Challenging landscapes of sociological thinking on everyday family lives in the UK: taking the yellow brick road

Abstract

This paper considers several critical and feminist interventions that colleagues and I have inserted into some key sociological perspectives and policy terrains in the families field: economic rationality, personal life, brain science, and social change. I use the metaphor of the ‘yellow brick road’ to discuss the challenges we made to the universalistic, decontextualized and unsituated thinking that often underpins and characterises intellectual and policy landscapes, and to think about how concepts of time and space can enhance understanding and bring the relationship between social divisions and everyday family lives in location into view. I conclude with some reflection on future possibilities and challenges in the families field.