| ESRC
RESEARCH GROUP ON CARE, VALUES AND THE FUTURE OF WELFARE
University of Leeds
Workshop
Paper No 16
Prepared for Workshop Four
Methodologies for Researching Moral Agency
Friday 17 March 2000
Fiona Williams
A CONCEPTUAL CHART FOR CAVA
Executive Summary
1.
This paper attempts, first, to clarify those concepts, some
of which we have been using in the Workshops, which seem to
be important to the different areas of our research and, second,
to chart how different concepts and ideas may relate to each
other within the context of our research questions and aims.
This is done rather tentatively, in the spirit of providing
a paradigm of articulation between different parts, not a
grand design. I have not tried to encompass everyone's work,
but I have tried to provide a framework through which we can
locate and link different ideas. I am also more concerned
here with clarifying our methodological and analytical concepts,
rather than our normative position(s). It is an exercise in
finding commonalities and links through our differences.
2.
Drawing on earlier work, the workshop papers and other work
by the Cava research group, I suggest that the concepts we
are using fall into clusters or constellations within four
overlapping and interconnected fields of analysis. These are
(i) the subject (ii) the social topography of enablement and
constraint in the intimate/informal/ close /local/ context
(iii) the wider discursive and institutional contexts and
(iv) the dynamics of social change.
3
The paper then elaborates the use of the concepts in each
field and the way they relate across the different fields
of analysis. In relation to the first field - that of the
subject - it is proposed that our research focuses upon people
as moral, welfare and care subjects, as well as social subjects
constituted through a spectrum of social relations. It then
examines, with reference to empirical research examples, different
aspects of the subject - subjectivity, identity, subject positioning
and agency.
4.
In the discussion of the second field of analysis, the paper
debates, again with reference to empirical research examples,
how far the sphere of the relational is a distinct field of
analysis which inflects subjectivity, identity and agency
with particular meanings.
5.
The discussion of the third field of analysis, the wider discursive
and institutional contexts, focuses largely upon the way in
which we operationalise an understanding of complex and multiple
social relations for our research.
6.
Field 4 on the dynamics of social change discusses briefly
the concepts to which our work refers (and generally critiques,
such as individualisation). It also briefly refers to the
issue of where cultural/ social change happens.
7.
The conclusion starts to identify that which is common to
all our approaches and
that which may be construed as distinctive about Cava research.
Three
Concerns
In
order to develop this chart, I draw on, and develop, earlier
work on conceptualising the agency / structure relationship
for rethinking research into poverty and social exclusion
(Williams, 1996, 1998) and social policy more generally (Williams
& Popay, 1999). Three concerns have been central to this
work:
-
An emphasis upon the capacity of people to be creative,
reflexive human agents, experiencing, negotiating and developing
their own strategies for the management of their welfare
and reconstituting the outcomes of welfare policies.
-
An attempt to apply to the framing and practice of research
the theoretical insights drawn from more nuanced theoretical
inquiries into social identification and differentiation
which point to the multiplicity, complexity and variability
of identities and social categories.
-
In pursuing questions of subjectivity, agency and identity,
not to lose sight of processes of social formation, especially
those constituted through power and inequality; to this
end, to discover how researchers have developed and made
use of 'mediating concepts' which link 'agency' to 'structure'.
The
'social policy' background to the emergence of these concerns
is relevant here.
Background
One
impetus behind this rethinking was the inadequacy of the paradigm
which had dominated social policy research. This provided
analyses of policies in terms of measurable outcomes for social
groups, and these social groups were categorised objectively,
in terms of constructions by the Registrar-General, or by
researchers, or policy-makers (that is, socio-economic/occupational
groups, or groups in administratively-defined need - single
parents, frail elderly, the poor, chronically ill etc.). In
general, the people who inhabited these fixed categories were
seen, and still are, as the passive beneficiaries (or not,
as the case might be) of different policies, whose content
might vary according to dominant political ideologies, or,
in the political economy version, according to the compromises
wrought between labour and capital. In this scenario, the
concept of social divisions was generally limited to class,
and the concept of social categories to income, occupation
and/or an administrative definitions of social need. The concepts
of agency, identity or personal experience were either non-existent,
or they surfaced as collective class struggle of labour (or
later, collectively organised women). In this framework the
outcomes of policies were understood to be measurable in terms
of access to benefits and services created to alleviate certain
identifiable risks and ends (poverty, unemployment, housing,
health and education). Occasionally less measurable terms,
such as stigma, emerged to explain some of the mismatch between
policy implementation and personal or cultural responses.
A
number of social, political and intellectual changes forced
a rethinking of this paradigm (see Williams, 1998, for full
explanation). First, from the mid-70s, a whole range of political,
economic and demographic forces challenged the social democratic
welfare state. Amongst them were competing political discourses
of welfare, so, for example, by the 1990s, New Right politics
of "consumer sovereignty" and "individual choice"
and "diversity of needs" competed with notions from
the left and user/social movements of "user-control",
"welfare citizenship" and the "diversity of
social rights", and, from an emerging New Labour, with
notions of "responsibilities with rights". However,
in spite of their political differences and pedigrees, what
all had in common was an emphasis upon the welfare citizen/consumer
as, first, agent of her/his welfare destiny - whether
through the market, through exercising social responsibilities,
or through local, democratic forms, and second, as articulating
her/his differential welfare needs. This helped shift
the grounds of social inquiry. It also helps to explain why,
in the early 1990s, the ESRC set up a new research programme
on "The Management of Personal Welfare", subsequently
directed by Jennie Popay and Ann Oakley(1)
. Its brief included the development of new research on people's
personal coping strategies which would identify them as 'creative
human agents'. I was brought into the programme and charged
with the task of reviewing the literature to see whether there
was any research on stress and coping which provided an adequate
conceptual framework capable of holding together these newer
concerns with agency with the more traditional social policy
concerns with the structures of poverty and inequality.
Needless
to say, there was very little. On the one hand, the research
on stress and coping was dominated by the methods of quantitative
psychology in which individuals and their experiences were
generally subsumed into aggregate measures of correlating
variables through which stress was, or was not, held at bay.
Gender, age, ethnicity, class, and so on were brought in simply
as differentiating variables, rather than as intersecting
modalities of difference which could render experience and
action more meaningful, and through whose relations power
is implicated and performed. On the other hand, the conceptualisation
of agency in research influenced by economics was in the rigid
shape of rational economic man driven by self-interest (see
Duncan's papers for Workshops 1 & 3 (Duncan, 1999a and
b)). Of greater concern was the fact that within the very
broad area of welfare research there had been few attempts,
with notable exceptions, to apply these newer theoretical
developments to the agency / structure question. One of the
most promising of these theoretical developments was Giddens'
structuration thesis (Giddens, 1979, 1984), and the
most notable exception was Janet Finch's Family Obligations
and Social Change (1989), which took as its starting point
the formulation by Giddens (1979) of the need to recognise
the relationship between social structure, on the one hand,
and the possibilities for independent human action on the
other:
"Giddens'
view of social structure is that it provides resources
which people can use when they are interacting with others
in daily life. In that process social structure is also
reinforced and reconstituted. We need to see human beings
acting purposefully in their use of such resources,
although the outcome of their actions may have consequences
which they did not intend. In the context of theory, Giddens
rejects the view that patterns of action are straightforwardly
imposed on people, including those theories which tell us
that people internalise the norms of society and then produce
appropriate action … People need to, and are able
to, explain what they have done and why they have done it
and this in itself forms part of the action. We all
do this by drawing upon our understanding of how the social
world works, by using the same shared knowledge of our society
which we use to formulate our conduct" Finch (1989,
p87-88, my emphasis)
(I
will come back to this as this quotation, and Finch and Mason's
subsequent work, begins to identify some 'mediating concepts').
Identifying/
Unpacking the Concepts
Bearing
in mind the three concerns I outlined at the beginning - i.e.
to develop (1) an emphasis upon creative human agency, (2)
a more complex understanding of the welfare subject, and (3)
mediating or middle-range concepts which connect 'agency'
to 'structure' - I reviewed empirical policy-relevant research
which was also attempting to deal with these concerns. From
this I suggested that some 'exemplar' researchers were developing
their frameworks across two or more levels of analysis. Drawing
on this, as well as the workshop papers and other work by
the Cava research group, I suggest that the concepts we are
using fall into clusters or constellations within four
overlapping and interconnected fields of analysis. I use
the word 'field' deliberately to signify two meanings. The
first is that of location, or boundaried space; the
second is that of a sphere of operation, a region of influence
or force (as in electric or gravitational fields). Thus,
the four fields of analysis are, in brief:
1.
The contemporary (welfare) subject, drawing upon
concepts of subjectivity ( a sense of self), identity
(a sense of belonging), subject position (one's positioning
within socially constructed discourses, practices and categories)
and agency (one's capacity to act). Related to agency
are concepts of doing/acting such as reasoning, negotiating,
and practices.
2. An intimate/informal/ close /local/ context, a social
topography of enablement and constraint which
the (welfare) subject inhabits, signified by risks, opportunities,
relationships and resources; these are marked by
variability in terms of both their distribution (usually interpreted
quantitatively) and the differing and changing meanings attached
to them (usually interpreted qualitatively). Later in the
paper I discuss how far the intimate, or relational
dimension, with its notions of informal rights, responsibilities,
obligations, normative guidelines, gendered moral rationalities,
and moral scripts, should be seen as a distinct field
of analysis.
3. The discursive and institutional contexts
(subnational/ national /international) of policy formation,
implementation and delivery; extends to social, economic and
cultural contexts. Key concepts: discourses and practices
(welfare, legal, cultural, moral), social relations
and formations, institutional arrangements (formal rights
and responsibilities attached to citizenship, welfare reforms,
forms of governance etc.).
4. The contextual dynamics of social, economic and political
change: all the posts, and associatedly, pluralisation,
fragmentation, hybridisation, de-centering, globalisation,
individualisation, reflexivity, unsettling, resettling, etc.
In
our different papers and research we have different analytical
starting points. For example Jennifer Mason usually starts
from 'agency' and 'practices' in field 1, links it mostly
to field 2, but brings in field 4. Carol Smart and and Bren
Neale's work on divorce often starts with a mismatch between
socio-legal discourses (3), explanations for change (4) and
actual practices (1). Sasha Roseneil and Fiona Williams are
often concerned with linking collective identities and actors
(1), with social formations and social relations and cultural
(S) or policy (F) discourses (3) and social change (4). Simon
Duncan's and Alan Deacon's recent work starts with policies
in field 3. For Simon Duncan, discourses, opportunities and
risk in the local are extremely important in understanding
agency and identity. Attempts to capture the dynamics between
fields 3 and 4 are Fiona Williams Family-Nation-Work (see
Workshop 1) and Simon Duncan's genderfare, (Workshop
1) and Sarah Irwin's moral economy (Workshop 1).
Although
these fields of analysis are dynamically interrelated, the
next sections explain them in sequence. The whole of the following
discussion is represented in Figure
1.
Field
of Analysis 1: The Subject
Whilst
the focus of my original research was welfare subjects,
the focus of CAVA's research concerns subjects whose fields
are, at one and the same time, both broader and narrower than
those inhabited by welfare subjects. They are narrower in
the sense of having a rather more specific focus upon 'parenting
and partnering practices'. But they are also broader in the
sense that, to begin with, we are concerned with subjects
who are constituted through more than welfare and law. We
are interested in the ways in which moral subjects are constituted
, how they exercise their moral agency, how they pursue moral
practices, and how they create and construct moral subjectivities
and moral identities and how all of this influences
moral decisions. What is important about this approach is
that it moves the moral subject out of the world of liberal
philosophy in which 'he' has a given, or pre-social, moral
identity into a sociological world in which he forms and reforms
her/his moral identity, and engages in moral activity as a
social practice. (It is, however, difficult to separate out
this field of the moral subject as a discrete area. Moral
discourses, practices and relations are implicated in welfare/
legal discourses of desert and dependency, etc., and they
permeate practices of care and intimacy). Furthermore, in
so far as we are concerned to research those who are caught
up in parenting and partnering practices (and not simply those
who are parents and partners themselves) then we are concerned
with another kind of subject. Perhaps we could call this one
the care subject (other options are the 'intimate' or 'family'
subject; but I think 'care' is better). So, within the field
of family, care and intimate relations we are concerned with
how the care subject exercises creative agency, with
the practices which follow, how discourses of care, intimacy,
parenting and partnering constitute that care subject, and
with the experiences and forms of identification that parenting
and partnering practices engender.
We
are also interested in people as social subjects. Again,
the separation of different types of subject in reality does
not occur, for all these different types of subject positions
intersect. But in so far as we are interested in social and
cultural change, then we are also concerned with how changing
gender, class, ethnic, sexual, generational and employment
relations are reconstituting people's experiences, identities
and practices. In Sasha's paper (workshop 2) and mine (workshop
1) these changes in the subject are related not only to changing
social relations but also to the plurality and the decentering
of identities which challenge fixed boundaries between straight
and gay, black and white, and so on. In relation to care subjects,
this idea is also there in Bren Neale's, Carol Smart's and
Amanda Wade's work in the shape of the challenge to the binary
of blood and step parent.
In
these ways, then, the notion of the subject is dependent upon
a series of other concepts - namely, subjectivity, identity,
subject position and agency. In their turn, these
concepts are dependent upon others - for example, agency to
practices, and subject position to discourses,
and most of them to social relations. We can develop
working definitions of these four dimensions of the subject
as follows:
subjectivity
- this refers to people's sense of self, usually
interpreted (and constantly re-interpreted) through their
experiences. Wendy Hollway's paper (Workshop 3) examined the
development of one person's moral subjectivity with reference
to conscious and unconscious elements in their life-history.
She then related these to wider discourses which positioned
Ron as a father, brother, criminal, and so on. What she emphasised
was that while Ron's sense of himself was of his own making,
it was still born of his relations with others, as well as
of his positioning within his particular and a general social
world (in other words her analysis of intersubjectivity
crossed and connected the first three of the fields I marked
out above)(2).
This connects to a point that Selma Sevenhuisjen makes:
"In contrast to an atomistic view of human nature,
the ethics of care posits the image of a 'relational' self
- a moral agent who is embedded in concrete relationships
with other people and who acquires an individual moral identity
through interactive patterns of behaviour, perceptions and
interpretations" (Sevenhuijsen, 1998, p55). This raises
the issue of identity:
identity - signifies a
person's sense of belonging(s); it refers to the ways in which,
and the sites through which, they attach themselves to the
social world. Of course, these attachments are multiple,
shifting and velcro-like - able to detach and reattach at
different points and different times. Identity faces two ways:
on the one side it looks to, indeed, shapes, the self; on
the other, it looks to the discourses which place us as social
beings. The first of these two faces is defined by Avtar Brah
as follows:
"identity may be understood as that very process
by which the multiplicity, contradiction and instability
of subjectivity is signified as having coherence, continuity,
stability; as having a core - a continually changing core,
but the sense of a core, nonetheless - that at any given
moment is enunciated as the 'I'" (Brah, 1996, p123-4,
her emphasis)
For Stuart Hall identity is the pivotal link between subjectivity,
subject position, practices and discourses, for it is both
the meeting point between those discourses and practices which
position us as social subjects and those processes which generate
our subjectivities: "identities are thus points of temporary
attachment to the subject positions which discursive practices
construct for us." (Hall, 1996, p6). Furthermore, Hall
places these concepts within wider social change - what he
calls the "pluralization of social life" - which
"expands the positionalities and identities available
to ordinary people (at least in the industrialised world)
in their everyday working, social, familial and sexual lives"
(Hall, 1996, p234).
David Taylor, in an article on identity and social policy
distinguishes these two faces of identity as ontological
and categorical identity. Ontological identity derives
from the attempt to impose a coherence upon fragmented experiences
and concerns that which marks out one's unique and different
self; categorical identity concerns an identification of oneself
(or others) as belonging to a same social category
(woman, cat lover, single parent etc.). It is also partly
between these two that the discursive construction of subject
positions are resisted / reproduced / and resignified. Is
there any difference, then, between the concepts of ontological
identity and subjectivity? Ontological identity signifies
the process of creating coherence from experience whereas
the span of subjectivity is much broader: its reach extends
beyond conscious experience to unconscious interiority.
In terms of the moral subject, what would we mean by moral
identity? Jennifer Mason's research on inheritance (Mason,
1999) is a good illustration of the way people create their
moral identities through the practice of making wills. What
it means to be seen as "a good mother / father"
was often very important to her interviewees. Similarly, when
grown children assess their mother's or father's parenting
as "s/he did her/his best in the circumstances"
they ascribe a positive moral identity to their parent based
on experience whilst at the same time articulating some kind
of general moral yardstick of "good enough" parenting.
This idea of an identity expressed in relational terms is
something I return to later.
subject position - refers to where and how one
is positioned within the social world. As such, unlike subjectivity
and identity which are precipitated subjectively (though constructed
with reference to. the social), subject position is largely
externally constituted - I say 'largely' because subject positions
are continually being revised through changing identities
(and these are themselves shaped by the sense of self continuously
revised through the interpretation of experience). Subject
positions are the positionalities that constitute us through
discourses (3) and
as subjects. As discussed above, these subject positions include
the social categories associated with gender, race, ethnicity,
class, sexuality, disability, age, generation and so on, but
we can also use the concept more specifically to refer to
moral, welfare and care subjects. The ways subject positions
are ordered (as binaries - men/women, deserving/undeserving,
good/bad, carer/dependant), as dominant/subordinate, as equal,
same or different) constitute their social relations. Our
research is particularly concerned with the interplay between
changes in the ordering of gender, ethnic, sexual, intimate,
parent, generational and friendship relations and constitutions
of people as moral subjects and care subjects.
Recent empirical research in social policy on the relationship
between experience / identity and subject position has usually
examined the resistance of welfare subjects to dominant welfare
discourses, (e.g. Simon Duncan's work on the New Deal and
Labour's rationality mistake). One good example of this is
John Baldock and Clare Ungerson's "Becoming Consumers
of Community Care" (Baldock and Ungerson 1994). In this
study they interviewed 32 stroke patients and their carers
in order to explore how they cope with their sudden and often
unexpected change of circumstances with reference to the mixed
economy of care provision resulting from the 1990 NHS and
Community Care Act. This legislation, amongst other things,
instituted a move towards the encouragement of low-cost home
care from the informal, voluntary and commercial sector, along
with a right of users to assessment of their needs for care
through a consultation process with a care manager. The implementation
of the Act was couched firmly within the discourse of consumerism
- that users will be able to articulate their needs and, with
access to information, exercise choice within the mixed economy
of care provision. Baldock and Ungerson found, however, that
their respondents did not adapt in a straightforward way to
a consumer identity. One reason for this was that their respondents
felt extreme uncertainty in the face of their new medical
condition:
"Organising
social care, from the point of view of its users and consumers,
is a largely unscripted process. That is to say that people
have few ideas as to what can be done and at the
same time and more importantly, they are very uncertain
about what should be done" (1994, p44).
There
was, to use the Finch-phrase, little sense of "the proper
thing to do". Furthermore, their past experiences and
how they understood these experiences (as users of public
services or consumers in the market) failed to provide them
with clear guidelines as to how to act. The 'normative guidelines'
(my use, not theirs) drawn from the discourse of consumerism
in the market did not fit well with the circumstances of requiring
social care. And, whilst the role of service providers was
to give people information in order to make choices, the researchers
found that people did what they did, not on the basis of factual
information, but on the basis of values and culture.
Part of the immediate problem for the stroke victim and their
carer was of adapting to a new condition of 'social dependency';
it is this that was a key part of the 'unscripted' process.
In addition, a consumer identity enabled people to think in
terms of buying some things, say consumer durables, but not
others, such as personal care. A third problematic element
was that people brought to the situation a particular identity
as a welfare user, accumulated from their experiences. The
practices which flowed from these identities Baldock and Ungerson
called "habits of the heart" (from de Tocqueville)
and placed them along two axes which distinguished between
four types of 'disposition towards the provision of care'.
These were consumerism - where, at its extreme, one
expects nothing from the state and subscribes to a view of
individual self-sufficiency. It included those who, regardless
sometimes of income, preferred the sense of control to be
had from actively seeking and buying-in services through their
own networks. In contrast, the second disposition, privatism,
represented a different, more passive form of consumerism,
in which people regarded dependency as a stigma, often refused
offers of help and preferred to keep themselves to themselves,
again valuing their autonomy. The third was welfarism,
where people who drew on this believed in the welfare state
and their right to use it. It often involved the active pursuit
of their entitlements. Finally, clientalism generated
a 'traditional' approach to the welfare state: "passive,
accepting patient and grateful". None of the respondents
was constituted simply in terms of the one disposition / discourse
or another, but those who were able to participate more in
the emerging landscape of social care were those who saw themselves
more actively as either consumerists or welfarists.
I have elaborated this example because I think it demonstrates
an interesting use of concepts which mediate between the field
of identity, subject and agency and the concept of discourses
in the third field of analysis - these include dispositions,
scripts and habits of the heart. In addition, I
have framed their work using concepts drawn from Finch and
Mason - proper thing to do, normative guidelines and
practices. These also mediate between identity, agency
and discourse. In both studies, too, it is practices or habits
which articulate with values, norms and 'oughts' and rewrite
the guidelines or scripts. In a sense, by drawing out these,
these researchers are spelling out what "agency"
means.
agency refers to people's capacity to act. As such,
and in order to research it, it has been tied to those concepts
which allow for the detailing of actions, such as habits,
practices and strategies. Agency runs through all three
of the conceptual elements of the subject I have discussed
so far. Experiences shape subjectivity, and subjectivity shapes
the meaning of those experiences; identity informs our practices
(often in ambiguous and contradictory ways: "I'm not
a feminist, but…") and those practices signify and
resignify our identities. The subject positions we inhabit
frame our practices in particular ways, while our practices
can reproduce or reconstitute the meanings of those subject
positions and their ordering. Practices may be productive
of power and they may challenge oppressive power. Furthermore,
as Jennifer Mason's paper for Workshop 3 suggested, agency
expresses itself in relational terms; individuals do
not simply act as individuals within, or with reference to,
relationships, but their very agency is constituted in and
through their negotiations with others, their capacity to
act, their reasoning, their actions and their practices. (Here,
note, negotiation and reasoning are added to
the conceptual toolkit of 'agency'.) I am not convinced that
relationalism applies so thoroughly to all subjects in all
positions, but it is a significant condition for the actions
of the moral subject and the care/familial subject
(A point discussed more fully later). In her discussion of
the moral subject, Selma Sevenhuisjen ties some of these concepts
together as follows:
"…the
definition of identity and selfhood has shifted. Individuals
are no longer seen as atomistic
units with a pre-determined identity, who meet each other
in the public sphere to create social ties. Identity, and
with it the ability to engage in moral activity, is formed
in specific cultural and historical situations, and thus
it coincides with subjectivity, the ability to judge and
to act. The self is not conceived as an entity, but as the
protagonist in a biography which can contain all kinds of
ambiguities and unexpected turns … The feminist ethics
of care has more to gain from the idea of a processual self,
a self which is continually in the process of being formed;
moral identity is continually being developed and revised
through this process. The construing of moral identities
is thus, in this sense, inherently a social practice, something
which we do and make within human relations and within specific
social and political contexts, and the narrative conventions
reflected in these." (Sevenhuisjen, 1998, p55-6)
In Cava we are concerned to research the moral agency of relationally
constituted individuals, but we are also, in Strand 5, concerned
with collective agency and the collective identities
which generate and are generated by this, as well as the subject
positions they challenge. Collective identity and collective
agency cannot be read off from individual identity and agency,
for the processes involved in their formation are different.
To begin with, collective identification summons up commonalities
across the experience of being different / particular (of
being a woman, a mother, a racialised subject, etc.). In so
doing, it freezes those collective identities in particular
ways at historically and culturally specific times such that
individual differences are temporarily erased. (At the same
time, this process feeds back onto individual identity and
practice: "I became a feminist and stood up to my husband").
This freezing generally takes place in the mobilisation of
collective agency and in the articulation of needs
or claims. The practices of claims-making and their
challenges to discursive (and non-discursive - e.g. visual
imagery) formations therefore become our focus in Strand 5.
But
we are also concerned with a different form of collective
agency and claims-making which is identified in Sarah Irwin's
paper (Workshop 2 #1) and which distinguishes between explicit
and implicit claims-making. She argues, in relation
to changes in divisions of labour, family and employment,
that implicit claims emerge through the very practices in
which people engage, and these may not involve conscious reflection
but be part of cultural embeddedness - what went before. This
point helps us link the work of Strand 3 to Strand 5.
Although
I have put agency in the first field of analysis as a dimension
of the subject, it actually represents the closest point of
entry - the stile - into the second field of analysis: the
intimate/informal/ close /local/ context with its the social
topography of enablement and constraint. Agency and practices
take us into the realm of what's possible, into the practicalities
and the realities of action, and is thus a more favoured habitat
for sociologists as it is in listening to the narration of
(or observing of) practices that they feel their ear is both
closest to the ground, and closest to context / structure
of fields 2 and 3. Concepts such as normative guidelines,
moral scripts, obligations, responsibilities and rights,
and the ways these are, related to social, cultural, legal,
moral, policy discourses serve to mediate between the fields
of analysis of the subject and those of context. Furthermore,
in the research on moral agency, to recoin a phrase, practices
mean principles, or at least, it is from people's moral practices
or groups' claims that one can begin to (re)construct a normative
order from which they are drawn and which they create (see
for example Chapter 9 in Carol Smart and Bren Neale's Family
Fragments (1998) (from practices) and my Good-Enough
Principles for Welfare (from claims) (Williams, 1999)
- a point pursued later.
1.
Field of Analysis 2: the social topography of enablement and
constraint in the intimate/informal/ close /local/ context
This
refers to the immediate context in which people perform, negotiate
and act. For our moral and care subject this is a field, crucially,
of close relationships. What should be stressed however
is the ambiguity of relationships - they enable and
constrain, they provide opportunities and they generate
risks (this counters the criticism that by emphasising
the negotiational and the relational in parenting and partnering
practices, one is in danger of suggesting an inevitable and
positive correspondence between intimacy and relationships).
The other key concept used in this field is that of resources.
In Giddens' use the concept of 'resources' refers to the structural
properties which individuals draw on in everyday life. Resources
are both the medium and outcome of social life, and represent
the interdependence of structure and agency. They are both
enabling and constraining. In some research resources is the
generic concept to cover not just 'things', such as material
resources, but also personal resources such as coping strategies,
relationships, and networks. Clearly, however, the implication
from Jennifer's work is that relationships and the
relational merit an analytical distinction apart from
resources. Should we be treating the relational as an analytically
distinct field of analysis? In order to discuss this I, first,
describe a piece of research which subsumes relationships
into a more generic understanding of resources drawn from
both the personal and the local context, and second, apply
the idea of a distinct relational field to some of the concepts
discussed earlier.
How
far do we treat the relational as analytically distinct?
(i)
relationships as part of resources
A
good example of empirical research which applies Giddens'
generic concept of resources, and also relates it social relations,
is Jonathan Gabe and Nicki Thorogood's study of tranquilliser
use by working-class white and African-Caribbean women (Gabe
and Thorogood, 1986).
Their
data were drawn from two separate but related studies in Hackney:
one on the use of benzodiazepines by middle-aged white women;
the other on the relationships between health beliefs, health
behaviour and the structural position of African-Caribbean
women. They focus on data drawn from life history interviews
with 45 white working-class women (of whom 32 used tranquillisers)
and 15 working-class Caribbean-born women (of whom 9 used
tranquillisers) all aged between 40 and 60. The resources
which the women themselves said they used in the management
of their daily lives were, besides benzodiazepines, housing,
families, relationships and social support, leisure activities,
cigarettes, alcohol and religion. Overall, they found that
the white women used benzodiazepines more often and for longer
than the Caribbean women and were more likely to see them
as enabling. They explain this in a number of ways. First,
in terms of the other resources available: for historical,
cultural and economic reasons Caribbean women were more likely
to have a full-time job, and they viewed this very positively;
they were also more likely to have children living at home
and find their daughters particularly supportive. In addition,
Caribbean women were much more likely to go to Church and
regard that as a very supportive resource. The authors suggest
for Caribbean women their lesser use of the health services
may be because they are experienced as racist or subordinating
and that this may also reduce their use of drugs as a resource.
The white women had far less access to such resources and/or
those resources were not seen as sufficiently enabling to
do without tranquillisers. They were less likely to have a
full-time job, and more likely to have ambivalent feelings
about their work. Also, long-term use was associated with
being divorced and not having children at home. All in all,
the access to, experience of and meaning of paid work, children,
partners and leisure were very influential in differential
patterns of tranquilliser use.
Gabe
and Thorogood's research framework uses social categories
not as methodological variables but in two different ways:
first, as signifying subjective experience which is imbued
with particular meanings, and, second, as being subject positions
shaped by the social relations of class, gender, race and
ethnicity which, in turn, find their structural expression
through the institutions of the labour market, family, health
services and of culture and religion. In addition, they see
these subject positions not as discrete but as mutually interlocked
and constitutive of subjective experience. In addition, the
institutions of family, health service, labour market and
religion are investigated in terms of the meanings attached
to them by the subjects. In this way, we begin to see more
clearly the process of the negotiation and the management
of risks through differently available opportunities and resources.
Thus, Caribbean women may attach particular negative meanings
to a resource such as the health services in a way that white
women do not, but their cultural identities and practices
may better place them to view their work, family support and
possible religious involvement more positively than some white
women. The approach enables us to recognise both groups of
women as creative agents operating within a complexly structured
local context of risks and opportunities, in which their welfare
outcomes are negotiated through their access to, and management
of, available 'resources'.
This
kind of approach, which identifies resources, risks and opportunities
and social relations of the immediate context as the structuring
forces shaping subjectivity, identity and agency, also creates
possibilities to weave in quantitative analysis of risks,
opportunities and resources (as Duncan's Workshop 4 paper
on Localities does - I think!). It is clear too here
that some of the concepts which operate in analytical field
3 also apply in the immediate / local context - for example,
localised social relations especially of class, ethnicity
and religion, or particular discursive practices (say, around
gender and employment, as Simon's work on lone mothers does).
In relation to the context of moral subjects and care subjects,
not only will familial habits and conventions be important
but also the nature and structure and practices of local care
provision and welfare and legal services(4).
These are all pathways into Field 3.
(ii)
The relational as distinct
In
the research example above, relationships are subsumed under
a more generic concept of resources. However, Jennifer Mason's
paper on relationalism (Workshop 3) mounts an important argument
for drawing out the relational as a more distinctive area(5).
Jennifer argues two things in her work
on inheritance (Mason, 1999):
(i)
'ordinary people' see morality as central to their lives
- in the sense that [they] are concerned with the morality
of their actions … and their thoughts (1999, p2)
(ii) that (as argued earlier) moral agency is "not
derived from abstract ethical principles which are either
generally agreed upon or imposed by 'ethical experts' but
have to be worked out in concrete situations & …
most crucially in relationships with others ". (ibid.)
She
goes on to argue, drawing upon her work on moving home that
the decisions involved in this process imply a high degree
of reflexivity (Mason, 2000, Workshop 3). However, the concepts
of reflexivity available to us (Beck, Giddens, etc.) suggest
that reflexivity is based upon the construction of individual
selves and individual identities. By contrast, her research
findings demonstrate that processes of reflecting, reasoning
and deciding were accomplished in relational ways.
As I said earlier, this is important because it begins to
spell out what is meant by agency, but also to attribute to
it a different meaning. In the work of Beck, Giddens,
Bauman etc., agency (and therefore reflexivity) are understood
in highly autonomous terms - pursuit of mastery, taking control,
exercising autonomy, choice and so on, whereas in Jennifer
Mason's work, these processes are understood as being accomplished
through negotiation with others. (We could extend the argument
to Giddens and New Labour's construction of a valid (positive)
welfare subject as one who pursues their autonomy through
paid work - see Williams,1999).
How
does this argument for relational agency relate to the concepts
of subjectivity and identity raised earlier? In Wendy Hollway's
work, the notion of a relational subjectivity is central
to her concept of moral intersubjectivity. She argues that
one needs, in order to understand subjectivity, to have a
theoretical perspective oriented towards understanding
(i)
of the influence of dynamic unconscious processes in the construction
of meaning and reality for people which involves the processing
of past experiences through the unconscious.
(ii) that this, together with their life experiences, influences
a person's capacity for moral agency.
She
therefore combines the psychoanalytic with the social. The
social includes the biographical and relational (not just
situational and structural). The psychoanalytic depends upon
the Kleinian idea that morality is born out of an infant's
growing capacity to identify with others and to feel connected
to their fate. In other words, moral activity develops relationally,
in its conscious and unconscious dimensions.
What,
then, of identity? Of course, both subjectivity and identity
are relational in the sense that they reflect and refract
social relations. But is there a distinct relational
identity which is constituted in different ways from the ontological
and categorical? Is there a (moral) identity which is created
and revised through our close relationships with others through
which we have a particular "sense of belonging"?
One could imagine that one's moral reputation as "a good
mother" in one's family could be achieved quite at variance
to one's standing as a worker or a woman. Similarly, one could
be a "good" professional, but a "bad"
husband. What is interesting for us is where these social
and relational identities create dilemmas - how does one enact
good mothering with being a good colleague / employee; a "good"
daughter with a "good" mother and a "good"
lover etc.
What
is important about spelling out these different modes and
sites of identity (ontological, relational and categorical)
and agency (individual, relational, collective) is that this
way of thinking breaks down the dichotomy of public and private
spheres which, I feel, has outrun its use. Here, instead,
we have a much more complex set of interactions between dimensions
of the subject and different contextual fields. In these terms,
I think that when Finch and Mason in their work on inheritance
(1994) spell out their levels of analysis between agency and
structure in terms of 4 levels of analysis based upon a public/private
dichotomy, they are actually doing their ground-breaking work
a disservice. They propose 4 levels upon which family responsibilities
can be analysed (1994, p98)
Level
1 public definition (a) social norms
Level 2 public definition (b) legal rules
Level 3 private definition (a) what I actually do
Level 4 private definition (b) what is appropriate
in my family
Although
they argue that the four levels in reality overlap and interrelate,
they argue for analytical separation. However, the use of
the public / private dichotomy suggests too great a fundamental
separation in my view and limits the opportunity to think
dynamically about the interrelations of different fields of
analysis (for example, the place of the local meshes the private
and public and disappears from view in this distinction).
(I also suggest that Level 3 and Level 4 could be reinterpreted
as relational moral agency and relational moral identity,
respectively).
Even
if we were to argue for the relational as a distinct
sphere or field, it should not be seen as a separate field
of analysis - it is important to keep in play the relationship
between identities and practices constructed in relational
settings and those constituted through one's subject positions.
A good example of this sort of analysis can be found in Tracey
Reynolds' empirical and qualitative study of Caribbean mothering
practices (Reynolds, 1998, 1999). She demonstrates that mothering
practices are informed by:
(i)
An understanding of what it means to grow up black in a relatively
hostile white world which involves teaching one's child how
to negotiate this.
(ii) A "mythical" construction of a Caribbean female
ethnic identity and associated practices which provide clear
normative guidelines for mothering, employment and parenting
practices.
(iii) That the "proper way to behave" that one teaches
one's children is informed not simply by a view of "not
letting the family down", but also "not letting
the (black) community down".
In
other words, notions of relational identity and agency are
imbued with an understanding of a racialised and subordinate
subject position and with ways of resisting or resignifying
this. I would suggest, therefore, that the field of the relational
can be seen as a distinct but not separate aspect of subjectivity,
identity and agency, and as a distinct but not separate field
of analysis.
Finch
and Mason's identification of "the public" above
is represented in this paper by the third field of analysis.
Field of Analysis 3: National / International / Subnational
Discursive, Institutional and Relational Contexts
Our
work on parenting and partnering practices will need to contextualise
itself within the discourses, practices and institutional
arrangements that help construct moral and care subjects.
These will operate around health, welfare, social work, education
and family law, as well as the media, political and sub-political
and cultural groups. This is a very large field
with many important debates but for reasons of space I discuss
here just one of the key concepts which is central to our
research questions and paradigm, and that is social relations.
(The other key area which frames our research is that of welfare
reforms and a central issue here for development is, I think,
the notion of governance and associatedly, ideas such
as ethico-politics(6)).
Picking up from the discussion of 'the subject' earlier, the
general social relations which underpin our research are those
of gender, 'race'/ethnicity, class, sexuality, disability(?),
age and generational relations. More specifically, we are
interested in the way in which these reconstitute and intersect
with moral, welfare and care relations.
To
place our subjects within so many social relations allows
us to insist upon the significance of this multiplicity, but
it also demands that we clarify the specificitites of these
different modalities, and also their particular salience for
our research. I suggested, in a discussion of Sasha Roseneil's
paper (workshop 2), that the art of juggling involved the
following:
1.
That we have to clarify the historical and cultural specificities
of particular forms of social relations; that we cannot assume
parallels between forms; nor can we, in the first instance,
assume the privileging of any modality of difference over
another.
2.
Having established both their centrality (in different ways
at different times) to the social formation, and their specificities,
we need to consider their variability in social and cultural
salience, and their particular salience to the issues
we are researching.
3.
However, one of the main forces that gives rise to their variable
salience is the fact that they rarely operate in isolation
from each other. As axes of difference they continually
reconstitute each other, compounding or mollifying particular
inflections of power. As individuals we experience this through
the complex interweaving of our multiple identities and subject
positions.
4.
Furthermore, as Sasha'a paper pointed out in relation to sexuality,
that which is historically interesting for the present is
the unfixing of the binaries which have held social
relations in place, and more than that, the construction of
hybrid identities.
5.
For our Cava research, the key thing is to be aware at what
points in our studies of parenting and partnering practices
are these different and intersecting social relations salient
for the construction and living out of moral/care identities,
subjectitivities, subject positions and agency. I would suggest
that we are interested in (a) the differences that
changing ethnic/ gender/ class etc. etc. relations bring to
identities, subjectitivities, subject positions and agency
(usually termed as 'diversity') but also (b) we are interested
in the ordering of these relations as relations of
power - for example, in relation to ethnicity and sexuality
- how far does the recognition of the diversity that ethnic
and sexual minorities bring still position those groups as
racialised or sexualised 'others' (will our empirical
work evince a picture of this - what sort of othering exists
and how is it changing, are, for example, minority family
practices still understood as pathological and how does this
affect parenting and partnering practices?) and (c) do changing
relations pose a challenge to the general cultural framing
of what is understood as e.g. 'family' or 'nation', and how
do we explore this? It's here that a proposition of hybridity
is important - we could, for example, be interested in the
ways in which the existence of black and white or straight
and gay members of the same family network reconstitute the
meaning of what that family is and does (and develop a notion
of 'queer family practices').
This
discussion above is predicated upon the importance of social
and cultural change as a central issue in the research. It
is also central to the different frameworks that members of
the research group use in their work (e.g. Fiona William's
Family-Nation-Work, SD's genderfare and SI's
moral economy). It is also the area enclosed by the
fourth field of analysis.
Field
of Analysis 4: The Dynamics of Social Change
In
Figure 1 I have listed the theorisations of change that appear
in our different papers : notions derived from the sociological
accounts of post-traditionalism, such as individualisation
and reflexivity, emerge most frequently as the intellectual
foil for our more relational, gendered and care-oriented accounts
(FW, CS &BN, JM); also post-Fordism and globalization
act as another more materially based foil (see FW). Ideas
drawn from cultural theory, such as pluralization and hybridization
are also evident (mainly SR but also FW). A critical engagement
with all of these seems to be an important contribution of
our work. But there is another aspect of social change which
lies implicit in our work and that is : with whom or what
do the significant processes of change lie in relation to
morality? I raise this only as a point to think about. In
a recent paper, Perri 6 distinguishes, in Durkheimian fashion,
between three kinds of cultural change mechanism (6P,2000)
. The first is climatic, where each individual is directly
exposed to the same phenomenon (say, of exhaustion, disappointment,
loyalty), the second is indirect and random, where a few individuals
are affected by a phenomenon (such as stigma, persuasion,
adaptation), but they then go on to influence others, but
not deliberately. This he calls epidemiological. Third
is apostolic where leaders or opinion formers (such
as social movements) experience a phenomenon and then deliberately
seek to influence others. Strand 3 seems to be dealing with
the first two and Strand 5 with the last.
Conclusion
Figures
1 summarises this paper. It also identifies two other areas
for discussion in the bottom left and right hand corners,
both of which will be pursued in papers (by FW and CS) for
Workshop 5. They concern the construction of principles and
how far we can develop a relational understanding of morality
and moral motivations. On the first point, I mentioned earlier
that CS and BN in Family Fragments use people's moral
practices around divorce as the basis from which to
begin to construct principles, whilst FW uses welfare groups'
claims to construct seven recognition principles for welfare
in Good-Enough Principles for Welfare.
In
a sense, this paper attempts to bring together our commonalties
whilst acknowledging our differences, as researchers By way
of finishing, then, I tentatively draw from this discussion
a set of characteristics which hold us together and through
which we can claim our research approach to be distinctive.
These are not complete or fixed.
- The
excavation of the relational in concepts of agency, subjectivity,
and identity, and in the theorisation of moral motivations.
-
A critique of the rational, unitary subject in favour of
the reasoning, fluid, multiply- positioned and active subject
-
The connecting of relational moral agency to wider concepts
of social relations, discourses, guidelines and principles,
i.e. a more complex and detailed attempt to relate agency
to structure /context and to social change.
-
The overall attempt to understand issues of morality and
of social relations as dynamic and fluid, as being situational
and subject to cultural and historic specificity, yet not
as simply relative. That there are possibilities for drawing
together commonalties in values which represent, in a particular
time and place, a shared core.
-
A critical but constructive reading of post-traditional
sociological approaches, and of New Labour and the Third
Way, especially in terms of their partial-sightedness to
issues of care, interdependence and equal moral worth in
the morally self-regulating individual.
Figure
1
APPENDIX 1
Discourse- see Footnote 3 and also Field of Analysis 3 on
Figure 1
There seem to be two / three main critical questions asked
about discourse: (1) what makes it any different from ideology?
(2) Isn't it overdeterministic? And (3) isn't it ignoring
of people's agency to construe them as subjects constituted
through discourse?
Very briefly: Argument 1. The problem with Marxism
and those theorists who used the historical materialism of
Marxism as a base to examine culture and ideology is that
it was very difficult to avoid, firstly, departing the material
from the ideological and, secondly, privileging the material
as the crucible in which the ideological was formed (and it
never really could get to grips with sociobiology, the body
and so on). Foucauldian theories which linked more clearly
and complexly discourses to practices and subjects provided
more scope for seeing the ideological and material as complexly
intertwined (see Michelle Barratt's Politics of Truth,
1992). They also provided better conceptual tools for dealing
with essentialist theories and ideas which rested on assumptions
of pre-social beings. To be able to talk of people as welfare
subjects and not as categories of needs-bearing individuals
(lone parents, elderly, disabled etc.) makes for a much more
reflexive approach to social policy.
Arguments
2 and 3: I would agree that much Foucauldian analysis
is overdeterministic, simply replacing a crude economic /
material determinism with a crude, top-heavy discursive constructionism.
I would also agree that discourse does not encompass everything
that structures our social world - there are non-discursive
factors, too. However, we can attempt to correct this overdeterminism
by developing the ideas of agency and identity. It is not
insignificant that the areas of study where these concepts
of agency and identity have been most developed are within
feminist research, work on 'race' and ethnicity and on sexuality
(i.e. in those areas where a notion of resistance resides).
In other words, it is precisely through developing the concepts
and ideas associated with 'creative human agency' and the
associated capacity to resist, resignify, reconstitute and
reproduce, that the best corrective to an overdetermining
approach lies. So, on the one hand, 'discourse' is a term
which signifies a more nuanced approach to the forces
structuring people's lives, but. on the other, it cries out
for an elaboration of 'lower order' concepts through which
individuals perform their identities and act up/ out their
agency. (Another related methodological issue I do not deal
with is the significance of discourse in narrative)
References
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S (2000) Comparative research: The
case of genderfare, Cava Strands 1&2 http://leeds.ac.uk./cava
Duncan,
S (2000) Localities Papers I, II, III. Cava Strands
1&2, University of Leeds.
Finch,
J. (1989) Family Obligations and Social Change, Polity
Press, Cambridge.
Finch
J and J Mason (1994) 'Family Responsibilities and Inheritance
in Great Britain' in M. Maclean and J. Kurckewski (eds. )
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J and N. Thorogood (1986) ' 'Tranquillisers as a Resource'
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A.(1979) Central Problems in Social Theory, London,
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S. (2000) Conceptualising Social Change: Family, Work and
the Changing Pattern of Social Reproduction Cava Strands
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S.(2000) Patterns of Change in family and Structure and
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J.(1999) 'Inheriting Money:kinship and practical ethics
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J (2000) 'Deciding where to live : towards a reflexive
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J (2000) 'Researching Morality' Cava Strands 1&2,
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6 (2000) 'Shaping Citizens : responsibility and the politics
of moral character' Paper for the seminar on 'Ethics Affect
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T. (1998) Afro-Caribbean Mothering: Re-constructing a 'New'
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S. (1998) Citizenship and the Ethics of Care: feminist
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Footnotes
(1)
This was the last major ESRC Programme in Social Policy until
CAVA, and was bitterly fought over as many felt that, after
11 years of Thatcherism, poverty and social polarisation were
far more pressing issues for research. Back
(2)
David Morgan commented, at the Family Centre ESRC Seminar,
that it was not necessary to go to a psychoanalytic frame
to develop the notion of intersubjectivity - one could revisit
Goffman and the interactionists (3-3-2000). Back
(3)
I clarify the use of the term discourse in appendix 1, since
it is caught up in the ways I have been using identity, subject
and subject position (and because its mention in the Workshops
seems to invoke a sharp intake of breath). Back
(4)
I think the notions of time / timetable / life course should
come into this field of analysis, but I'm not sure how. Back
(5) In some ways, Jennifer's 'relational' is similar to the
concept of the 'informal' developed in the 1970s by Abrams
et al. Back
(6)
For example, Nikolas Rose's concept of ethico-power (Rose,
1999) would seem to be an important idea for analysing current
policies around parenting and partnering and the importance
of our 'grass-roots' approach. Back
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