relationships. The article develops relational methodology, addressing the ‘middle ground’ of relations to bring together the personal and the more structural aspects of family dynamics that phases of biographical change make visible.
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