'It's Made a Huge Difference': Recognition, Rights and the Personal Significance of Civil Partnership

In this paper we map briefly some of the arguments around the meaning and significance of the introduction of Civil Partnership in England and Wales, and in this way show how contested these meanings are with some groups profoundly against this legal reform and others supporting it, but for a mixture of reasons. We then turn to our empirical data based on interviews with same-sex couples to explore the extent to which these arguments and issues are part of the everyday decision making processes of same sex couples who have decided to register their partnerships or to undergo a commitment ceremony of some kind. In doing this, we were interested in how people make their own meanings (if they do) and whether they actually frame important decisions in their lives around the ideas that are part of the current political debates. We are interested in whether the public debates (such as legal equality) are featured in the accounts of our interviewees but we are also concerned to reveal whether other issues are important to same sex couples when they decide to have their relationship publicly recognised in some way. We found for example that while equality and legal rights were important, love, commitment and respect from wider family featured just as strongly in people\'s accounts.Civil Partnership, Same-Sex Relationships, Marriage, Law Reform

Losing the Struggle for Another Voice: The Case of Family Law

This paper is based on empirical work in progress concerning co-parenting and the ways in which mothers and fathers organize the care of children after separation. It deals with two foundational issues: Gilligan\u27s concept of another voice and its congruence with recent developments in family law in the United Kingdom and otherdeveloped countries including Canada and the United States. The author concludes that the ethic of care incorporated in the British legislation and given some expression in the judicial system does not fully recognize two kinds of caring. There is caring about and caring for. The caring about of fathers for children is generally lauded. The caring for of mothers for children is ignored or denigrated. The new legislation also adopts as its paradigm the good parent as being the one who concedes and who does not require state intervention. In a specific case study, the author demonstrates that the new legislation can operate to deny the existence and effects of spousal violence against a woman and her child

Reflections on methods: Contemporary challenges for sociological approaches

Sociology has long been a fruitful disciplinary field for feminist work and, in turn, feminism has contributed a great deal to Sociology both substantively and methodologically. Feminisms’ early challenges to positivistic and male-oriented methods were crucial in positioning qualitative methods and particularly the in-depth interview as central to the discipline. In this paper I shall acknowledge this heritage, but will suggest that there are new challenges to the methodological strategies and codes that have been established over the last couple of decades. In particular qualitative research in sociology has begun to recognise the limitation of the typical in-depth interview and also to some extent the limits involved in a strategy of merely giving ‘voice’ to experience. The emphasis on linear narrative is increasingly recognized as limiting and as flattening out the range of things that matter to people in their everyday life. There is a greater understanding of the importance of the intangible. This might mean the invisible connections between people revealed in looks or particular expressions more than in words. Or the intangible might exist in the significance of memory or even in aspirations for the future. It is, in part, the realm of the imaginary, but it is more than this because it is personal and not solely cultural, and it exists ‘in between’ people and not simply within the person. Of course amongst these facets of everyday life that research has not really grasped and/or reflected have been emotions and feelings. While the latter may have featured much in feminist work elsewhere, within sociology feminist work still struggles to deal with emotions. In this paper I shall explore a number of these issues and will draw on research projects in which I have been closely involved. (These will include interviews with lesbians in long-term/ committed relationships and interviews with children.) Through these I shall discuss the value of different emergent methods such as visual elicitation, the focus on relationships and relationality through interviews and other devices, and also the renewed attention to both listening and writing. I shall argue that although it is possible to benefit from incorporating new devices and strategies in the research process, what we hear people say is still influenced by theoretical frameworks which may induce forms of deafness. In addition, how we write what we hear/understand may still be constrained by disciplinary protocols which cannot (yet?) accommodate more innovative forms of expression

Disciplined Writing: On the problem of writing sociologically

Any form of writing is a disciplined activity because, even if one enjoys the process, it requires dedication, self-criticism, background research and the ability to create a comprehensible, readable form or shape from (often) ill-disciplined thoughts. But in addition to this, as a sociologist, it is necessary to write within the literary and scientific conventions of a specific discipline. It is not easy to know exactly what the rules of the discipline of sociology are however. Different journals have different conventions. Books may have much greater freedom of expression – but not if you are a ‘junior’ academic and even there the peer reviewing of manuscripts can be very rule bound. Theoretical writing can offer some freedoms too but it seems only if the writer takes refuge in (relative) incomprehensibility. But writing with qualitative data imposes a different set of requirements or discipline. In this paper I consider the difficulties we face trying to write differently with these kinds of data and I will critically review my own attempt to meld together different forms of data in order to produce a sociological story which is still recognisably sociological but which may also produce different kinds of stories and engage with different imaginations

Disciplined Writing: On the problem of writing sociologically

Any form of writing is a disciplined activity because, even if one enjoys the process, it requires dedication, self-criticism, background research and the ability to create a comprehensible, readable form or shape from (often) ill-disciplined thoughts. But in addition to this, as a sociologist, it is necessary to write within the literary and scientific conventions of a specific discipline. It is not easy to know exactly what the rules of the discipline of sociology are however. Different journals have different conventions. Books may have much greater freedom of expression – but not if you are a ‘junior’ academic and even there the peer reviewing of manuscripts can be very rule bound. Theoretical writing can offer some freedoms too but it seems only if the writer takes refuge in (relative) incomprehensibility. But writing with qualitative data imposes a different set of requirements or discipline. In this paper I consider the difficulties we face trying to write differently with these kinds of data and I will critically review my own attempt to meld together different forms of data in order to produce a sociological story which is still recognisably sociological but which may also produce different kinds of stories and engage with different imaginations