Close Relations

This book speaks to the meanings and values that inhere in close relations, focusing on ‘family’ and ‘kinship’ but also looking beyond these categories. Multifaceted, diverse and subject to constant debate, close relations are ubiquitous in human lives on embodied as well as symbolic levels. Closely related to processes of power, legibility and recognition, close relations are surrounded by boundaries that both constrain and enable their practical, symbolical and legal formation. Carefully contextualising close relations in relation to different national contexts, but also in relation to gender, sexuality, race, religion and dis/ability, the volume points to the importance of and variations in how close relations are lived, understood and negotiated. Grounded in a number of academic areas and disciplines, ranging from legal studies, sociology and social work to literary studies and ethnology, this volume also highlights the value of using inter- and multidisciplinary scholarly approaches in research about close relations. Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Close Relations focuses on families in terms of what they do rather than the shape they take. Fully updated for the fifth edition, this text continues to provide a focus on applications and theory: what works for families, for us as individuals, and for society, with a special focus on the variations in family processes, forms, and structures.

The “spatial turn” of the 1990s has inspired many academics to re-evaluate the importance of space and time within their own disciplines and to engage in productive dialogue with other disciplines whose spatial focus intersects with their own. This book applies insights and approaches generated by the “spatial turn” to Greek and Roman theatre. The title evokes the “close relations” that exist between the many aspects and notions of space-time and their complex interweaving, between the disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches that are needed to understand complex spatial phenomena, between notions of space in general and those of theatrical space, and between Greek and Roman theatre as it existed in antiquity and as it has been “received,” interpreted, and transformed throughout history ever since.

‘A witty and intelligent tale about the terrifying, seductive lie of stability – emotional, physical, financial, sexual’ Mail on Sunday Gordon Hammond, sixty-five, a builder who has built up his own, modestly successful business, has a heart attack. Whilst recovering in hospital he falls in love with April, a young black nurse, and leaves Dorothy, his wife of 45 years to set up home with her. Dorothy is released like a loose cannon into the lives of her three daughters and chaos ensues. More relationships break up, passions run high and dramatic developments ensue that will change the Hammond family forever.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The New York Times bestselling author of Compromising Positions returns at her sexy and satiric best, with a novel that blends sex, politics, and family craziness Marcia Green is a sophisticated, witty, successful New Yorker, a whiz of a political speech writer, a woman who finds a smoke-filled room more intoxicating than a magnum of champagne. Her private life is a little less bubbly. She has a passionate but not very promising live-in relationship with her boss’s dashing chief of staff, Jerry Morrissey. He offers her only a good time—but what a time! Can Marcia resist when a new man arrives on the scene, a man who is exactly the sort her family wants her to marry—bright, kind, attractive, wealthy, and charming—in short, too good to be real? Marcia is determined to find the right kind of man, as well as the right kind of life. Compelling and entertaining, Close Relations is about the things that are vital to all of us, about men and women, about sex, money, work, family values and about what we need most in today’s world—close relations.

Set in 19th century Dudley, this is a story of a love affair between a lock-keeper's son and a canal-boat owner's daughter. Their marriage should be made in heaven - but they encounter some surprising obstacles.

Noted photographer Henry Horenstein presents his earliest photographs, made from 1970 to 1973 - a collection of portraits of family and friends, landscapes and period imagery. Horenstein documented his friends and parents, and their stylish, turn-of-the-70s friends, all the while keeping to the forefront the importance of preserving the present to create a record for the future. In Close Relations he offers viewers a warm and quirky look at his personal history and that of a particular place and time.

How Native American history can guide us today: “Presents strong voices of old, old cultures bravely trying to make sense of an Earth in chaos.” —Whole Earth Written by a former Green Party vice-presidential candidate who was once listed among “America’s fifty most promising leaders under forty” by Time magazine, this thoughtful, in-depth account of Native struggles against environmental and cultural degradation features chapters on the Seminoles, the Anishinaabeg, the Innu, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Mohawks, among others. Filled with inspiring testimonies of struggles for survival, each page of this volume speaks forcefully for self-determination and community. “Moving and often beautiful prose.” —Ralph Nader “Thoroughly researched and convincingly written.” —Choice