Ways of Living by Paul Blyton

Author:Paul Blyton
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Discussion: the nature of personal communities

The analysis of these 20 interviews provides evidence of the existence of two types of personal communities – those that include a mixture of family (blood ties) and friends, and those that are dominated by family. None of our participants had personal communities that were totally ‘chosen’ and devoid of blood family relationships, although one participant had immediate family and a wider ‘family’ based on ethnic, not blood ties. Therefore, we do not find strong evidence that blood families are less important than chosen relationships for these respondents. In fact, these results demonstrate the significance and relevance of traditional family ties among respondents. Blood family usually form the focal core of the personal community, with non-blood family relationships serving more limited, less complex, and in many cases more transient roles in individual lives. It was more common for individuals in our study to describe family as friends (especially siblings) than it was to describe friends or neighbours as family.

The evidence from this study reveals that for many ‘given’ social bonds prevail and for others there is a mixture of given and chosen or constructed relationships. There are a number of participants that very clearly had family-focussed personal communities and some of these were immediate family-focussed (meaning those that live in one household) with extended family relationships being more role-based. Those that had ‘hybrid’ personal communities tended to have close ties with family and differing types of friendships from simple to complex. Thus, irrespective of the composition of the personal community – either given or constructed – it is clear that a personal community shapes one’s way of living. The evidence presented in this study indicates that in many cases, given ties are still very strong. Thus, family-centred personal communities appear to have the greatest influence on lifestyle choices.

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