Exploring material things in family life : Morality and intimacy in sibling- and child-parent interaction

Abstract: This study examines the everyday family life of 12 families across Sweden. The study aims to explore the ways in which material things figure in the enactment of everyday family life, that is, how family life is accomplished in interaction between children, parents and material things during everyday activities. The empirical material consists of 45 hours of video recordings of the families’ everyday lives and was produced mainly by the families themselves (40 hours) and the thesis author (five hours). The recordings contain the families’ interactions during everyday, routine activities, (e.g., mealtimes), including sibling interaction and conflicts. During these interactions, different aspects of everyday family life emerged as important to the participants, such as moral issues and practices of intimacy.This thesis takes an explorative approach to the study of family life by weaving together Studies in Social Interaction, including multimodal interaction analysis, Child Studies and themes in Science and Technology Studies. The methodological approach illuminates, through micro-focused analysis, how material things and children figure in the enactment of family morality and practices of intimacy in sibling- and child-parent interaction.The results show that serious negotiation and conflicts occurred continuously in siblingand child-parent interaction. In such negotiations and conflicts family morality was enacted which typically related to negotiating local family rules about in/appropriate behaviour with material things. Equally prevalent were family members’ engagements in practices of intimacy and care. Such practices were framed by affective, playful and joyful activities with each other and with material things, even when such activities went against the participants moral expectations of how the activities should be carried out. As such, this study demonstrates how material things are intertwined with, and are central in, the constitution of family morality and intimacy, in practice. This thesis contributes to discussions about how complexities of social phenomena can be explored and embraced through a focus on actors that have tended to fade into the background of research on family life, such as material things and children.