Introduction
The Social Exchanges of Australian Families research program comprises a new research focus for the Australian Institute of Family Studies that builds upon existing knowledge, particularly in relation to family intergenerational exchanges. The program is one of four research programs to be funded over the next three years and includes a multi-disciplinary research team from economics, demography, psychology and sociology. Whilst it is envisaged that this program will ultimately lead to a primary data collection exercise – at present the research effort is focussed upon three activities:
Structure of symposium
These three activities provide the framework for today’s symposium:
Structure of paper
This paper proceeds by answering the following five questions:
What is this research about?
How do families meet their needs? Do they meet their needs by helping themselves, relying upon community support, buying help, obtaining it from the government, or a combination of these? Which of these means of meeting needs, or combination of means, is most supportive of family well being? These are the basic questions of the Social Exchanges of Australian Families research program.
This research will extend our knowledge of family well being in two ways. First, it will situate the meeting of family needs in its full social context. Second, it will emphasise the nature of relationships entered into to meet family needs. Family needs include child care, elder care, health care, education, income, emotional support, financial support, practical help and so on.
The following concepts and their definitions are important in defining the precise nature of the questions we wish to ask:
Figure 1 depicts the four institutions that family members can use to meet their needs: the family beyond the household, the community, the state and the market. Not all of these institutions will be available to all families at all times to help meet their needs. If families cannot rely upon their members to meet their needs, cannot be self-reliant, what structure of social exchanges is available to help meet their needs? What are the opportunity costs of this structure of social exchange for families in particular and for society at large? Not all of these institutions will be equally good at meeting family needs. What structure of mutual interdependence provides for the best family well being outcomes given the diversity of family types and the diversity of their needs?
The shaded area between the five institutions in Figure 1, and the accompanying arrows, are drawn to place an emphasis upon the nature of the relationship that exists as a family engages in a social exchange with another institution. Not all social exchange relationships will be the same. The different institutions are characterised by different ways of acting (see Table 1) and this will affect the quality of the social exchange relationship. This research asks which social exchange relationships are most supportive of family well being?
Figure 1: The structure of social exchanges and the nature of social exchange relationships.
Each of the core institutions available to assist in the meeting of family needs can be characterised by their different organisational form, segment of economic activity, and ways of acting (Table 1) (Colebatch 1997: 41).
| Organisational form | Segment of economic activity | Ways of acting |
|---|---|---|
| Market | Private sector | Self-interested exchange |
| Bureaucracy | Public sector | Following rules |
| Community | Third sector | Shared Values |
| Family | Domestic sector | Obligation, love. |
What is of interest is the extent to which the different ways of acting, characteristic of different institutions, enable more or less productive social exchanges. The concept of social capital focuses our attention on the quality and productiveness of social exchanges. ‘Social capital, put simply, is the mutual sense of reciprocity and trust which enables groups of people to live and work together successfully.’ (Smith, 1998: 8). The importance of social exchanges characterised by social capital is that they are said to result in better social and economic outcomes. Thus, it becomes important to understand which social exchanges are characterised by social capital and which are not and why this is so.
If we examine the ‘ways of acting’ column in Table 1, a logical hypothesis might be that the ‘shared values’ of the community appear the most likely to be characterised by trust and reciprocity. If empirical research was to support such an assumption, then meeting the policy aim of engendering social capital would be best served by focussing on family-to-community social exchanges.
Ways of acting, after Weber (1948), need to be understood as subjectively meaningful. Our actions are often imbued with meaning or intent for they take account of the actions of others – they are not simply behaviours. Subjectively meaningful social action can be differentiated from behaviour as ‘Not every type of contact of human beings has a social character; this is rather confined to cases where the actor’s behaviour is meaningfully oriented to that of others. For example, a mere collision of two cyclists may be compared to a natural event. On the other hand, their attempt to avoid hitting each other, or whatever insults, blows, or friendly discussion might follow the collision, would constitute ‘social action’ (Weber 1947: 113).
In studying families’ ways of acting in social exchanges, we must understand the meanings of these actions. This places a research emphasis upon understanding attitudes towards social exchanges. What do families believe should be their role, and that of other institutions, in the structure of social exchanges? How do these attitudes affect ways of acting in social exchanges and what affect does this have on the levels of trust and reciprocity in the nature of social exchanges?
What is changing that means we should do this research?
A sweeping history of the family as a social institution (in western societies at least) displays a long-term trend away from family self-reliance toward mutual interdependence (Grimshaw 1983; Gilding 1991). Self-reliance characterised family life in 17th and 18th century Europe when the social practice of caring and support was carried out in a relatively autonomous, self-providing unit. Production was carried on in the home or on land adjacent to it, and all family members, including children, contributed. Without market or state institutions sufficient to provide for basic needs the family relied upon its own resources (Giddens 1982: 123).
Mutual interdependence is at the opposite end of the scale to self-reliance and refers to a social practice of caring and support by families that is closely interwoven with a range of other institutions. At the close of the 20th century the family no longer relies upon only its own members to provide care and support, but obtains caring and support services from a range of other institutions, be it for child care, education, health or care of an elderly relative (Burbidge 1998). Take for example child care, though families remain the main provider of child care services (Millward 1998 forthcoming), a complex web of families, community organisations, government subsidies and market providers combines, in various ways, to offer a wide range of child care services. That each of these institutions provides care or support that is of equally good quality cannot be assumed. However, the institutional interdependence between families, communities, states and markets is mutual for families draw upon it to undertake their caring and support role, and the other institutions require families to undertake their care and support role to ensure physical (sustainable population) and social (social order) reproduction.
The complex, interwoven nature of this mutual interdependence is experiencing a dramatic restructuring due to significant demographic, economic, political, and cultural changes. Such changes include:
The implications of the structure of mutual interdependence for family well being remain under-theorised and under-researched. The need to conduct this research is all the more pressing because of the dramatic restructuring that is currently under way. This context of change has rendered the structure and nature of mutual interdependence a considerable policy concern. The Prime Minister articulated this concern in a recent speech to the Australian Council of Social Services national congress: ‘It is only through this partnership between individuals, business, government and the community with each one playing their proper role that a free, fair and united society can be strengthened and maintained. After all, strong local communities are essential for developing a sense of nationhood. Strong but fair communities depend upon a web of relationships between individuals and within and between families and communities. These relationships are about trust and mutuality – they are what hold us together.’ (Howard 1998: 2).
Why are these changes taking place?
A research program that proposes investigating the interdependent links between the institutions of family, community, state and market, echoes the key concerns of the leading early-twentieth century sociologist Talcott Parsons. Parsons’ theory of social change centred on the process of structural differentiation. This means that institutions evolve which specialise in fewer functions. This process of differentiation and specialisation, Parsons argued, involves the transfer of a variety of functions from the nuclear family to the other structures of society. Functional specialisation of institutions was said by Parsons to mean that the nuclear family was the most well adapted to the demands of industrial society. He predicted that as all countries industrialised so would their family systems approach the nuclear type (Parsons and Bales 1955).
Parsons’ thinking, however, became discredited in the 1970s as research revealed the predominance of the nuclear family in pre-industrial societies, the role of the extended family in modern society, as well as the growth in recent years of a diversity of household types. It is now thought that the nuclear family in England dates back to the 4th century (McDonald, 1992, Goldthorpe, 1987). Furthermore, whilst Parsons identified the gender specialisation of roles characteristic of the male breadwinner/ female nurturer model of the family as a part of the differentiation process, this would also appear under challenge today by the emergent gender-equity model of the family (see McDonald 1998). The rise of this model of the family also points to the dissipation of specialisaton and differentiation in gender roles within the family. Increasingly, albeit slowly, men and women share family caring and support tasks that were previously exclusive to one gender (Bittman 1998). Moreover, rather than the practice of family caring and support being specialised within the family, to the contrary it is now met by drawing upon a range of social institutions which are interwoven in complex patterns of mutual interdependence.
A more useful theoretical explanation of why the change in mutual interdependence has occurred may be found with risk society theory.
Risk society theory
Contemporary social change, theorists argue, is of such a dimension and quality that it amounts to an epochal transformation. It is argued the industrial epoch of modernity is now giving way to the risk epoch. ‘Risk society’ is the stage of modernity in which the hazards produced in the growth of industrial society become the key risks in social life (for example, ozone depletion and global warming resulting from industrial and automobile pollution) (Beck, 1996). These ‘manufactured uncertainties’ that define risk society are said to be the result of social interventions (Giddens, 1996:152).
To illustrate the character of risk society and connect this discussion to issues of family stability and well being, ‘Take as an example the decision on the part of someone living in a Western society to get married. Fifty years ago, someone who decided to marry knew what he or she was doing: marriage was a relatively fixed division of labour involving a specified status for each partner. Now no one quite knows any longer what marriage actually is, save that it is a ‘relationship’, entered into against the backdrop of profound changes affecting gender relations, the family, sexuality and the emotions’ (Giddens, 1996:153). This uncertainty about marriage can be conceptualised as a manufactured uncertainty because it is a part of the social restructuring of gender, sexual and family relations. Not only has the incidence and timing of marriage altered dramatically over the past twenty years, but the norms and values associated with marriage, its social meaning, has also been significantly reshaped.
A compounding factor of uncertainty in a risk society is the exhaustion and dissolution of collective and group-specific sources of meaning. For example, whereas the opportunities, hazards and ambivalences of life could once be coped with in the family unit, in the community and by recourse to social class, in risk society, it is argued, these are increasingly interpreted and dealt with by the individual alone. This process is referred to as ‘individualisation’. (Beck, 1996: 29-30)
Individualisation is a process whereby individuals, rather than general or traditional social rules, are increasingly responsible for setting the boundaries to the ways in which we lead our lives, or as Smart phrases it, ‘the parameters of biographies’ (1997:307). Consider the example of married life. ‘[C]ouples can [now] create for themselves the normative order of their relationship. Thus, if a couple agree to a certain set of boundaries, the important element is sticking to what is agreed rather than following general or traditional rules which are presumed to accompany ones status as husband or wife.’ (Smart, 1997: 307) Individuals are increasingly responsible for negotiating their own life patterns and either make such choices or face increased uncertainty.
The writing of individual biographies is not, however, undertaken in a social vacuum, for secondary agencies and institutions come to take the place of traditional ties and social forms such as social class and the nuclear family (Beck 1992: 131). Such secondary agencies include the labour market and the welfare state. This enhanced role for social policy in a risk society places government at the very heart of family life. Regardless of political ideologies that advocate less or more government intervention, the evolving structure of the social fabric, risk society theory argues, marks policy institutions as forces central to the shaping of individual lives.
One outcome associated with the rise of manufactured uncertainty and individualisation in a risk society, is a quantitative change in the diversity of family and household forms. Processes of individualisation lead to the break down of more traditional forms of social group which includes the nuclear family. Manufactured uncertainties about marriage (increasing divorce and falling marriage rates), childbirth (decreasing fertility rates), sexuality and gender roles lead to a proliferation of other family and household forms, including increasing proportions of one parent families, group and living alone households. As Beck summarises it: ‘Marriage can be subtracted from sexuality, and that in turn from parenthood; parenthood can be multiplied by divorce; and the whole thing can be divided by living together or apart, and raised to a higher power by the possibility of multiple residences and the ever-present potentiality of taking back decisions. This mathematical operation yields a rather large, though fluctuating sum on the right side of the equation, and gives some idea of the variety of direct and multiply nested shadow existences that are more and more often concealed today...’ (Beck, 1992: 116).
Nor is it simply that at any one point in time there is an increased diversity of household forms, but that over time any one individual is likely to find their biography littered with an array of living arrangements – we can talk of serial diversity. As this diversity of household forms becomes increasingly accepted as a part of the complex mosaic of family life in late modernity, so does a qualitative change in the social meaning of the family occur.
Risk society theory also suggests that the opportunities for individualisation or to plan a biography, are unlikely to be evenly distributed across the population. Social inequality remains an important dimension of a risk society affecting opportunities for individualisation (Smart, 1997: 308). Amongst the well paid and well educated the uncertainty of risk society may present as a host of previously unheralded opportunities. For the disadvantaged, however, such uncertainties are more likely to represent insecurity and a loss of opportunity.
The trend toward individualisaton has also been identified in relation to family values. Reconciling the goal of personal autonomy with the essentially social nature of human life has been a central tension in western philosophy since the Enlightenment (McDonald, 1995:27). The ‘pull’ of this tension over the centuries has undoubtedly been toward increasing personal autonomy or liberalisation. ‘In broad terms, today’s family values reflect the continued extension of individual rights to adults, including the right to determine the ways in which they live their lives...the emphasis has been on the rights of the individual family member rather than on the rights of the family as a group unit’ (McDonald, 1995:46).
How might risk society theory help address the key research questions of the Social Exchanges of Australian Families research program and how might this exploration help advance risk society theory? The key concepts of risk society theory, manufactured uncertainty and individualisation, draw our attention to the relationship between the family and other core social institutions – in our terms the structure of mutual interdependence. They do this by referring to the breaking down of traditional institutions such as the family and the rise of secondary institutions such as the labour market and the welfare state in shaping people’s biographies.
Risk society theory hypothesises an increasing mutual interdependence of families upon states and markets associated with a weakening of family and community. The mutuality of this interdependence is, as the Prime Minister puts it, that ‘Robust communities, cohesive families and responsible individuals are fundamental for building a strong economy. And without a strong economy, a caring community becomes that much harder to achieve. Without strong economic foundations there can be no guarantee of fulfilling and lasting employment, little hope of security for individuals and families and no stable revenue base to provide the social safety net that the community demands.’ (Howard 1998: 3). If risk society theory is right that the direction of change in the nature of mutual interdependence is toward weakening family and community institutions then clearly this is a question which is of fundamental concern to society at large and the Institute in particular. Through empirical exploration of the ways in which families exist in mutual interdependence with other institutions, this research will contribute to theoretical development by testing propositions about weakening families and communities and more importantly identify what forms of mutual interdependence will strengthen families and communities.
The focus of this research program is not only the structure of mutual interdependence but also the nature of the relationships in that mutual interdependence. The concept of social capital usefully places a focus upon the quality of social exchanges. Though social capital remains a politically contested concept Putnam’s definition of relationships characterised by trust and reciprocity has increasing acceptance amongst social policy analysts (Putnam 1993). The research will use and contribute to social capital theory by evaluating whether those relationships characterised by social capital do in fact lead to better family and social outcomes.
The research will also contribute to social capital theory by establishing the family’s role in the creation of social capital which to date remains under-theorised and unclear. Coleman (1988) assumed that different family structures created different levels of social capital. He measured this simply as the presence of two parents in the household, regardless of the levels of trust and reciprocity that may have existed within the family. Putnam’s (1993) Mafia families worked on a basis of fear and intimidation rather than trust and reciprocity. The tendency is to assume that the family is the very crucible of social capital, but do strong family relationships based on obligation ‘crowd out’ the relationships of trust and reciprocity that social capital depends on? Does social capital aid the development of strong family relationships, or does strong civil society demand a focus beyond the boundaries of the family?
What are the key research questions to be asked?
How will we go about answering these research questions?
The current phase of data collection, reviewing relevant literatures and secondary data bases, will continue to proceed. A case study of the meeting of childcare needs has commenced and case studies of elder care and youth support have been identified as foci for this ongoing work.
Some of the key literatures we have been drawing on are:
Some of the key secondary data bases we have been and will be drawing on are:
To assist us in the process of arriving at a strong definition of social capital we have made collaborative links with a network of key social capital researchers in Australia. A key outcome of this collaboration will be an edited collection of works under the working title Social Capital and Social Policy in Australia. A conference based around these book chapters will be held on Wed Feb 17th 1999 at the Rydges Hotel Canberra and the book will be published later that year.
The key element of future data collection will comprise a survey designed to illicit how families carry out their care and support role and how the structure and nature of social exchanges engaged in to do this affects family well being. The survey will also be designed to reveal how systematic differences in attitudes towards the ‘proper roles’ of family, community, state and market, shape the structure and nature of social exchanges and ultimately family and marital stability.
Whilst the purpose of this data collection is clear, which particular family needs are studied will depend upon the results of the first phase of literature and secondary data-base analysis, as well as negotiations with the Institute’s new host department about policy priorities. If, for example, the secondary databases provided sufficient up-to-date information about the meeting of childcare needs, the Institute’s survey work would not attempt to duplicate these data.
Work to date in this research program has highlighted a number of important variables that will need to be included in the construction of a survey sample. There are clear differences between urban and rural areas in attitudes towards social exchanges. Furthermore, both social exchange attitudes and practices appear quite different amongst different generations, different ethnic groups and the different genders.
Conclusion
There is little to conclude at this stage, for we are very much at the beginning rather than the end. This research program is still being developed and hence the desire to air its intentions in public. We very much welcome comments on the proposed theoretical framework, the research questions, on possible empirical foci, methodology, and on connections to social policy development.
References
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