Famille / Familles : Difficiles et mouvantes typologies

La diversité actuelle des comportements familiaux pose pour les sociologues et les démographes la difficile question du classement de ces comportements en modèles structurés, c'est-à-dire la construction de typologies cohérentes. Après avoir rappelé quelques étapes marquantes de l'élaboration des typologies de la famille, nous illustrons les difficultés auxquelles se heurte la recherche lorsqu’il s’agit de construire une typologie basée sur des données empiriques. Nous essayons de montrer, à travers des exemples tirés d’enquêtes effectuées à Liège en 1984, 1985 et 1986, comment une mosaïque de situations et de pratiques très diversifiées renvoie à des dynamiques familiales spécifiques, où le temps (biographique et historique) devient une donnée fondamentale.The actual diversity in family behaviours is not an easy matter for sociologists and demographers faced with sorting out these behaviours into structured models, i.e. coherent typologies. Following the illustration of a number of notable steps taken in the elaboration of family typologies, we will show the difficulties faced by researchers trying to build up a typology based on empirical data. We will endeavour to show, with examples taken from surveys conducted in Liege in 1984, 1985 and 1986, how a mosaic of highly diversified situations and practices refers to specific family dynamics, where time (biographical and historical) becomes a fundamental datun.La diversidad actual de conductas familiares plantea a sociólogos y demógrafos el problema difícil de organizarlas en modelos estructurados, en tipologías coherentes. Después de recordar algunos hitos en la elaboración de tipologías de la familia, el artículo ilustra las dificultades de la investigación que trata de construír una tipología sobre datas empíricos. A partir de encuestas efectuadas en Lieja en 1984, 1985 y 1986, el artículo muestra como un mosaico de situaciones y de prácticas muy diversas refiere a dinámicas familiares específicas, donde el tiempo, tanto bibliográfico como histórico, ocupa una posición determinante

Drawing Belgium: Using Mental Maps to Measure Territorial Conflict

Governing divided Belgium is not an easy affair. Traditional tools of political research have provided insights about the dynamics of Belgian federalism but they have fallen short in exploring the territorial dimension of the conflict and its political representations within the population. Mental maps, scarcely used hitherto by political scientists, offer an innovative research tool to dig into territorial conflict dynamics since they aim at capturing the mental representation an individual has of a given object or space through the materialization of their representation with a drawing. This article discusses drawings of Belgium made by over 5000 first year higher education students in this country. The drawings confirm the importance of the two most prominent—and thus symbolic—elements of the territorial conflict in Belgium: the internal language border and the position of Brussels. In triangulation with responses to a questionnaire collected simultaneously, the analyses show that differences between the two language groups in Belgium are not very high, but that opposed visions on the country are reflected by those who exclusively identify themselves with Belgium or with Flanders. We state that if used with caution to ensure both internal and external validity, mental maps can prove to be an innovative but robust research tool for the study of territorial conflict broadly speaking. Because of their flexibility and their openness, mental maps capture the shortcuts citizens use to forge their political and territorial representation of their country

Currently cohabiting: relationship attitudes, expectations and outcomes

This study uses prospective data from the British Household Panel Survey to analyse individuals’ relationship expectations and subsequent outcomes between 1998 and 2005. How do relationship expectations differ by age, sex, previous relationship history and parenthood? How do attitudes towards cohabitation differ by age, sex, previous relationship history and parenthood? Prospective data are particularly well suited to answering these questions as the relationship expectations are collected whilst the subjective state exists, allowing systematic empirical investigation of social change