Description:
This book surveys the conceptions of motherhood, fatherhood, and childhood that emerge from the practices of agencies.
Brief description:
Caroline Knowles is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. She is the author of Race, Discourse, and Labourism as well as Family Boundaries: The Invention of Normality and Dangerousness.
Review Quotes:
Caroline Knowles adopts a Foucauldian approach to studying family, exploring the narrative accounts of family life produced by agencies mandated to manage child abuse. These professional discourses actively constitute, for practical purposes, what social arrangements are taken to be 'a family' and what is 'normal' or acceptable conduct within families. This book offers a powerful critique of standard textbooks on family sociology, which commonly disguises 'how-to-live' manuals under the textual device of scientific rhetoric.
--Sylvia Hale, St. Thomas University