"Collective Voices around Partnering and Parenting"
1-2 November 2002

Collective Interventions on the Terrain of Care and Intimacy: The CAVA Project

Fiona Williams, Sasha Roseneil, Greg Martin
(CAVA)

Please do not quote without permission

(First presented at WORLD CONGRESS OF SOCIOLOGY, 7- 13 JULY 2002, Brisbane. Joint Session of RC 19 and RC 47: Social Movements and Social Policy)

Introduction

At the beginning of the 21^st century public culture in Britain is characterized by what seems to be an ever greater cacophony of voices speaking out on issues of care and intimacy. Politicians and policy-makers, the growing `third sector' of voluntary organizations, activists in grass-roots campaigns and self-help groups, and individuals who appear on mid-morning television talk shows, are all engaging in vigorous public discussion of the politics and ethics of parenting and partnering. Their interventions, which show no sign of abating, have moved issues which used to be considered personal and private on to centre stage of contemporary civic life and political debate.

This paper comes out of ongoing research conducted by the authors on `collective voices around partnering and parenting', and it offers an early and tentative discussion of how it might be possible to understand the complex social and political context within which these interventions are taking place. We begin with a brief description of aims and scope of the research project, and outline its methodology, before moving on to explore the different dimensions of a framework within which the politics of parenting, partnering and welfare in contemporary Britain might be analysed. This framework draws on bodies of literature from within the disciplines of sociology and social policy, bringing together perspectives on social welfare and social policy, and on social movements and other forms of collective action - the concerns of RC19 and RC 47.

The Project: Collective Voices on Parenting and Partnering

This project is part of a wider five-year study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council on changes in parenting and partnering and the implications of these for future social policies in the UK. We are using the focus on parenting and partnering as a lens through which to examine two areas of social change: the process of welfare reform and resettlement, and transformations in our social and cultural lives. One aim is to develop a grounded understanding of what matters to people - their values and ethics - in their experiences and practices of care and intimacy. As such, we are concerned to find out what kinds of moral grammar/ vocabulary exist around such practices. The background to this is that, on the one hand, much has changed in the dominant gender, sexual and ethnic ordering of Britain since the post-war welfare state was created, which poses significant challenges to the administrative, normative and cultural frame of welfare citizenship - changing patterns and conditions of work for both men and women, increases in divorce and single parenting and long-term partnerships outside of marriage, increased diversity of forms of sexual/ love relationships, demographic changes, increases in migrations and permanent settlement, greater ethnic and cultural diversity. On the other hand, the welfare reforms being introduced are not simply the result of a changed economic and political climate, they also involve an explicit (in Tony Blair's case) attempt at the moral re-ordering of society. For example, policies that reinforce the work ethic as the duty of a welfare citizen have been central to many of New Labour's reforms (Williams, 1999, 2001).

Central to our thinking and methodology is an idea of people as creative moral agents and that the study of morality/ values is not simply about abstract principles, as articulated through religion, philosophy or law, but is something that is worked out in concrete situations and relationships. In this sense we are interested, initially at least, not so much in 'what works?' (as the dominant mantra of contemporary New Labour politics in Britian has it) as in 'what matters?' This is being studied through five empirical projects, based in particular localities sampled on the basis of a geography of family formations, and is using intensive and qualitative methods. Four of the projects are each studying an aspect of social change significant for relations of care and intimacy. These are:

• Mothers, Care and Employment
• Divorce and Separation
• Transnational Kinship
• Friendships and Non-Conventional Partnerships

The fifth project is the subject of this paper and is a study of the 'moral' claims, positions and challenges articulated by national and local voluntary organisations in the areas of parenting and partnering. These voluntary organisations include a range of big national charities, advocacy groups, campaign groups, pressure groups and mutual aid and self-help groups. (We also included trade unions in our study - see below). The rationale for this study turns, on the one hand, upon the growing significance of activities in the voluntary sector characterised by the growth, since the 1970s, of such groups focused upon both claims of recognition (Williams 1989, 1999; Leonard 1997)) and the articulation of user interests within welfare services (Beresford and Turner 1996), as well as by the introduction of contracts and partnerships between the voluntary sector and the state in the provision of services (Harris and Rochester, 2001). On the other hand, at a more theoretical level, the breakdown of traditional forms of social stratification, rationalist bureaucracies and the political alignments and social identities which were constituted by them, and the mobilization of new interests and identities, is seen to give rise to new possibilities for social and political action (Offe 1987; Habermas 1981, 1987; Beck 1992). Thus, it is argued, the social reflexivity of late modernity produces "an energetic society" (Giddens 1995:86) characterised by a proliferation of social movements, pressure groups, campaigning organisations and self-help groups - a new form of 'sub politics". (Others have countered this - ref Bowling Alone). Further, it has been suggested that these movements and groups are engaged in the construction of new ways of thinking and new forms of social relations, and give expression to new collective identities (Eyerman and Jamison 1991; Roseneil 1995). For example, some (but by no means all) groups have begun to resist their portrayal as inadequate families, incompetent parents or invalid partners (e.g. disabled people, `lone' mothers, lesbians and gay men, `absent' fathers, minority ethnic families) and to assert the right to respect and recognition. So our aim in this project is to explore how far, and in what ways, these collectivities are seeking to shape the moral ordering of `family` life.

A further rationale for this project is that the values associated with care and intimacy have most commonly been studied in relation to the practices of 'family life'. In common with the Friendships and Non-Conventional Partnerships Project (Roseneil, 2000a and b; Roseneil and Budgeon, 2002) this study is concerned to locate practices and values about care and intimacy which operate in civil society but may well be outside the conventionally defined 'family'- those spaces which are located at the interstices of "public" and "private", in the relatively untheorised spaces between "family", "community" and "state"/"nation". In relation to care, the significance and the changes in localised non-familial relationships of reciprocity, beneficence and self-help was starting to be mapped by Philip Abrams and colleagues in studies done in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Department of Health, 1989). Using the term 'neighbourhood care' they noted the change over the post-war period in motivations for informal extra-familial care and support from one based upon the vicissitudes of insecurity, isolation and hardship to one based upon choice, mutual interest and reciprocity.

Our original research questions were:

• What collective welfare claims and welfare practices are emerging from social movements and self-help groups in late modernity?
• To what extent, and in what ways, do these groups challenge social policy practices and provision?
• To what extent do their claims and practices represent new normative values in relation to partnering and parenting?
• How far do such claims and practices challenge traditional normative values about partnering and parenting?
• To what extent do these groups represent competing and irreconcilable claims, and to what extent may universal principles exist?
• What are the implications of these claims and practices for future welfare provision and practice?

Methodology

The findings of this research come from qualitative data derived from semi-structured interviews conducted with over fifty voluntary organisations, trade unions and grassroots groups in the UK. (We are in the process of analysing this data). One of our aims initially was to discover the diversity of collective voices around parenting and partnering in the UK. Thus, an exploratory mapping exercise was carried out to try to ascertain the range of claims being made by various groups and organisations at national, regional and local level. These were then mapped onto an annotated table and grouped according to the issues that each organisation represents. The list of groups included in this mapping exercise was gathered from a range of sources including directories and the Internet. The mapping exercise was by no means exhaustive but it did provide us with an indication of the kinds of groups that were out there raising issues and campaigning around parenting and partnering. From this mapping exercise we selected the national voluntary organisations part of our sample.

Along with national voluntary organisations we also wished to research trade unions and grassroots organisations (e.g. self-help, support and community groups) both of which can be regarded as part of the voluntary sector (Kendall and Knapp, 1996: 17-24). As ours is a bottom-up approach, in which we are particularly interested in new and emerging voices, we developed a wedge-shaped sample whereby we would look at a larger number of grassroots groups than national voluntary organisations and a smaller number still of trade unions. Sampling in the trade union sector was done by employment sector, and at least one union was selected from each sector, e.g. general, telecommunications, manufacturing, professional, health. Initially, unstructured telephone interviews were carried out with officials (e.g. policy and research officers) working for almost all of the trade unions in the UK in order to determine which unions were more actively involved in campaigning around issues of partnering and parenting (such as work-life balance, "family-friendly employment", equal work-related benefits for lesbian and gay partners), and we sought to include in our sample a number of unions which had a particular interest in these issue.

We do not present any research associated with trade unionism in this paper but the inclusion of trade unions in our research was considered important because demands about work-life balance, which are being strongly articulated within the union sector, constitute a key mobilizing discourse in contemporary interventions around partnering and parenting. In the context of the marginalization and disempowerment of the unions from the 1980s onwards in Britain, and the changes that have taken place in the workforce, including casualization and feminisation, work-based politics around care have generated, and been generated by, a new politics of time in workplace bargaining, which presents both pitfalls and possibilities for women. As Jane Pillinger explains (Pillinger, 2000a), in Europe the greater scope for bargaining around time is a consequence of the link between pay and productivity being broken in the private sector, and shrinking public expenditure budgets providing limited opportunities for advantageous pay bargaining in the public sector. For male employees it is no longer feasible to argue for a 'family wage' but it is more acceptable to press for 'family time'. This focus on time has provided the opportunities for women (particularly in the Netherlands and Sweden) to demand a restructuring of work in ways which redistribute working and care time between men and women. Pillinger argues that new forms of time flexibility which benefit women, rather than reinforcing job insecurity and care/work incompatibility, appear to work best when developed as part and parcel of local strategies which integrate issues of work, time, care, space and welfare services, such as the 'Time in the City' projects in Italy, where they are 'rooted in the decentralisation of services, the articulation of user demands and imaginative responses to improved delivery of services and the very operation of cities. Likewise, experiments on the redistribution and reorganisation of time, the use of time banking and of lifetime working hours suggest a trend towards more individualised solutions and choices in working time.' (Pillinger, 2000, p.334).

During preliminary analysis of the research interviews conducted with key informants (e.g. chief and deputy-chief executives, policy officers, researchers, information officers) working for national voluntary organisations, we discovered that issues which we conceive as being about `parenting and partnering' are often publicly expressed through a discourse of concern about children and child welfare. We therefore decided to include in our sample the big five children's charities (Barnardos, The Children's Society, NCH Action for Children, NSPCC, Save the Children) which are the organisations most explicitly addressing concerns about children, in part to explore how they may be setting agendas of debate around parenting and partnering. We interviewed key individuals from the big five charities including one chief executive, a public policy officer, two regional officers and a research and development officer. After we had carried out the research into national voluntary organisations and trade unions we generated a sample of grassroots groups based in the localities on which the wider research programme is focused (see Duncan 2000a, b, c) using, amongst other things, local networks, community workers and local voluntary action directories. One of the reasons for focusing on groups in the CAVA localities was that we wanted to see whether the issues being raised and the levels of participation in self-help, support and campaigning was related to the `gender and family conventionality' of the different localities. In our research on local groups we have aimed to explore submerged and emergent collective voices around issues of parenting and partnering, and to study groups `of' `parents' and `partners', as well as those `for' `parents' and `partners', which are more characteristic of the large national voluntary organizations. We also wanted to a focus on groups and networks that have a looser, more fluid, perhaps more transient, formation than what might be regarded as typical of voluntary organisations. Some of the grassroots groups were included also because the issues they were raising and campaigning around we believed to be important yet had not been included in the national voluntary sector part of the sample, e.g. twins and multiple births and ADHD. On the other hand, where it was possible, some issues replicated the national part of the sample so that we could see how they were played out in a local context.

Falling between Theoretical Stools

We have found some difficulty in attempting to locate our study within a single theoretical, empirical or analytical body of work. This is partly because our research questions seek to bring together the changes in three different social phenomena: the politics of the third sector (as represented by the groups in our sample); changes and challenges in parenting and partnering; and theories of social and cultural transformations which speak to both the mobilisation within the third sector and changes in parenting and partnering (see figure 1). At least six different areas within the sociological and social policy (and politics) literatures are relevant to this triangle, yet each only partially provides us with an analytical lead. Our aim in this paper is to explore this in order to draw out some points of articulation between these different areas that help us cast some sort of analytical net over the integrity of our study. The relevant areas we explore (these are not exhaustive) which link together the three axes of our triangle are:

• in relation to literature on social and cultural transformations which is relevant to both the changing political context of voluntary organisation mobilisation and parenting and partnering:
• the social movements literature,
• theoretical literature on governmentality, as well as specific analyses of New Labour and governance
• and the sociological literature on social change and individualisation.

• In relation to the changing context and mobilisation of voluntary organisations:
• the social policy literature on voluntary organisations
• and the sociology/politics literature on associational democracy

• And, since we need also to understand what it is that is being challenged by claims around partnering and parenting (if at all), then we look also to:
• the literature on New Labour and family policy.

The following attempt to pull out relevant insights, however, works across these areas rather than in the order above.

Fig.1

Social and Cultural Transformations Voluntary Organisations

Analyses of Contemporary Social and Cultural Transformation

The backdrop to our study is the complex pattern of contemporary transformations in the social formation. These have been characterized in recent sociological discussions as processes of individualization, reflexive modernization and detraditionalization (Bauman, 2001; Beck, 1992; Beck and Beck- Gernsheim, 1995, 2002; Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994; Heelas et al, 1996), and liquefaction (Bauman, 2000). These processes have implications in terms of both the social organization of parenting and partnering and for the possibilities of public, political intervention around these issues.

There is now a substantial body of literature which takes as its starting point the belief that we are living through a period of intense and profound social change in the sphere of intimacy. In the context of a wider argument about the undoing of patriarchalism, Castells (1997) suggests that the patriarchal family is under intense challenge. In a not dissimilar vein, Giddens's (1992) argument about the `transformation of intimacy' and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim's (1995; 2002) work on the changing meanings and practices of love and family relationships posit the idea that in the contemporary world processes of individualization and de-traditionalization and increased self-reflexivity are opening up new possibilities and expectations in heterosexual relationships. With a (rather cursory) nod in the direction of feminist scholarship and activism, their work recognizes the significance of the shifts in gender relations consequent particularly on the changed consciousness and identities which women have developed in the wake of the women's liberation movement. Giddens considers the transformation of intimacy which he sees as currently in train to be of `great, and generalizable, importance' (1992:2). He charts the changes in the nature of marriage which are constituted by the emergence of the `pure relationship', characterized by "confluent love", a relationship of sexual and emotional equality between men and women, and he links this with the development of `plastic sexuality', which is freed from `the needs of reproduction' (1991:2). He identifies lesbians and gay men as `pioneers' in the pure relationship and plastic sexuality, and hence at the forefront of processes of individualization and de-traditionalization. Beck and Beck Gernsheim argue that "the ethic of individual self-fulfilment and achievement is the most powerful current in modern society" (2002:22), and the desire to be "a deciding, shaping human being who aspires to be the author of his/ her life" is giving rise to unprecedented changes in the shape of family life. Family membership shifts from being a given, to a matter of choice, and as social ties become reflexive, and as individualization increasingly characterizes relations among members of the same family, we are moving into a world of the "post-familial family" (Beck-Gernsheim, 1999). Roseneil (2000) has extended these analyses of individualization and the transformation of intimacy to argue that the sexual organization of the social is also undergoing significant change, as the homosexual/ heterosexual binary, which marks the modern sexual order, is destabilized.

Contributors to this body of work offer differing prognoses about the impact of these processes of social change on the possibilities for collective action. At the pessimistic end of the spectrum Bauman (1999; 2000; 2001) suggests that we are now entering the era of the individual rather than that of the citizen. In `liquid modernity' and the `individualized society' of the present, although individuals experience similar troubles, these troubles are `non-additive', and are `not amenable to `summing up' into a `common cause'; there are no more collective projects, beyond the reassurance that is to be gained by the company of fellow sufferers. Bauman's analysis of the contemporary suggests little possibility for collective interventions of any sort beyond the formation of self-help support groups, although it should be noted that in other texts (1993; 1995) he strikes what could be read as a more optimistic note, in arguing that the postmodern condition gives rise, of necessity, to a turn to ethics. In contrast, the work of Beck (1992) and Beck and Beck Gernsheim's ( 2002), which places a similar significance on processes of individualization, grants an important place in its analysis to the development of the sphere of `subpolitics', a space in which agents outside the conventionally defined political system engage in the redesign of the social. Although the political structure is becoming increasingly fragmented, they point to the forceful demands which exist in contemporary society for self-determination and participation, and suggest that political involvement is actually increasing at `microcosmic level' and that `subpolitical society is governed from below in more and more issues and fields of action' (2002:29). What characterizes an individualized society in which `living a life of one's own' and living a reflexive life are imperatives it is impossible to escape, are forms of subpolitical engagement in which `thinking of oneself and living for others, once considered a contradiction in terms, is revealed as an internal connection' (2002:28). They propose the birth of `new "we" orientations' which create `something like a co-operative or altruistic individualism' (2002:28), in which individuals join together to construct a politics around the defence of life as a personal project. They also point to how people are forced into political and social alliances and temporary coalitions at points when their isolated, privatised lives are shattered by individually experienced social risks. The more optimistic possibilities suggested by their work echoes that of Giddens (1991; 1994), for whom the reflexivity of social movements organized around `life politics' continue to be of great significance.

This body of work outlines the major social transformations with which our research is concerned, and suggests radically divergent analyses of the political formations of an individualized society. Part of our task in the project is, therefore, to bring together the analysis of transformations in the sphere of intimacy and the analysis of the political in the contemporary individualized, detraditionalized, reflexive world, to seek to contribute to an understanding of the possibilities of, and limitations, on collective interventions around issues of parenting and partnering.

The Study of Social Movements

Policy approaches to social movements have tended to focus on the political impact of movements or how their action leads to legislative change (Martin, 2001). Thus, while she acknowledges the cultural and social effects of movements, Charles (2000: 68) focuses on the way in which feminist movements have pressed the state to change social policy. Indeed, the cultural and symbolic challenges of social movements are often regarded as an unintended consequence of collective action (Giugni, 1999), although there is a growing body of work that considers this dimension of welfare. For instance, Taylor (1998) urges social policy scholars to examine not only material conditions and structural inequalities but also the 'welfare discourses' and discursive regulation that surround welfare subjects which have a direct effect on policy implementation.

Traditionally, social policy has also focused on issues of redistribution. Recently, however, Williams (1999) has challenged this arguing that we must include struggles for recognition. This means that we ought to view social movements as 'bivalent' (Fraser, 1995) since they are about struggles over distribution and recognition. In order to incorporate struggles for the recognition of difference into our analyses we need to move away from top-down approaches and the 'false universalism' that dominated previous approaches and consider instead the diversity of claims and voices that are articulated by various service users and grassroots groups that operate at the level of civil society and are thus not necessarily engaged in state politics.

In social movement studies, theorists such as Melucci (1989) have attempted to demonstrate the contemporary significance of the cultural and symbolic struggles of 'new' social movements [short footnote + refs on the debate about the novelty of NSMs?]. As in social policy, social movement studies tended to focus on the political aspects of movements and concentrated on issues of structural inequality and material redistribution. However, during the 1980s, Melucci and others in the field showed how a variety of movements had emerged that eschewed conventional politics and (welfare) state institutions and were interested in retaining their independence and autonomy or sustaining an oppositional culture (see Carroll and Ratner, 2001). These collective actors can now be found in civil society and consist of subterranean networks of people and groups embedded in everyday life. By living out various alternative lifestyles and subcultural identities these movements challenge the homogenising logic of 'complex society' (Melucci, 1989: 11-12) and ask that their difference be recognised and respected.

In her work on women's postpartum self-help movements in the States, Verta Taylor (1999) addresses many issues to do with social movements, welfare and social policy that interest us here in this paper. She argues that self-help movements are concerned with the redistribution of power but are also 'heavily cultural and revolve around disputed meanings and contested identities' (Taylor and Van Willigen, 1996: 128). Moreover, she shows how these postpartum movements not only challenge gender relations and institutional practices but also influence policy. Thus, women's support groups exist in submerged networks that exemplify a better way of organising society; they encourage the husbands of women with postpartum depression to participate in housework and childcare; they challenge gender inequality by targeting the logics of social institutions such as medicine, law and the family; and they raise questions that have implications for the provision of social care in society.

Taylor's focus on 'care' has immediate and obvious relevance for our research. However, her social movement perspective is especially significant for us here in this paper as it gives credibility to self-help/mutual aid as a form of social protest that can influence policy where so often it is seen as an apolitical form of identity politics (Taylor and Van Willigen, 1996: 125). The other work we have discussed around collective action in social movement studies and social policy also provides relevant theoretical and analytical insights. This is because it enables us to move beyond a definition of policy and politics that focuses only on the labour movement's struggle with the state over material distribution through trade unionism. While we do not disregard this as an important ongoing social conflict in contemporary Britain we also believe it important to examine the increasingly significant role being played by collective actors that are not engaged in 'traditional' forms of politics and are not included in service provision. This is why (new) social movement theory is relevant because it helps us to think about how various voluntary organisations and grassroots groups are now engaging in new forms of politics and making claims around parenting and partnering and how these might have implications for welfare, support and social policy in contemporary Britain. Finally, while these groups and organisations must still connect their voices and claims to 'institutionally immanent possibilities' (Giddens, 1991: 155), it seems, as we describe below, that the nature of this relationship has changed with the emergence of New Labour as it entails a more explicitly democratic engagement through partnership, consultation, participation and 'active citizenship'. Our task is therefore to see whether these groups are being recognised and their voices not just heard but listened to.

The Study of Voluntary Organisations

Within the disciplines of social policy and management studies, the study of voluntary organisations in the UK has gained ground over the last twenty-five years, and particularly, over the last decade. The Wolfenden Report of 1978 on The Future of Voluntary Organisations sealed the importance of these organisations as a third sector of welfare activity alongside the state and the market, constituting an important link with a fourth area, the informal sector of welfare provision - by family, friends and neighbours. The subsequent development of a mixed economy of welfare through the New Right government and, with it, the development of a 'contract culture' (along with the decline of municipalisation) gave new importance to voluntary organisations, especially the larger, more formal organisations, whilst also establishing the conditions in which they were to change. This was followed by New Labour's 'partnership' approach which has extended the scope and nature of the public sector/ state sector relationship to one of both service provision and consultation at national and local level. The bonus of increased funding has been accompanied by the regulation of voluntary organisations and the requirement for them to be more efficient and accountable. For the more formal end of the sector this shift has been described as moving from 'doing good' to 'doing well' (Tonkiss and Passey , 2001 ).

Two of the main concerns in the study of voluntary organisations within the discipline of social policy have been how to define and classify the plethora of organisations constituting the voluntary sector, and, unsurprisingly, to provide an assessment of the implications of the policy changes. For example, in relation to the second, Nicholas Deakin's analysis of the effects of changes on the voluntary sector concern itself with whether or not the new conditions for the sector allow for greater involvement of service users. Under the New Right, Deakin's assessment was that while the new role given to the sector had probably increased efficiency and quality of services, it had not given users any greater 'voice'. In other words, users had been granted a place as 'consumers' rather than as 'active citizens' (Deakin, 1996). By 1998 New Labour had introduced the 'National Compact' which acknowledged a wider importance to voluntary organisations not only in terms of service delivery, but also their role as advocacy and campaigning movements and, through this, their capacity to advise on policy at local and national levels. This movement has signalled different approaches to the voluntary sector which place its organisations and practices more firmly within a civil society/democracy rather than a simply a social policy paradigm. This approach has been influenced, too, by developments in EU policy-making in which there has been a shift from governance through the dyad of 'social partners' (based on the corporatist model of the state and the trade unions) to a conception of the 'civil dialogue' which involves the larger NGOs and associations of civil society as a third partner. Although these shifts mark out the importance of voluntary organisations they have given rise to new concerns about how far the conditions imposed for partnership with central and local government may undermine those very characteristics of the voluntary sector that give it its innovatory and democratic role. Thus, Deakin suggests that too much evaluation and measurement of its efficiency could weaken the voluntary sector's capacity for responsiveness to needs which inevitably render its activities unpredictable; and he warns against an over-rational, formalistic local governance which fails to connect with, or trust to, the chaos and instability of voluntary organisations at the local level (Deakin, 2001).

Marilyn Taylor examines the processes of the incorporation into policy-making of voluntary organisations further in terms of the play of power and influence (Taylor, 2001). While she acknowledges the potential for voluntary organisations to put policy inot practice, she reports that there have been difficulties to date in terms of power-sharing as power tends to be loaded with the statutory sector by virtue of its hold over agenda setting and policy development. She identifies a preoccupation with formalism, the framing of issues and procedures in the discourses and practices of the statutory sector, and a resistance to alternative ways of doing things. Constraints on time work against the proper representational processes of reporting back and discussion with constituencies, and attempts to reach unity do not allow for differences or conflicts to be aired or for new thinking to emerge. These experiences have led those involved to be suspicious that they do not ultimately have much influence over agendas or decisions: they are peripheral rather than core players. Three key tensions therefore exist: between the demands for accountability and the needs for flexibility and responsiveness; between extensive and time-consuming processes of democratic practice and the intensivity of implementation; and between the diversity of claims and the need for integration at the national policymaking level. Seeing some level of incorporation as inevitable, Taylor recommends careful alliances, an eye to political opportunities, and open communication with 'the less institutionalised and angry' - what has been called the 'Greek chorus' of claims makers (Taylor, 2001, p.105) - as the route to greater influence for voluntary organisations.

Such studies of changes in voluntary organisation illuminate aspects of power in decision-making in local and national government, but they throw only cracks of light on two of the issues with which our project is concerned, that is, how we understand, in both form and substance, the position of voluntary organisations in relation to the mobilisation and impact of what are defined as social movements, and what their claims tell us about social and cultural changes (in our case, around parenting and partnering). At a general level, Williams, for example, has identified the grass roots' campaigns around health and welfare issues as descendants of the social movements of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. She argues that while these political and 'sub political' activities do not and have not constituted a homogeneous movement, nevertheless, together they contributed as profound a political critique of the post-war welfare state as those from the New Right and New Labour. They put on the agenda needs to do with personhood and well-being which expanded the moral repertoire for understanding people's engagement with welfare, and widened the meanings of redistribution, equality, universalism and justice (Williams, 1999). In addition, she suggests that their claims raise the question as to whether it is possible to combine a commitment to universalism in policies whilst respecting a diversity of identities, practices and beliefs. She relates these developments to the debate about the nature of contemporary political movements as representing a politics of 'recognition' and 'redistribution', for they provide us with concrete examples of the ways in which struggles for what have been termed 'recognition' (claims for dignity, respect and personhood in the receipt of welfare provision) are part and parcel of issues of 'redistribution' (claims about unequal distribution of goods and wealth) (see Fraser, 1995, 1997, Honneth, 1995, Taylor, 1994). In other words, campaigns about redistributive issues of who pays and who benefits from welfare programmes have been part and parcel of how services and benefits are delivered and received.

From the critical perspective of the disability movement, Oliver has sought to distinguish between the forms of representation of grass roots, user-led movements and those whose roots generally lie within the charity organisations and are based upon a paternalistic model of speaking on behalf of (rather than as) disabled people (ref and develop). In fact, the two writers referenced above - Deakin and Taylor - do refer briefly to the historical relationship between voluntary organisations and social movements. Taylor refers to 'an inevitable cycle from protest [of the 60s and 70s social movements] to a more co-operative approach to policy influence' (2001, p.96), whilst Deakin (1996), in common with Williams, sees the movements after 1968 as influencing the development of self-help initiatives and campaigns around service provision. The development of some of these organisations as service providers, and the entry of 'soixantehuitards' into public and voluntary sector employment meant the discourses of user-control and participation were carried into them. Indeed, an initial reading of our data confirms the influence of these ideas in many of those who hold high office in the large voluntary organisations and in the organisational practices of smaller, local grass-roots groups.

What also marks voluntary organisations, and has also occupied those that study them, is their diversity and heterogeneity. Thus, how to classify them has itself become a central issue. Here, the distinction made by Oliver (above) of organisations of and for users, appears as just one of many crosscutting differences. Kendall and Knapp (1996) identify at least four different ways of cutting the cake: first, in terms of the sectors which determine the operation of voluntary organisations: governmental sector (e.g. quangos); for-profit sector (e.g. co-ops and friendly societies); sacramental sector; the party political sector; and the informal sector (e.g. community groups). A second set of distinctions covers the 'industry' of which the voluntary organisation is part - e.g. culture and recreation, social services, education, housing, and so on. However, this tends to limit the voluntary organisations to a differentiation based upon service provision, so they add in the social role as to whether the voluntary organisation is a service provider mutual aid, an advocacy, and/or a campaigning organisation. A further distinction can be made in terms of the intended beneficiary. While this is relevant for our sampling strategy (see above) it is not as relevant, analytically speaking, as the discussion by Marshall (1996) based on his choice of four criteria to differentiate voluntary organisations. These are:

• Sector (private, statutory, religious, philanthropic, community).
• The criteria for the allocation of action (economic - who can pay? Legal - who is entitled? Moral - who is deserving? Political - who can mobilise? Social - who belongs?)
• Control of the voluntary organisation (who makes decisions etc.) - the market, government, religious group, providers, beneficiaries, 'culture'?
• Contribution to social change: does not alter inequality/ systemic redistribution/ local redistribution/ empowerment/ social reproduction.

Marshall argues that it is the last of these criteria, which holds the key to understanding, what voluntary organisations are all about (and, as such, comes near to both social movement theories and the issues which concern us). Arguing that the only common factor they hold is their capacity as 'mediating institutions', he says it is through them individuals can have

Marshall's analysis puts a premium on voluntary organisations capacity to broker social change especially in relation to social values, and in this sense, confirms our focus on voluntary organisations as agents of collective claims which may challenge normative assumptions about parenting and partnering. However, he does not say how this may actually happen. How are social values and relationships negotiated? It is not clear, either, in the voluntary organisation literature, what precisely is meant by 'values' for in many discussions, the distinctive values of voluntary organisations are taken to be present in their organising principles, rather than in the claims they make (see, for example, Paton, xxxx).

Billis and Glennerster (1998), in common with Marshall, attempt to go beyond explanations for the existence of voluntary organisations. Instead, they propose a theory of the 'comparative advantage' of voluntary organisations, which rests on the nature of the users' needs and the organisational characteristics of different sector providers. They argue that the state and market share certain organisational characteristics which distinguish them from voluntary organisations: there is a separation of the roles of those who control the organisation and paid workers and service users. However, in voluntary organisations, there is 'stakeholder ambiguity', that is, that the roles of these different groups are not clear-cut and there is significant overlap between them. In relation to particular user groups, they identify four types of disadvantage that might motivate people to seek support: financial disadvantage; personal disadvantage - in that they are unable, because of age or incapacity, to mobilise for their own needs; societal disadvantage, that is, they are one of a group that is 'othered' in society - e.g. living with AIDS, a member of a racialised group, or a stigmatised group for whom there is insufficient voter or politician support or awareness; and community disadvantage where the locality is such that its services are poor and inadequate. Drawing on empirical research they show that people belonging to the last three groups are more likely to find support in the voluntary sector in pursuit of their claims (unless they are a member of the 'personal disadvantage' group who is financially advantaged in which case they might use the private sector). However, the significance of the organisational characteristics is not drawn out in their analysis. Whilst this 'theory of comparative advantage' goes some way in providing evidence that certain types of user groups favour the voluntary sector in meeting their needs, and as such, it may help us frame the particular user basis of the organisations we have interviewed, it does not provide us with an understanding as to why these different types of voluntary activism exist in and of themselves. Is this because the state and the market are becoming narrower in their access or criteria of entitlement, or are there more forms of 'personal', 'societal', or 'community disadvantage'? Is the fact that some groups, for example, disabled people, people with learning difficulties or users of psychiatric services have refused a category of 'personal disadvantage' significant? Does the analysis provided by Williams (1999) that understands these 'disadvantages' not simply as welfare needs but as part of the claims of subaltern groups for the recognition of their equal worth have more leverage for the issues we are investigating?

New Labour and 'Family' Policies

In looking to contextualize that axis of our study which focuses on parenting and partnering, we can turn to, first, analyses of New Labour and family policy. Many of the assessments of New Labour's social policies on parenting and partnering (or family policies as they are more usually called) note their ambiguities, inconsistencies and unevenesses (see Levitas, 1998, Lister, 1999, Williams, 1999, Bell and Binnie, 2000, Land, 2000, McKie, Bowlby and Gregory, 2001, Rake, 2001, Williams, 2001, Barlow, Duncan and James, 2002, Driver and Martell, 2002, Land, 2002). These cluster around New Labour's acknowledgement of familial and sexual diversity which co-exists with its appeal to the superiority of traditional family forms; its remoralising insistencies on family discipline and financial responsibilities of parents for children (as well as children for their older parents) which contrasts with the re-moralising in its approaches to teenage pregnancy (from sexual immorality to social responibility); its acceptance of women's equality rights in relation to paid work compared with the lack of progress in relations to the unequal division of care responsibilities in the home.

Taking the last issue first, much commentary on New Labour focuses upon the fact as Jane Lewis (2001) says, that policies for care have had far less priority than policies for work. There have to date, as Williams points out (2001, see also McKie, Bowlby and Gregory, 2001, Rake, 2001, and Land, 2002), been some important commitments by New Labour around care: the setting up of a National Childcare Strategy and a National Carers Strategy; a promise of one million childcare places by 2003, a range of measures to help working parents from the Treasury, the DTI, DSS, DFEE and DoH (including extended maternity leave and pay and paid paternity leave, and unpaid time off for dependants), a Better Government for Older People initiative, Commissions on Long-term Care and on Disability Rights. However, policies for maternity leave and pay are redressing thirty years of neglect. Britain lags behind the rest of Europe in terms of provisions for working parents; it was the EU rather than New Labour which was behind the part-time and parental leave directives. There has been a reluctance to confront employers about implementation which is patchy across the employment sectors. More significantly, no clear political justification has emerged for these measures other than those associated with the work ethics of productivity and competitiveness. Some measures have been introduced to help get single mothers into work, others to help business retain women workers with skills, others to avoid absenteeism, others to encourage women into the new economy. Thus there exists a fundamental tension between the practical acknowledgement of care and the political privileging of the work ethic.

The principle of paid work has been central to New Labour's welfare reforms, providing the financial imperative to get people 'off welfare and into work', and the moral imperative to turn people into better citizens. Paid work is presented as the first responsibility of citizenship, as the route out of dependency into independence and economic self-sufficiency, as the solution to poverty (in the case of the New Deal for Lone Parents), as the point of connection that individuals have to the wider society, as the role model to offer children (both for mothers and for fathers), and as the glue that binds society together. Paid work is also the condition of eligibility to a new range of benefits such as the Working Families Tax Credit.

It is in this larger scenario of citizenship as a set of responsibilities in exchange for rights that the family enters in its more traditional form. Strong and stable families are seen to be the basis for strong and cohesive communities which in turn are to be the basis for a strong, unified, economically efficient and modern nation (Ministerial Group on the Family, 1998, Green Paper Supporting Families, 1998). Strong and stable families according to Supporting Families preferably have two married parents. Thus, the 'Family-Work-Nation' triad (Williams, 1989) which underpins welfare policy takes both a new and not-so-new form. It is new in its explicitness about support and intervention for family life, particularly parenting life (Land, 2000). This has included (as noted above) financial support for children, strategies to develop childcare for working families and changes in employment rights for parents and support and counselling for parents (see Rake, 2001, pp221-7). These latter range from the setting up of the National Family and Parenting Institute as well as support for helplines (ParentLine and ParentLine Plus) whose philosophies are disposed to recognising the diversity and commitment of parents, to in contrast policies which, in the words of the Parliamentary Committee on Parenting promote 'social responsibility and self-discipline' (Barlow et al, 2002, p. 115) such as penalties for parents who fail to discipline their children or who are school refusers.

When it comes to recognising those who fall outside these conventional definitions of 'family', again there are inconsistencies. Lone parents have been supported but in a way that channels them into paid work much of which is low paid (see Rake, 2001) and in a way that devalues their own commitments to caring. Indeed, a perverse effect of the Working Families Tax Credit is that it discourages partnered mothers from taking up paid work, whilst focussing its incentives to work on lone parents (details see Rake, 2001, p. 220-1). In terms of sexuality, New Labour practice has been inclusive of gay men and lesbians - there are/ have been openly gay men in the Cabinet, the government has engaged with Stonewall, the UK GL civil rights group, measures to allow gay men and lesbians to adopt have been passed, the government has tried to get section 28 and the age o consent passed (they have fallen in the House of Lords), they have taken a new approach to teenage pregnancy which encourages young people to have knowledge about sexuality. On the other hand, sex education in schools still prohibits what is called the 'promotion of homosexuality', the treatment of cohabiting partners, same-sex or otherwise, in relation to pensions and other benefits is unequal, and New Labour's inclusivity tends to express itself in 'non-discriminatory' rather than 'anti-discriminatory' terms. Thus, it has balanced the right of people to continue to think homosexuality is wrong, with the assimilation of gay people as full citizens (Bell and Binnie, 2000).

It is possible to identify three processes at work in New Labour's policies. The first is a process through which a discourse of family in which the figure of the child features most strongly becomes the legitimate public discourse on welfare. It has been easier to raise claims around children's needs rather than other social groups/ issues (such as lone parents, disabled parents, female poverty). Jenson notes similar process at work in Canada and calls it a child-investment model (Jenson, 2001). This is born out by a number of our interviewees. For example, the Disabled Parents' Network, points out that one of the groups whose needs have been highlighted is children who help care for disabled parents - 'young carers', and have had more resources accorded to them. However, pursuing such a policy, without having listened to those disabled parents, has had the consequence of pathologising disabled parents as putting their children at risk, rather than complementing services for children with services for their parents. Furthermore, the fact that young carers' services are not charged for, and those of parents are, acts as a barrier for parents to apply for services in their own right, instead of as adjuncts of their children. The Network has had to lobby hard for a dialogue to be set-up between disabled parents and the champions of young carers and to claim that attention to children's well being should not be at the expense of parents, nor vice versa.

The second process is one in which a discourse of 'gender-neutrality' especially around parenting and active (work) citizenship is obscuring ongoing inequalities in the gendered division of labour in the home, as Katherine Rake concludes in a detailed analysis of financial and family support policies:

: Following on from this point is a third process which is about the redrawing of the boundaries between that which is seen as 'private' and not suitable for state intervention, and that which is 'public' and suitable for state intervention. We would suggest (though this is not watertight) that this is loosely around parenting and partnering. Parenting has become established as a legitimate site for intervention especially around the 'responsibilisation' of parents. Partnering, however, is left much more to individual freedom of action and choice. Some acknowledgement of this is in the Green Paper Supporting Families which said that there were some areas where people do not want to be lectured at or told how to behave (para4.2). Delineating a non-interventionsist boundary can also have the effect of leaving certain groups vulnerable (e.g. the example of the 'non-discriminatory' approach to homosexuality mentioned above, or the lack of protection for cohabitees and same sex couples). To some extent, this process was set in train before New Labour - the 1990 Children's Act emphsized that it was not so much marriage but parenthood that was for life, but overall it is this delicate re-etching of the public and the private in ways which implicitly acknowledge the intimacy of late modernity (individualisation) whilst explicitly promoting the care patterns of modernity (modernisation and responsibilisation) which markes New Labour policy. One exception which proves the rule is the high profile denouncement of forced marriage, for this is about partnering. The possibility for state intervention here is largely because it is seen as part of a different agenda which has become very public - the race relations and migration agenda. The discourse of which this has become part is less about gender inequalities (on which Southall Black Sisters have fought for intervention) and more about the defence of a'new "modern" tolerant nation accompanying new rules around (not so new ideas of) integration of minority ethnic groups (particularly Muslims).

Governmentality, Governance and New Labour

The second area that we look at is those theories and analyses which contextualise New Labour's partnership policy with the third sector. Two texts are particularly relevant here: the development of Foucauldian hypotheses on governmentality by Nikolas Rose in Powers of Freedom (1999) and Janet Newman's analysis of the New Labour's governance in Modernising Governance (2001). Both provide analyses which draw on cultural studies and make connections to 'the social', and, as such, refer to policies around family and community, which are particularly relevant for our study.

The study of governmentality differs from that of governance in that the former is concerned with the sorts of knowledges, ideas and beliefs about different aspects of society that generate the way in which issues are problematized and the strategies, tactics and programmes that governments use to deal with them. The study of governance focuses upon an analysis of what is there in the exercise of political power: what are the patterns of power in the relationships between different actors - state, civil society, public and private sectors, citizens and communities? Both approaches invite the criticism that they leave little room for agency, either at the individual or collective levels, however, both these authors make explicit attempts to avoid this omission. In his study of governmentality in the twentieth century, Rose provides three insights which are relevant for our work.

1. That which characterises contemporary (UK) politics is not simply a search for a Third Way outside of neo-liberalism and post-war social democracy, but the search for a 'third space' a buffer between the rock of the state and the hard place of the market. This is given different terms - civil society, community, third sector. It occupies a 'third space' which has placed on it impossibly competing objectives: to stand for that which is natural, grounded and, in a sense, untainted by, and external to, formal politics, yet, at the same time, identified as the crucial area for political intervention and incorporation. In the communitarian interpretation it is here that diversity can flower yet, nevertheless, be reduced (or raised) to some form of consensual core. Thus, unlike the studies of voluntary organisations discussed above, this approach understands the significance of the third sector not simply arising from its growing historical importance in relation to that which the state or market cannot supply, but crucial to the invention of community as a sector whose energies can be

2. This marks the shift away from 'morality' as imposed from above and aspiring towards the common good, towards 'ethics' as practised by individuals in their own particular lives, and is accompanied by the remaking of political subjectivity in which the subject is a moral individual who has specific responsibilities both to her/himself and to a network circumscribed by emotional bonds of affinity - family, friends, locality, etc. Rose calls this new form of governmentality 'ethico-politics', as distinct from disciplinary power (with its focus on people's utility and docility) and bio-power (health and welfare of the masses),

The focus of politics thus becomes the inculcation of responsibilities, or, more particularly, self-responsibilisation, for this grants autonomy to individuals (and to groups and organisations) to regulate themselves according to the specifics of their situation. In that granting of autonomy, Rose says, lies the possibility of contestations. Yet inculcations also act as new forms of disciplining, usually by recourse to the reinforcing of obligations to areas of the 'natural' - work, family, status quo, etc. This distinction is crucial, for one that seeks to discipline and normalize sees 'the community' as fixed and cohesive, rather than imagined, fluid, indeterminate and a site of an explicit and agonistic ethico-politics (see also Amin, 2002, and one might add that this distinction might also refer to the familiar and not-so-familiar sites of care and intimacy).

3. The radical potential of those 'becoming communities' lies in their ethic of creativity - 'the active, material, technical, creative assembling of one's existence, one's relation to oneself, even one's corporeality' (ibid, p. 196). In researching these Rose suggests we should be asking: what forms of collectivisation dot they take (groups, movements etc)? What relation to truth do they establish - e.g. testimonials/ experience, tract, etc)? How are the objects of contestation formed? What are the rhetorics of contestation? What is the telos of struggle, the techne of struggle, and the form of struggle? And what sort of art of activity does it produce in those who engage in it?

What, then, Rose provides us with is an analysis which contextualises both the significance of voluntary organisations - big and small - for contemporary politics. In so far as Marshall (see above) began to identify voluntary organisations as the sites of social change and of negotiation of social values, then Rose provides an analysis of how this is so, but also sheds more light on community as a site of discipline and as a site of contestation. Within this, parenting, in particular, is seen as a site of responsibilisation. Therefore, in our terms, the extent to which our groups contest, or merely demonstrate the extent of, or the effects of, that responsibilisation (do they refuse those responsibilities, or do they exhibit anxieties because of them or act to provide support in the face of them?). In relation to partnering, we might see the effects of 'autonomization' - the granting of freedom to work out ethical responsibilities.

Newman's combines an analysis of New Labour's 'modernizing' of governance with an understanding of the effects of this upon 'the social' - i.e. social relations, particularly of 'race', ethnicity and gender (Newman, 2001). Within both of these processes she identifies key points of tension. Partnership with voluntary organisations can be seen to represent a new form of governance which transcends both state and market, hierarchy and competition, which can deliver 'joined-up' government, where the tiers between local, community and central are integrated through an inclusive and consensual politics. However, Newman's analysis shows that much of the old hierarchies and concessions to the private market has remained with New Labour's approach, but, more than this, the desire to encourage innovation from below in the name of 'what works' or in the attempt to deliver 'quick wins', has been muted by the countermanding practices of a centrally driven agenda and setting of goals. The result is not local empowerment, but a dispersal of power:

However, she goes on to say that this does not mean that there has been no change: old problems have been defined in new ways - discourses of social exclusion, welfare-to-work and joined-up government rename the problems of poverty, urban decay and the delivery of health and welfare services. They operationalise them in ways which, in acknowledging the need for policies appropriate to different localities, disperse the responsibility for the solutions to problems to those localities. What, then, is distinctive is the process of making individuals, parents, communities and localities, responsible for finding solutions to their problems while the power to define the agenda and to influence the meaning of evidence remains with the centre (201, p.81-2). In common with Rose, the phenomenon of 'responsibilisation' is identified as the key to government policy, but unlike Rose, Newman analyses this as part of the processes of governance, and, in particular (for our study) in the process of partnership, discourse creation and agenda setting. This provides us with a question for our data about how far some of our larger organisations have been, on the one hand, able to participate in the development of government policy, but on the other, in terms set by central government, and also how far our smaller organisations find the place to articulate their needs, but the responsibility, too, for pursuing solutions to those needs.

Newman's discussion of what is meant by the modernization of governance is also important for our study, for this involves an attempt to redraw the relationships between civil society and the state and to settle 'the social' - to construct a `modern', in New Labour's terms, British people. Two themes run through New Labour's understanding of civil society: the first presents an image of society in which the fundamental divisions of class, gender and 'race', are a thing of the past, and where diversity is tolerated and discriminations are the vestiges of outworn prejudice. The socially excluded represent the residual problems of New Right policies. This approach embraces diversity while distancing itself from the social movements which made that diversity visible. The second theme is one of homogeneity and consensuality - cohesive communities which can redress the haute individualism of the New Right. Thus, rather than allowing alternative conceptions of civil society - of, say, an agonistic politics of multiple publics (Fraser, 1997), older, more traditional conceptions of stable families, strong communities and a benign, tolerant but tough nation have become part of New Labour's discursive and legitimising frame for policies.

New Labour's modernization, Newman argues, has established governance as a gendered and racialised domain (2001, p. 171-6). 'Notions of 'the public', 'community' and 'citizenship' are structured around particular (gendered) notions of the family and the public and (racialised) notions of nation and citizenship' (ibid, p.172). The processes of public participation are, in principle, open to diverse 'stakeholders', yet outside challenges find difficulty in being heard. Further, its conceptions of the 'modern world' attempt to accommodate both 'old' and 'new':

Some of its appeal to modernity thus invokes a post-war Fordism and a pre-modern social order, whilst at other times it refers to a complex, post-modern social domain, a feminised economy, and a knowledge and information society. These ideas fit with our suggestion above that polices around parenting and partnering similarly invoke both the old and the new. However, we attempt to draw differences within the construction of the family which emphasises the responsible self in relation to parenting and the reflexive self in relation to partnering. And in so far as Newman begins to look at alternative notions of the social, the people and of governance, our study will also assess the empirical possibilities for these.

Conclusion

From the discussion of the disparate literature that is relevant to our study, how can we begin to construct an analytical net to contain our study? What new questions are raised for the analysis of our data? We identify 5 areas:

1. Two issues emerge from the literature on social and cultural transformations. First, there is the question of how far our groups reveal new and less familiar forms of care and intimacy arising from the processes of detraditionalisation. Second, how far does a new 'subpolitics' exist around these issues? What mobilising principles do they instate? However, unlike the theorists of social change, we are less concerned with what social and cultural transformations tell us about a new politics as to what the claims of the new politics might tell us about social and cultural transformations around parenting and partnering.

2. The social movements literature leads us to consider the nature of the claims our organisations are raising - are they about redistribution of resources, about respect, recognition, personhood, wellbeing, and dignity? Do they focus on inequalities of power around, say, welfare professionals? Are the collective voices competing and cacophonous?
3. The voluntary organisations literature enables us to differentiate our organisations, in terms of, for example, the basis of support, who runs, funds and controls them, who uses them and so on, but importantly it points to the capacity of the third sector to broker social change especially in the area of social values Our question is therefore how are new values articulated and negotiated around parenting and partnering, what ensures their capacity to challenge the status quo of normativity? Along with Newman's analysis, this literature also raises questions about the terms on which voluntary organisation are being drawn into the new democratic decentralising processes involved in the modernisation of governance. What is the flow of power and influence - is there evidence of incorporation and disempowerment or a democratic renewal of civil society?
4. The review of New Labour's policies enables us to examine how far our larger voluntary organisations and trade unions are drawn into framing their claims within the dominant 'parenting and partnering ' discourses. Here we pointed to the discourse of the child as the morally worthy object of state intervention as well as the de-gendered and de-racialised discourses of parenting and partnering. We also identified different policy frames at work around parenting and partnering, with more explicit forms of legitimisation being sought for 'responsibilising' policies associated with parenting and more 'individualised' approaches to practices of partnering. How far and in what ways are our groups responding to these different processes?
5. Rose's analysis of governmentality enables us to stand back from our methodological and theoretical assumptions about creative moral agency and place these within a wider process of 'ethico-politics'. This refers to the extent to which the absence of 'guarantees' for our beliefs and values reconstitutes us as 'autonomous' ethically-thinking subjects, as well as a new political context in which 'responsibilisation' and the self-regulation of individuals are key objectives. This has also given rise to a new politics 'from below' characterised by contestations around moral or ethical claims. How far does the autonomy we are granted to reshape our ethics create the basis for contestation? And how far do our organisations demonstrate this form of contestation? Do our groups contest, or merely demonstrate the extent of, or the effects of, that responsibilisation (do they refuse those responsibilities, or do they exhibit anxieties because of them or act to provide support in the face of them?). In relation to partnering, we might see the effects of 'autonomization' - the granting of freedom to work out ethical responsibilities?
6. Finally, in relation to Newman's analysis of the processes of 'modernising', how far are our organisations caught up in the dispersal of power as well as the devolution of responsibility for problem solving? In articulating their needs, do they also find themselves responsible for solving them or is this responsibility actively sought in the face of the rigidity of statutory services and professional power and dominance? And how far are the claims that are emerging a challenge to New Labour's conceptions of a modern family within a modern Nation?

References to follow

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