Sharing (and) familiarities: round table discussion

The session evolves around different notions of sharing and an inclusive concept of family. The aim is to question and qualify ideas on how to understand various types of connectivity related to family and familiarity. By introducing the idea of familiarities in the field of family research, we are given other opportunities to work with both bloodline and non-bloodline relationships and linkages. This includes questions such as: how do we share households, family and lives? How does the sharing of households amongst siblings or in intergenerational living arrangements affect, enrich and complicate everyday life? How does shared everyday life bacteria affect social connectedness and experiences of other-than-bloodline cohesions? What is the scope for new ways of conceptualizing ideas around ‘sharing’ and ‘families’? What meanings are ascribed to sharing – in contexts and situations including but not exclusive to lifestories/biographies, travels, times, spaces and material items, bodies and intimate knowledge of one another, surnames - in the subjective lives of family members?
Sociology has traditionally been preoccupied with notions and logics of sharing in homely contexts (e.g. Simmel’s work on the Meal, and Elias’ work on etiquette). The geographer Massey (2004) uses the term throwntogetherness a notion that could prove itself useful for understanding life between places in changing and shared households, where life, objects, and emotions become important. Current research on the complex entanglements between bodies; human as well as other-than-human, (e.g. Haraway, 2016; Tsing, 2015; Morton, 2016, 2017; Bencard, 2014; Bennett; 2009) makes way for new explorations in the field of family research. Mason (2018) uses the concept of affinities as an entry into working with potent connections and attunements in personal life. The questions - What is (a) family? and What is familiarity? - call for new explorations and answers in light of always-evolving living structures, societies and epistemological turns.
The symposium aims at opening a productive forum for novel and creative ways into understanding family and physio-social connectivity (and/or –ties). It invites participation from those interested in the broad concepts of ‘sharing’ and ‘familiarities’ in families or family-like contexts (institutions, communities and beyond). We will open the discussion with different presentations and perspectives, and subsequently invite a shared discussion on the issues raised and related themes.