The Ivy Compton-Burnett School of Sociology: family culture and everyday life

Ivy Compton-Burnett is a little-known writer whose novels about family life should be essential reading for anyone interested in relations of power in families. This paper takes those novels as a starting point for reflecting on methodological issues that arise when working with data that offer multiple perspectives on one family. I am part way through a PhD that considers negotiation of domestic labour in families with teenage kids. My study is based on confidential, in-depth interviews with four or five members of each family. Reading the transcripts from this study is like reading the novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett: in both, accounts from each family member can be seen as situated in the context of their family culture. The paper outlines a typology for thinking about analysis of data from multiple perspectives, devised by UK sociologists Jane McCarthy, Janet Holland and Val Gillies. I propose an approach to analysis for the current study that draws on the work of Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith. I argue that considering people’s accounts in the context of their family culture enables us to see people as situated actors, and invites us to consider how relations of power are enacted in their everyday lives.