The Family as Project

Abstract

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.

Unveiling the Non‐discursivity of the Lifeworld Experience: An Inquiry into the Taken‐for‐Grantedness of the Spousal Sexual World of Hong Kong Chinese Couples*

“…1 Studies along this line are seen, for example, in the domains of education (Alerby 2003;Greasley and Ashworth 2007;Richardson 1997;Van Manen 1990), nursing (Crotty 1996;Jensen and Lidell 2009), and family studies (Gubrium 1988;Gubrium and Holstein 1993). 2 The list of 44 debates was a result of a long process of discussions and debates between the author and his supervisor during the study.…”

The Transcendence and Non-Discursivity of the Lifeworld

“…28 Another version of the sociological perspective which tends to sidestep the question of how the pre-predicative structure acquires the appearance of a discursive object is featured in a corpus of publications authored by Jaber Gubrium and/or James Holstein. Their approach adopts a constructionist gaze onto the everyday discursive practices through which domestic reality-family, not the family-is constituted (Gubrium 1988;Gubrium and Holstein 1993a;Holstein and Gubrium 1994a). Based on a similar line of critique of essentialism adopted in CSP, the Gubrium-Holstein approach opposes ''family as a distinct social form, as abstract thing separate from its individual members and personalities'' (Gubrium 1988, p. 273).…”

“…In this vein, family discourse conveys the meaning to the actor that the relationship under consideration is trusting, giving, and not calculating (Gubrium and Holstein 1990, p. 13). Gubrium-Holstein therefore considers that biological and legal ties are only candidate qualifications for membership in the family, contending that family is a discursive project (Gubrium 1988).…”

‘An intimate loneliness’: evaluating the impact of a child's death on parental self‐identity and marital relationships

“…She notes that although family paradigms are the result ofjoint action and negotiation, individual members may ascribe different priorities and values to the shared metaphors used in this reflexive process. The interdependent but subjectively different nature of these relational metaphors in representing and engaging with 'the family project' (Gubrium, 1988) is sharpened by the loss of any one of these individual family members. Family paradigms have to adjust when a grandparent dies or when an older child leaves home, but in both cases, remaining family members are supported in their adjustment by wider social discourses offering metaphors for 'normalizing' these disturbances.…”