In light of the recent upsurge in the popularity of sensory, and particularly visual, methods, this article makes a case for a sensory methodology that remains attuned to the complex ways in which the senses are tangled with other forms of experience or ways of knowing. Drawing on a project investigating the social significance of family resemblances, we look at how our methods (a combination of visual methods and creative interviewing) emphasized the interplay between tangible and intangible sensory experience, including elements of the sensory that were visible, audible, touchable, etc., in the present as well as those which people conjured in their sensory imaginations and ethereal or mystical ways of resembling. We suggest that ‘sensory intangibility’ is vital to how we see resemblances and to the practice of sensory methodology.
In this paper we explore some of the negative aspects of friendship. In so doing we do not seek to join the debate about whether or not friendships are more or less important than other relationships but rather to explore precisely how significant friendships can be. Based on written accounts submitted to the British Mass Observation Project, we analyse how friendship, when it goes wrong, can challenge one's sense of self and even produce ontological insecurity. Friendship, it is argued, is tied into the process of self-identification and so staying true to friends, even when the relationships becomes uneven or tiresome, can be a sign of ethical standing. Meeting 'old' friends can also become very challenging, especially if one does not wish to be reminded of the self one once was. The paper contributes to the growing interest in relationships beyond kin.
This article explores the significance of intra-generational ties with siblings to sociological understandings of the . D who they have the potential to become in the future, it is demonstrated that identities are often constructed in relation to how they are similar to or different from their sibling(s). Literature expounding the role of stories in the construction of the self is used to suggest that the comparing that is at the heart of the relational construction of sibling identities can occur through the telling and re-telling of family stories within the politics and power dynamics of existing relationships. The article concludes by suggesting that sibling relationships be conceptualised as part of a web of relationships in which young people are embedded.
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