Living Resemblances
October 2005 - September 2008(Contact: Professor Jennifer Mason - University of Manchester or Professor J. M. Green - Mother and Infant Research Unit, University of Leeds or Professor C. Smart - University of Manchester or Dr Jon Prosser or Prof. Lynne Cameron or Dr B. Gough - Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds)
Funded By: ESRC through its National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM)
Other project members:
Dr A. Wade - Centre for Research on Family, Kinship and Childhood
Dr Zazie Todd - Institute of Psychological Sciences
The Leeds/Manchester Node is funded by ESRC through its National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM). The mission of NCRM is to provide a strategic focal point for the identification, development and delivery of an integrated national research, training and capacity-building programme aimed at: promoting a step change in the quality and range of methodological skills and techniques used by the UK social science community; and providing support for, and dissemination of, methodological innovation and excellence within the UK.
This is one of three projects that comprise the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, Universities of Leeds and Manchester Node: Multi-dimensional Methods for Real Lives.
”Living Resemblances” is one of three inter-disciplinary projects that form part of the Leeds/Manchester Research Methods Node.
The question of whether and how people resemble members of their families – bodily, physically, bio-genetically, behaviourally, temperamentally, intellectually, emotionally – is one that pervades everyday lives in a multitude of powerful ways. The claiming of a resemblance to another can be empowering and provide a sense of origin and connectedness, or conversely the perceived lack of resemblance can emphasis a sense of disconnection. On the other hand, apparent likeness to others can be feared, rejected or accepted fatalistically, with significant implications for how relationships are conducted. Negotiations about resemblance pervade the operation o family relationships in profound ways and are a powerful dynamic. Resemblances matter, and not only in the highly charged contexts of adoption and assisted conception, where rights and responsibilities to resemble others, or to acknowledge bio-genetic connection, can be hotly contested. Assumptions about family resemblances pervade thinking and practice on a range of levels of everyday life, for example in understandings about educational and moral development and behaviour In lateral and generational kin.
The Living Resemblances project brings a creative palette of mixed methods to this new field of enquiry, deployed by an interdisciplinary team across sociology, social policy, education, applied linguistics, medicine and gender studies.
I will contribute expertise in the analysis and computer-generated visual display of metaphor to the development of mixed research methods in investigating the nature and impact of family resemblances.
Contact details
Professor Lynne Cameron
School of Education
University of Leeds
L.J.Cameron@leeds.ac.uk
This project last updated by Karon McBride on 5th October 2005.