The Weakening of Kin Ties: Exploring the Need for Life-World Led Interventions

Gert Schout and Gideon De Jong
Additional contact information
Gert Schout: Department of Medical Humanities, VU University Medical Centre, P.O. Box 7057, 1007 MB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Gideon De Jong: Edith Cowan University, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Building 21, Room 21.423, 270 Joondalup Drive, Joondalup, WA 6027, Australia

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-12

Abstract: The protective features that families and wider social relationships can have are required to meet the demands of life in contemporary Western societies. Choice and detraditionalization, however; impede this source of solidarity. Family Group Conferencing (FGC) and other life-world led interventions have the potential to strengthen primary groups. This paper explores the need for such a social intervention, using insights from sociological and philosophical theories and empirical findings from a case study of the research project ‘FGC in mental health’. This need is understandable considering the weakening of kin ties, the poor qualities of state agencies to mobilise self-care and informal care, its capacity to produce a shift of power from public to private spheres and its capacity to mitigate the co-isolation of individuals, families and communities. A life-world led intervention like FGC with a specific and modest ambition contributes to small-scale solidarity. This ambition is not inclined to establish a broad social cohesion within society but to restore; in terms of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk; immunity (protection) and solidarity in primary groups, and consequently, resolve issues with those (family, neighbours, colleagues) who share a sphere (a situation, a process, a fate).

Keywords: Family Group Conferencing; life-world led interventions; thick and thin solidarity; social embeddedness; kin ties; Sloterdijk’s sphere theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/2/203/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/2/203/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:2:p:203-:d:128730

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().