Civil society: Bringing the family back in

The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2020

Political philosophers´ interest in the family - understood as a unit in which one or more adults discharge a socially and legally recognised role as primary carers of their children – has a long pedigree. But there is no doubt that over the last half century philosophical discussions of the family have intensified and given rise to an increasingly rich and multi-faceted body of literature. After briefly introducing the key reasons why political philosophers have been interested in the family, this chapter discusses two main sets of questions that arise concerning justice and the family. The first set of questions are about what the family owes society as a matter of justice, that is, about how the family can and should help realise, or how it may hinder the achievement of, independently formulated demands of justice. For example, does the existence of the family necessarily threaten the pursuit of equality of opportunity for children? Should prospective parents constrain their freedom to found and raise a family in light of considerations about the environmental impact that their having and rearing children will have for future generations? The second set of questions concern what society owes families, that is, what we owe our fellow citizens as a matter of justice, insofar as they are actual or potential members of families: Do adults have a right to parent, and to parent particular children? Do children have a right to being raised in families? Should society share in the costs of having and raising children, or may it let most or all of those costs fall on the shoulders of those who freely choose to become parents?

The Good Society, 2008

The Journal of Ethics, 2000

This paper examines two central arguments raised byfeminist theorists against the coherence andconsistency of political liberalisms, a recentrecasting of liberal theories of justice. They arguethat due to political liberalisms' uncritical relianceon a political/personal distinction, they permit theinstitution of the family to take sexist and illiberalforms thus undermining its own aims and politicalproject. Political liberalisms' tolerance of a widerange of family

Irish Marxist Review, 2019

The one model of the 'natural' family, promoted by right wing lobby groups, is a myth. It is argued that a Marxist explanation of the family shows how the family suits capitalism, is linked to social class, and also points the way to radical change.

2006

Commoning with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici, 2019

2008

The British Journal of Sociology, 2012

The central concern of this paper is that there has been a move within British sociology to subsume (or sometimes, even replace) the concept of 'family' within ideas about personal life, intimacy and kinship. It calls attention to what will be lost sight of by this conceptual move: an understanding of the collective whole beyond the aggregation of individuals; the creation of lacunae that will be (partially) filled by other disciplines; and engagement with policy developments and professional practices that focus on 'family' as a core, institutionalized, idea. While repudiating the necessity (and indeed, pointing out the dangers) of providing any definitive answer to definitions of 'family', the paper calls for critical reflection on the implications of these conceptual moves.

Journal of Social Policy, 1997

This paper argues that John Rawls’s remarks on the family reveal a fundamental problem with Rawlsian theory - more fundamental than Susan Moller Okin allows in her important critique. The problem is not that Rawls fails to apply his theory correctly to the family, but rather that the specific case of the family illustrates deep-seated difficulties with Rawlsian justice as a whole.

How is the family different from other basic social institutions? Using Aristotle's distinction between a thing's form and its matter, I argue that the family produces society's matter while a market, pact, and political constitution are, at least in part, society's form. I draw upon Lucretius, John Rawls, and recent findings in endocrinology to argue that family life prepares adults for social cooperation and helps them evaluate whether their society is just. In other words, the family is important not only for bearing and raising children to become functioning members of society. It also conditions adults for constructive participation in society.

2020

Work for this article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement Number: 648610; Grant Acronym: Family Justice).

This article examines the development of the ‘troubled families’ narrative that emerged following the riots in England in 2011, drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant. Their work is briefly discussed before the current concern about ‘troubled families’ is located in its wider historical and political context. The response to the riots and the emergence and development of the official concept of ‘troubled families’ is then examined. It is argued that the establishment and subsequent expansion of the Troubled Families programme was part of a wider process of neoliberal state-crafting that was undertaken by the coalition government, and which is likely to be continued under the new Conservative administration in the United Kingdom (UK). The article pays particular attention to the centrality of ‘the family’ in this neoliberal restructuring and adds to the emerging literature on neoliberal forms of governing families in the UK at the current time.

Forum Teologiczne, 2021

At the beginning of the twenty first century, Chantal Delsol wrote that the man of late modernity is characterized by his attempt to regress to a period in history before his attainment of autonomy and subjectivity, both of which Delsol associates, among other things, with the essential and formative role of the family. Turning to a society or a group with which he could identify, man – in her opinion – takes a step back towards a tribal form of existence, which deprives him of the right to self-government. Demographic data seem to confirm the tendencies which Delsol has described: the rising number of divorces, the dropping number of marriages, and the increasing presence of the welfare state in the life of an individual. We might tend to think that reality bears out the pessimistic vision of the man of late modernity Delsol puts forth. Yet it is the role of philosophy to call into doubt all that seems obvious and to ask questions where to all appearances there is no room for doubt...