While the ‘spatial turn’ within the social sciences has already nurtured a broad discussion of the relation between society and space, little attention has so far been paid to the question of what we can learn about families when exploring space in its different facets. This book brings together international authors from the fields of sociology, human geography, and anthropology to support the development of space-sensitive and de-territorialised perspectives on the family that reach beyond classical concepts such as the ‘household’ or the ‘nuclear family’. With close attention to the implications of differing relations to space for the social fabric of families, it presents studies of theoretical, methodological, and empirical aspects of late-modern family life. Examining the meaning of absence and presence for parenting, the aesthetic, and sensual dimensions of everyday family life, and its digital and media-related features aspects, Family and Space considers the value of a range of approaches to researching the spatial elements of family life, including ethnographic accounts, interviews, group discussions, mobile methods, and network analyses.
"1. Introduction: Rethinking Family and Space in Mobile Times Part 1: Understanding Family and Space: Theories and Concepts 2. Co-presence and Family. A Discussion of a Sociological Category and Conceptual Considerations 3. Parenthood as a Symbolic Order. The Perspective of the Sociology of Knowledge and Discourse Theory 4. Between Things. Situating (Post-)Migration and Material Culture in Social Space 5. Space and the Intersection of Gender, Work and Family. Recent Currents in US Scholarship Part 2: Space-Sensitive Research on Family and Identity: Methodology and Methods 6. Notions of Space and Family. The Documentary Method Approach to Analyse Communication about Family Life 7. Social Relations, Space, and Place. Reconstructing Family Networks in the Context of Multi-Local Living Arrangements 8. Multi-Local Family Life. Researching the Commute between Two Worlds Using Video Supported Mobile Participant Observation 9. Sensory Encounters and Mobile Technologies. Mundane Intimacies as a Site for Knowing Part 3: Space in Family – Family in Space: Interrelations in the Focus of Empirical Research 10. Falling Pregnant and Space. The Reconstruction of Procreation from a Practice Theory Perspective 11. Mobile Couple Relationships – Arranging Times of Presence and Absence by Means of Mobile ICT 12. Between Convergence and Divergence. Territorialisation Practices within Multi-Local Post-Separation Families 13. Living in Two Homes. Spatial Appropriation and Spatial Constructions by Children in Post-Separation Multi-Local Families 14. A Room with a Vacuum. Spatial Perceptions and Appropriations of Children’s Rooms in the Context of Shared Residence 15. Fatherhood Post-Separation: Practicing Fathering from a Distance and in Brief Co-present Phases 16. ""How Can I Be at Home Again?"" Family (Dis)Continuities Concerning Polish Remigration in the Context of Digital Communication Technologies 17. The Playground and the Pub. About the Merging of Age-Specific Urban Domains into Family Space 18. The ‘Authentic’ Family. On the Aesthetic Representation of Family and Living Spaces in Mom Lifestyle Blogs 19. Conclusion: Opening Space for Family Studies"
Maya Halatcheva-Trapp is a postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Educational Science, Psychology and Sociology at TU Dortmund University, Germany. Giulia Montanari is an independent researcher based in Munich, Germany and Puebla, Mexico. Tino Schlinzig is a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Technische Universitat Dresden, Germany.
