Abstract
For a long time, the household unit—that is, the ‘ménage’—has been a privileged doorway to study family and personal life (Laslett 1972; Wall 2005). Yet, the transformations of family arrangements associated with divorce, informal cohabitation, migration, and ageing alongside the pluralization of the life course have been challenging the heuristic potential of the household unit to capture family meanings and practices (Bonvalet and Lelièvre 2013). More recent approaches (e.g., the configurational perspective) highlight the importance of focusing instead on the networks of meaningful relationships in which individuals are embedded in their everyday lives that can go beyond the limits of the household (Widmer 2010).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
This Project was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (PTDC/SDE/65663/2006).
- 2.
To reconstitute household trajectories, we considered with whom individuals coresided over the last two decades. Our approach to household trajectories draws on the contributions of family historians (Hammel and Laslett 1974; Laslett 1972). We adapted their theoretical and methodological tools by positioning individuals (ego) within household structures. Our examination of the empirical development of biographical events associated with coresidence does not anticipate a model of predefined sequence of stages and transitions.
- 3.
The attribution of substitution and insert / deletion cost is a key element of optimal matching analysis (Abbott and Hrycak 1990; Gauthier 2013). Costs can be set using several methods. In our case, INDEL costs were set at 1 and substitution costs were differentiated according to their (inversed) relative transition frequency (more frequent transitions are less costly, less frequent transitions are more costly).
- 4.
We used the average number of elements cited in each type of tie because we followed the same methodological procedure as Widmer (2010) to create the configurational typology, thus, ensuring future comparability. However, we assume that the proportion of elements cited in each type of tie would have been more accurate to assess the representativeness of these ties within the networks.
References
Abbott, A. 1995. Sequence Analysis: New Methods for Old Ideas. Annual Review of Sociology 21: 93–113.
———. 1998. The Causal Devolution. Sociological Methods & Research 27(2): 148–181.
Abbott, A., and A. Hrycak. 1990. Measuring Resemblance in Sequence Data: An Optimal Matching Analysis of Musicians’ Careers. American Journal of Sociology 96(1): 144–185.
Abbott, A., and A. Tsay. 2000. Sequence Analysis and Optimal Matching Methods in Sociology: Review and Prospect. Sociological Methods & Research 29(1): 3–33.
Aboim, S., and Vasconcelos, P. 2013, November 21. From Political to Social Generations: A Critical Reappraisal of Mannheim’s Classical Approach. European Journal of Social Theory 17(2): 165–183.
Allan, G., G. Crow, and S. Hawker. 2011. Stepfamilies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bidart, C., and Lavenu, D. 2005. Evolutions of Personal Networks and Life Events. Social Networks 27(4): 359–376.
Bonvalet, C., and E. Lelièvre. 2013. Significant Others and the Dynamics of the Family Network (from the Proches et Parents Survey to the Biographies et Entourage Survey). International Review of Sociology 23(1): 8–26.
Everitt, B.S. 2011. Cluster Analysis, 5th edn. Chichester: Wiley.
Fischer, C.S., and S.J. Oliker. 1983. A Research Note on Friendship, Gender, and the Life Cycle. Social Forces 62(1): 124–133.
Gabadinho, A., G. Ritschard, M. Studer, and N. Müller. 2008. Mining Sequence Data in R with the TraMineR Package: A User’s Guide. Geneva: University of Geneva.
Gabadinho, A., G. Ritschard, N.S. Müller, and M. Studer. 2011. Analyzing and Visualizing State Sequences in R with TraMineR. Journal of Statistical Software 40(4).
Gauthier, J.-A. 2013. Optimal Matching, a Tool for Comparing Life Course Sequences. In Gendered Life Courses Between Standardization and Individualization. A European Approach Applied to Switzerland, ed. R. Levy, and E.D. Widmer, 37–49. Zürich, Berlin: LIT Verlag.
Goodwin, J., and H. O’Connor. 2015. A Critical Reassessment of the ‘Complexity’ Orthodoxy: Lessons from Existing Data and Youth ‘Legacy’ Studies. In A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century, ed. P. Kelly, and A. Kamp, 38–52. Brill: Leiden, Boston.
Gouveia, R. 2014. Personal Networks in Portuguese Society: A Configurational and Lifecourse Approach. Tese de doutoramento em Sociologia. Lisboa: Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa.
Gray, A. 2009. The Social Capital of Older People. Ageing & Society 29(1): 5–31.
Greenacre, M.J. 2007. Correspondence Analysis in Practice, 2nd edn. Boca Raton: Chapmann & Hall/CRC.
Hammel, E.A., and P. Laslett. 1974. Comparing Household Structure Over Time and Between Cultures. Comparative Studies in Society and History 16(1): 73–109.
Laslett, P. 1972. Introduction: the History of the Family. In Household and Family in Past Time, ed. P. Laslett, and R. Wall, 1–89. Cambridge: Cambrigde University Press.
Merton, R.K. 1968. The Matthew Effect in Science. Science 199: 55–63.
———. 1988. The Matthew Effect in Science, II: Cumulative Advantage and the Symbolism of Intellectual Property. Isis 79(4): 606–623.
O’Rand, A.M. 2001. Stratification and the Life Course: The Forms of Life Course Capital and Their Interrelationships. In Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, 5th edn, ed. R.H. Binstock, and L.K. George, 197–217. San Diego: Academic Press.
Troll, L. 1987. Gender Differences in Cross-Generation Networks. Sex Roles 17(11–12): 751–766.
Wall, K. 2005. Os grupos domésticos de co-residência. In Famílias em Portugal—Percursos, Interacções, Redes Sociais, ed. K. Wall, 553–597. Imprensa de Ciências Sociais: Lisboa.
Wall, K., and R. Gouveia. 2014. Changing Meanings of Family in Personal Networks. Current Sociology 62(3): 352–373.
Widmer, E.D. 2010. Family Configurations. A Structural Approach to Family Diversity. London: Ashgate.
Widmer, E.D., and L.-A. La Farga. 2000. Family Networks: A Sociometric Method to Study Relationships in Families. Field Methods 12(2): 108–128.
Widmer, E.D., and G. Ritschard. 2013. Life Course Changes in Late Modernity: Towards Destandardization and De-gendering? In Gendered Life Courses Between Standardization and Individualization. A European Approach Applied to Switzerland, ed. L. Verlad, 161–181. Berlin / Zurich: Lit Verlag.
Widmer, E.D., G. Aeby, and M. Sapin. 2013. Collecting Family Network Data. International Review of Sociology 23(1): 27–46.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ramos, V., Gouveia, R., Wall, K. (2017). Coresidence as a Mechanism of Relational Proximity: The Impact of Household Trajectories on the Diversification of Personal Networks. In: Česnuitytė, V., Lück, D., D. Widmer, E. (eds) Family Continuity and Change. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59028-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59028-2_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59027-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59028-2
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)