Family Rhetoric as Social Order

Gubrium, Jaber F.; Lynott, Robert J.

doi:10.1177/019251385006001008

Cited by 30 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…The challenge and consideration mutually transform one's family as an entity from a tacit, undistinguished background feature of everyday life into an object of general reckoning writ large (Berger and Luckmann, 1966;Berger and Kellner, 1970). Its concrete engagement, though, is anything but abstract, for the family order assigned to domestic affairs is articulated in relation to the practical and substantive concerns of diverse circumstances (GarfinkeL 1967;Gubrium and Holstein, 1987;Gubrium, 1987a;Gubrium and Lynott, 1985b)-Challenges have discernible contents, which in application, predictably structure experience (Gubrium and Buckholdt, 1982;Gubrium, 1988;Silverman, 1985Silverman, , 1987. For example, one might be asked to consider whether one's family is intimate and closeknit, or affectively cool, presenting a two-category structure for assigning meaning to emotional bonds with kindred.…”

Section: Approach and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Just as society, community, institutions, and other social forms are not concretely available to us in the large, so the family is an abstract object more or less perceived through its signs (Gubrium and Lynott, 1985b). Attitude researchers, for example, locate the form and substance of attitudes in the representative opinions that signal attitudes.…”

Section: Substantiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is now a decade since Lasch (1977) lamented the impact of a therapeutic society on the family. His position was that an ostensible public concern for family life masked attempts to steal away what was the remaining personal 'haven in a heartless world\ Since then, the rhetoric of family in public discourse (Gubrium and Lynott, 1985b) has increasingly continued to signal a family besieged, one whose essential character is tenuous at best and said to be rapidly disappearing. Some believe it urgent to secure what are called 'family values^ and traditional domesticity (New York Times, 1986).…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Family as Project

Gubrium

1988

The Sociological Review

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Based on data gathered in settings where the family side of personal troubles is a regular concern, it is argued that the family enters into social relations as a collective representation. Adaptmg Durkheim's usage to everyday life, the family is analyzed as a ‘public’ project of those whose domestic affairs are challenged for consideration of family order. Three features of the family project are considered: (1) the awareness of the social form, (2) family conduct in the large, (3) family usage. As an object of experience, the family presents itself in a category separate and distinct from its members, while at the same time being a practical, discursive construct built out of, as well as reflecting concrete domestic affairs.

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Section: Approach and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Substantiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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The Family as Project

Gubrium

1988

The Sociological Review

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“…For a more complete analysis of these points, see Wess ( 1 9961. For an empirical examination of how narratives of familial expertise operate to construct family, see the work of Gubrium, Holstein, and associates (Holstein and Gubrium 1994;Gubrium 1988;Gubrium and Holstein 1990;Gubrium and Lynott 1985).…”

Section: Acknowledgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing Narratives of Expertise: Toward the Development of a Burkeian Pentadic Scheme

Knapp

1999

The Sociological Quarterly

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Recent work in the sociology of professions highlights the central importance of abstract discourse in professionalization processes. Drawing on the work of Kenneth Burke, I argue that broadening the focus of analysis from "abstract discourse" to "narratives of expertise" will provide the ability to (1) more clearly analyze the social cofiditions that are conducive to the efficacy of abstraction as a basis for a claim of expertise and (2)'theorize and empirically examine the formation and maintenance of a collective professional identity. To assist in the reformulation of professionalization studies around narratives of expertise, I develop a modified extension of Burke's five key terms of dramatism (act, agent, scene, agency, and purpose). Burke's pentadic scheme enables researchers to show how narratives of expertise ground jurisdictional claims and the constitution of professional identity in one of the elements of pentad. I illustrate the empirical power of the pentadic scheme through an examination of claims of psychotherapeutic expertise, particularly claims of marital and familial expertise.Recent scholarship in the sociology of professions has stressed that successful claims of professional expertise require the development and ownership of an abstract discourse through which a professional group advances claims of jurisdiction over a set of problems (Abbott 1988). Although Andrew Abbott discusses a number of elements important to any analysis of the division of expert labor, he identifies the key factor in jurisdictional contests as the ability of a professional group to advance their claim of expertise in a discourse that maintains an "optimal level of abstraction" relative to current systemic conditions and properties of jurisdictional locales, such as the workplace, public opinion, and the legal sphere. Abbott's (1988, p. 98) focus on the cognitive components that "dominate the structuring of jurisdictions . . . [and] the conduct of jurisdictional contests" continues a long tradition of emphasizing the importance of some form of special knowledge as the most distinctive and defining characteristic of professional occupations (Barber ).Despite the attention given to abstract discourse in the literature on professions, how Direct all correspondence to abstract discourse actually works to advance, maintain, and expand professional jurisdictions remains underdeveloped. In what follows, I appropriate elements of Kenneth Burke's work to argue that current theorizations of the importance of abstract discourse for professionalization need to be expanded, critiqued, and reframed by broadening the focus of analysis from "abstract discourse" to "narratives of expertise." More importantly, I show how the development of a Burkeian pentadic scheme can assist researchers in the theoretical and empirical analysis of narratives of expertise. I illustrate the empirical power of the pentadic scheme through an analysis of narratives of familial expertise in the system of psychotherapeutic professions. THE BURKEIAN PENTA...

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“…I have been criticised for failing to distinguish 'household, family form, family system, family process etc.' (Harris 1986b: 111); such criticism is based partly on the ubiquity of 'family terms' and my refusal to be drawn into the confusion which such ubiquity yields along with the danger that one might then be 'doing things with words' (see Gubrium andLynott 1985: 148 andBernardes 1987).…”

Section: Theorem Of Sociological Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

Founding the New ‘Family Studies’

Bernardes

1988

The Sociological Review

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By developing the concept of Multidimensional Developmental Pathways, the potential social policy consequences of such theorising are explored. In moving towards conceptualising the actual needs of people and the unity of their lives we can consciously (rather than unconsciously) contribute proposals for rebuilding social policy. With a view to generating further interest in alternative theoretical approaches to the analysis of ‘family life’, three theorems are then proposed. These three theorems constitute the first step in founding the New‘Family Studies’.

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Family Rhetoric as Social Order

Cited by 30 publications

References 10 publications

The Family as Project

The Family as Project

Analyzing Narratives of Expertise: Toward the Development of a Burkeian Pentadic Scheme

Founding the New ‘Family Studies’

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