Personal Communities: Not Simply Families of ‘Fate’ or ‘Choice’

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. • ESRC Research Centre on Micro-social Change. Established in 1989 to identify, explain, model and forecast social change in Britain at the individual and household level, the Centre specialises in research using longitudinal data. Terms of use: Documents in• ESRC UK Longitudinal Centre. This national resource centre was established in October 1999 to promote the use of longitudinal data and to develop a strategy for the future of large-scale longitudinal surveys. It was responsible for the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and for the ESRC's interest in the National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study• European Centre for Analysis in the Social Sciences. ECASS is an interdisciplinary research centre which hosts major research programmes and helps researchers from the EU gain access to longitudinal data and cross-national datasets from all over Europe.The British Household Panel Survey is one of the main instruments for measuring social change in Britain. The BHPS comprises a nationally representative sample of around 5,500 households and over 10,000 individuals who are reinterviewed each year. The questionnaire includes a constant core of items accompanied by a variable component in order to provide for the collection of initial conditions data and to allow for the subsequent inclusion of emerging research and policy concerns.Among the main projects in ISER's research programme are: the labour market and the division of domestic responsibilities; changes in families and households; modelling households' labour force behaviour; wealth, well-being and socio-economic structure; resource distribution in the household; and modelling techniques and survey methodology.BHPS data provide the academic community, policymakers and private sector with a unique national resource and allow for comparative research with similar studies in Europe, the United States and Canada.BHPS data are available from the Data Archive at the University of Essex http://www.data-archive.ac.ukFurther information about the BHPS and other longitudinal surveys can be obtained by telephoning +44 (0) 1206 873543.

What Is a Friend? An Exploratory Typology of the Meanings of Friendship

“…Either way, this representation of (intimate) friendship as family confirms the processes that Pahl and Spencer [9,10] called suffusion, of blurring boundaries between kin and non-kin, with roles among members of the personal community being inter-changeable: friends can be "like family"; and family can be "like friends". If the latter ("family-like friends") is also present, it is not, however, the most prevalent: strong kinship bonds are predominantly represented as the ultimate form of intimacy that one can experience within friendship.…”

How We Know Each Other

“…29 It is argued here that the use of film to accompany qualitative interviewing can add to the present literature on ethnographies of friendship (Pahl and Spencer 2004, Heaphy and Davies 2012, Owton and Allen-Collinson 2014, Tillman 2015 by offering a multisensory portrait of relational practices, thus complementing a growing body of work that is oriented towards reported verbal accounts. Through this research project we aim to explore the nature of four friendships as they are experienced, and the practices that bind them, by hearing participants' accounts, and by seeing and hearing their friendships in action.…”

“…The varying strengths and degrees of friendships are illustrated by the observation that some relationships offer more than (and are not limited to) a shared activity (Pahl and Spencer 2004). Beyond the practice-based relationship, multi-stranded friendships are suffuse affairs.…”

“…10 Perhaps because of the lack of an innate or familial bond, friends have been referred to as families we choose (Roseneil and Budgen 2004), or elective kin (Pahl and Spencer 2004), and can differ in type and vary in levels of intensity (Pahl andSpencer, 2004, Heaphy andDavies 2012). Some might be referred to as simple friendships, being based on sharing a single activity (work, leisure, belief, political affiliation).…”

Facial Difference, Consumer Culture and Being ‘Normal’

“…These are seen as 'communities in the mind', representations of people's networks across different types of relationships, places and time. It is an approach that differs from a focus on place-based or family-based groupings (Pahl and Spencer, 2004). By looking back over the life course, shared histories, times of adaptation and times of continuity can be seen.…”