Introduction

Abstract

It should be noted here that the voices represented in this book do not represent the UK’s full diversity of ethnicities. Sociology, in general, and much of family studies in particular, have a problem with race—where whiteness and white families are still considered the norm and too often this is not called into question. Often, this is due to methodological approaches which target ‘known’ groups, available participants or majority groups, all of which exclude those who are less visible, less accessible or in a minority. This book presents data from a number of different studies, none of which was explicitly focused on majority white populations but all of which, nonetheless, recruited samples with majority white participants. This includes the nationally representative surveys used in Chaps. 4 and 6 on cohabitation and living apart together and the ‘elderly’ survey material used in Chap. 2, just as much as the small qualitative samples supporting the chapters on marriage, name change and weddings. Exceptionally, the qualitative interview s with cohabitants were supplemented by small purposive samples of cohabitants of African-Caribbean and Asian heritage, groups which displayed marked differences from the white ‘norm’. Although not always accounting for ethnic diversity, we feel that our arguments concerning tradition, agency and bricolage may be abstracted from particular identity positions to explain wider social processes. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that theory built on the study of majority white groups and individuals will necessarily produce a biased account.