On Not Going Home at the End of the Day: Spatialised Discourses of Family Life in Single Location Home/Workplaces

Seymour, Julie

Abstract

This chapter draws on a study of family practices in family-run hotels, pubs and discourse therefore „allows the researcher to map the doing of family life is revealed as a and boarding houses in the UK. One focus of the research is the spatiality of such locations; that is, the dynamic of space and social life in the construction of everyday family life where this occurs alongside a business. While such single location home/workplaces may constitute a comparatively „atypical case? (Mitchell, 1983), their „inverted? spatiality makes explicit those processes and practices which are often less visible in situations where the home and workplace are situated in discrete locations. More broadly they show how family practices are also enacted in locations other than the domestic thus preventing family research from being confined to specific locations. The fluid and dynamic nature of the concept of spatiality finds resonance in that of family practices. Both address the continual and socially constructed nature of their „realization? (Keith and Pile, 1993: 6) and the role played by both structure and agency in producing particular configurations within specific locations. Importantly, a „family practices? perspective incorporates, but keeps separate, consideration of the activities of everyday family life and the discourses of „the family? (Morgan, 1996). A family practice focus on actions interplay of the influence of socially and historically constructed discourses of family life with the biographies of the specific individuals involved? (Seymour, 2007: 1098). As a result, the structurative process of combining the pragmatic demands of the specific situation people find themselves in (the family they live with) with the aspiration of producing in Gillis? phrase (1996: xv) the „imagined family we live by?. Through family practices, families reproduce themselves literally and ideologically (Dallos, 1997). An earlier article (Seymour, 2007) has focused on the activities element of family practices in hospitality establishments, particularly the creation of spatial boundaries. This chapter will focus on the issue of the discursive construction of family life by interviewees and the role of spatiality in this.

Citation

Seymour, J. (2010). On Not Going Home at the End of the Day: Spatialised Discourses of Family Life in Single Location Home/Workplaces. Geographies of Children, Youth and Families: An International Perspective (108 - 120). Routledge

• Acceptance Date: Dec 15, 2010
• Publication Date: Dec 15, 2010
• Pages: 108 - 120
• Book Title: Geographies of Children, Youth and Families: An International Perspective
• ISBN: 978-0-41556-384-0
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/405224