Troubling Children’s Families: Who Is Troubled and Why? Approaches to Inter-Cultural Dialogue

Abstract

This article draws on multi-disciplinary perspectives to consider the need and the possibilities for intercultural dialogue concerning families that may be seen by some to be 'troubling'. Starting from the premise that 'troubles' are a 'normal' part of children's family lives, we consider the boundary between 'normal' troubles and troubles that are troubling (whether to family members or others). Such troubling families potentially indicate an intervention to prevent harm to less powerful family members (notably children). On what basis can such decisions be made in children's family lives, how can this question be answered across diverse cultural contexts, and are all answers inevitably subject to uncertainty? Such questions arguably re-frame and broaden existing debates about 'child maltreatment' across diverse cultural contexts. Beyond recognizing power dynamics, material inequalities, and historical and contemporary colonialism, we argue that attempts to answer the question on an empirical basis risk a form of neo-colonialism, since values inevitably permeate research and knowledge claims. We briefly exemplify such difficulties, examining psychological studies of childrearing in China, and the application of neuroscience to early childhood interventions in the UK. Turning to issues of values and moral relativism, we also question the possibility of an objective moral standard that avoids cultural imperialism, but ask whether cultural relativism is the only alternative position available. Here we briefly explore other possibilities in the space between 'facile' universalism and 'lazy' relativism (Jullien, 2008(Jullien, /2014. Such approaches bring into focus core philosophical and cultural questions about the possibilities for 'happiness', and for what it means to be a 'person', living in the social world.Throughout, we centralize theoretical and conceptual issues, drawing on the work of Jullien (2008Jullien ( /2014 to recognize the immense complexities inter-cultural dialogue entails in terms of language and communication.

Interpreting family struggles in West Africa across Majority-Minority world boundaries: tensions and possibilities

“…Critical debates about the 'crisis of representation' and the potential of postcolonial approaches (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2012;Connell, 2006;Philipps, 2018), are pertinent here. Yet it is only relatively recently that family lives have become a focus of cross-cultural discussion in relation to the Majority world, largely among sociologists, who have a longer tradition of researching 'family' meanings and practices than geographers (Korbin, 2013;Ribbens McCarthy and Gillies, 2017; see Punch, Vanderbeck and Skelton, 2016;Evans et al, 2017a; Ribbens McCarthy et al in press, for work in geography). My recent research in the Francophone African context of Senegal sought to set aside Minority world theorising on death, bereavement and family relations.…”

“…In particular, the time needed and costs of travel for collaborative, capacity-building workshops among research team members across Minority-Majority boundaries, particularly at the stages of qualitative analysis and interpretation of findings, need to be take into account when designing research projects. As academics based in Minority world institutions, we need to acknowledge our often limited engagements with Majority world perspectives, particularly at the research formulation, analysis and writing stages, and recognise ethnocentrism and the implicit value judgements in much theorising and empirical research on children's and families' lives (Connell, 2006;Ribbens McCarthy and Gillies, 2017). The failure to situate the knowledge we produce serves to perpetuate hegemonic worldviews and theorisations about family lives globally.…”

“…Notable exceptions include my own and other geographers' research in Africa (Ansell, 2001;Katz, 2004;Robson, 2004) and elsewhere in the Majority world (Brickell, 2014;Punch, 2002), in addition to edited collections which encompass Majority and Minority world contexts (Panelli et al, 2007;Vanderbeck and Worth, 2014;Horton and Pyer, 2017). Yet there is often little critical reflection on the extent to which the frameworks and concepts used to analyse geographies of children, youth and families in the Majority world reflect Minority world theorisations and perspectives, despite recent work in sociology that explicitly addresses this question (Korbin, 2013;Ribbens McCarthy and Gillies, 2017).…”

Making Sense of Family Deaths in Urban Senegal: Diversities, Contexts, and Comparisons

“…In developing our qualitative empirical study of family deaths in West Africa, the work of Klass (1999), calling for a cross-cultural model of “grief,” has been a key starting point. In addition, we drew theoretically on feminist theorizing of care ethics and caringscapes (Bowlby, 2012; Evans, 2012; Ribbens McCarthy, 2012a; Ribbens McCarthy & Prokhovnik, 2014; Tronto, 1993) and the notion of a family death as a “vital conjuncture” (Johnson-Hanks, 2002; Evans, 2014) that was likely to be associated with significant changes in various aspects of family members’ lives. For the present discussion, we also draw on an interactionist sociological approach to discuss how people “made sense” of family deaths through a theoretical focus on meanings-in-context.…”

“…The somatization of grief has been recognized by researchers for some time in many cultural contexts (Horwitz & Wakefield, 2007; Rosenblatt, 2008), including, to some degree, the embodied experience of loss and relationality after death in Anglophone countries (e.g., Ribbens McCarthy & Prokhovnik, 2014). Thus, “emotions” may be experienced in embodied terms rather than through verbal expressions of an internal state of feelings.…”