From Function to Competence: Engaging with the New Politics of Family

Abstract

This paper argues for a critical reclaiming of family and highlights the risks associated with decentring such a powerful and pervasive concept. Influential critiques of family as an organising category are considered in the context of a contemporary trend towards reorienting it within broader studies foregrounding personal and intimate realms of human connectedness. It is suggested that while concepts of personal lives and intimacy have much to offer they can not capture the full range and nature of relations raised through the lens of family. In particular the political consequences of subsuming family within wider approaches are set out through reference to a new public politics of family in which emphasis is placed less on structure and function, and more on knowledge and competence. Through an exploration of the key changes characterising this shift a case is made for retaining family (alongside intimacy and personal life) as a flexible, enduring and necessary sociological framework.