Family is more than “a word”: considerations on contemporary living arrangements

Abstract

By reflecting on the “new living arrangements” or “new family forms”, it seems inspiring to produce an “inversion” in the ways of defining objects. It’s not so much about defining what subjects are doing and more about investing in what Fassin defines as “the grammar of social uses” of the family. Inspired by this idea, the articles in this issue allow us to conceive forms of alliances between women, support and care networks, the transmission and erasure of memories, as well as the production of affections and transitive links. These arrangements invite us to reflect on the complexities of the contours of relationships, constituted in different houses, in the relationships between women (nexos de cultivos), in fluid temporalities, in small forms of living (vida miúda), in families by choice, in care, in conflicts, in the intergenerational transmission of a reproductive memory and in parental exercises that blur the boundaries of law, blood, and affection. These arrangements should not be taken as ways of framing the term family but as points for reflection and differentiation.