Abstract
It was in another book, published in 1996, that David Morgan first began to talk about ‘family practices’. His intention, in that earlier book, was to help restore the significance of sociological studies of family life by showing the ‘family connections’ (the title of the 1996 book) to a whole array of other sociological concerns – paid work, gender, the body, time and space, among others. ‘Family practices’ (formally discussed only in the book’s concluding chapter) were the means by which these connections could be located and investigated. As a term, it also suggested a perspective on families that was more fluid and less constrained than earlier visions of ‘The Family’ would allow. As he wrote then, ‘ “family” is not a thing, but a way of looking at, and describing, practices which might also be described in a variety of other ways’ (Morgan, 1996: 199). The ‘practices’ focus also conveyed a sense of the active, everyday work of individuals producing and maintaining family life. This way of thinking about ‘family’ has since acquired a presence well beyond what even Morgan, an eminent British sociologist in the family studies field, might have anticipated. So his 2011 book is a welcome reflection on the influential conceptual journey he started, for himself and others, many years before.
He picks up the story where he left off in 1996, by examining what he had in mind at the time. In the first, introductory chapter he repeats some of the material in that last chapter of the 1996 book, including his list of key implications in the use of the term: the linkage of perspectives of actor and observer; a sense of the active; a sense of the everyday; a sense of the regular; a sense of fluidity; and a linking of history and biography. The second chapter is also retrospective; here, Morgan attempts to locate his own early use of ‘practices’ in the broader intellectual context from which it emerged. In the mid-1990s, as he notes, talk about practices was ‘in the air’, so direct links to his own thinking at the time were not always easy to pin down. He does his best, citing a range of scholarly influences (including, for example, feminist and postmodern thought and the work of Pierre Bourdieu). The chapter ends with a reminder of what had not so far been picked up – the distinction between ‘practices in general’ and ‘family practices’. Family practices, Morgan writes, ‘are not simply practices that are done by family members in relation to other family members but they are also constitutive of that family “membership” at the same time’. He considers that the relational approach of family practices serves as a ‘valuable corrective’ to the more individualistic emphasis implied in discussions of ‘practices in general’ (p. 32).
The focus on family takes shape in the book’s third and fourth chapters. In the third, Morgan considers recent approaches that might be considered as alternative, or complementary, to the ‘family practices’ perspective. He considers two general categories of approaches: those more closely linked to debates within the family studies field; and those whose starting point is more distant, but which come to involve family relationships along the way. In the first category he groups work on ‘intimacy, personal life and configurations’ – a broad umbrella encompassing work which, while going beyond traditional notions of ‘The Family’ in multiple ways, still keeps family relationships in view. The second category, in which Morgan includes the ‘caringscapes’ perspective, and also Gluckmann’s work on the ‘total social organization of labour’, broadens the context in which caring relationships and family-oriented labour can be considered. Morgan points to the commonalities all these approaches share with the ‘family practices’ approach – notably, the attempt to deal with fluidity, complexity and uncertainty. All provide ‘a set of tools which can be used in all kinds of different combinations or which can be discarded if they are seen to fail in their task of confronting the complexities of modern life’ (p. 53).
The book’s fourth chapter turns to the ways the family practices approach has been taken up – sometimes uncritically and without further explanation, sometimes with further elaboration and conceptual development. Here Morgan also considers criticisms of the approach – though most of these are potential, rather than actual. One of the pleasures of the book is Morgan’s own reflection on his work; the questions he raises about the utility of the family practices approach are mainly his own, arising, as he puts it, out of a ‘discussion with myself’ (p. 64). The first potential stumbling block he addresses is the very use of ‘family’ as a descriptor. Morgan is clear that ‘family’ continues to matter. It ‘still appears to be an important matter of concern to large sections of the population’ (p. 65), as well as in public and scholarly discourse. He acknowledges the (external) criticism that he may have underplayed the effect of structural constraints on family practices, and he recognizes the possible white, male, middle-class, heteronormative bias in his illustrative material. But this, as he points out, does not reduce the applicability of the approach to other bodies of work. He sees the potential for many further developments.
This potential emerges in three chapters in which, reminiscent of his earlier book, Morgan turns to other areas of scholarly concern – time and space, the body, emotions – to show the linkages to a family practices approach. These are two-way connections. For example, family practices have a temporal and spatial character, which a focus on time and space can make clear. But a focus on family practices, with respect to such issues as household constitution and location, or changing family connections over the life course, can also add to our understanding of time and space. He notes that a focus on the body illuminates the inevitably embodied character of family practices, engaged as they are with such matters as bodily care, food and feeding, sexual intimacy, sometimes also violence. But a focus on family practices provides a ‘clearer understanding of the relational character of the body and embodiment’ (p. 108). With respect to emotions and family practices, Morgan notes that ‘our very understanding of family practices . . . would seem to have emotions at the heart of it’ (p. 111). But, as he also points out, the study of emotions is a complicated business, and sociological analysis may only go so far. The contribution of a family practices focus may in fact be to illuminate the extent to which emotions are part of many other dimensions of social life. Another contribution may be to point out the low-key but inevitable emotional content of the everyday. As Morgan nicely puts it, ‘The quiet pleasures of the familiar or the mild annoyances of the habitual are nothing to write home about but are frequently what home is about’ (p. 126).
Similar interconnections are explored in a chapter dealing with the ‘ethical turn’ in family studies. Here Morgan explores the ‘everyday, practical ethics’ bound up in many of the choices and dilemmas of family life, where questions about ‘the right thing to do’ arise in a wide variety of contexts and relationships. There are, as he points out, some obvious affinities between studies of ethical behaviour and a family practices approach, though the connection is not without complications; families may not always teach us about caring, responsibility and commitment, and lessons learned in the context of family life may not provide the basis for ethical behaviour in other settings. What both share is a focus on the active and the practical; ethics, like family, is something that we do.
Having explored themes directly linked to family practices, Morgan turns in his final substantive chapter to what he considers to be an application of the family practices approach. Here he examines issues related to work/family articulation, demonstrating the considerable overlap between the two domains – an overlap that becomes all the more evident when practices are the focus. In his concluding chapter, Morgan reviews the ground covered in the book, and notes, again, the value of an approach that focuses on the ‘doing’ of family, and one that links family and other areas of social life. He concludes: ‘So long as some people continue to think that, from time to time, family life is in some ways distinct, there will be a need for the practices approach’ (p. 177). It is hard to disagree. This is a valuable book, on two counts. First, it is a rare opportunity to accompany a senior scholar on a journey of reflection on, and critique of his own work. This is a personal journey: as noted earlier, one of the book’s pleasures is Morgan’s conversation with himself on a variety of issues as the book unfolds. It is also personal, as he points out, in terms of the body of work he incorporates into his discussion. To his own disclosure of possible bias in the selection of his illustrative material must be added the note that it is heavily oriented to British and to a lesser extent European research. This may in part reflect the places where the family practices approach is familiar. This then leads to the second reason why the book is valuable: it will introduce the family practices approach to a broader field of scholars.