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This edited collection brings together two strands of current discussions in gender research through the concept of creativity. First, it addresses creativity in the context of the family, by exploring changing and newly emergent family forms and ways of creating and maintaining intimate relationships. Creativity here is understood not as just "newness or originality," but as that which, in the words of Eisler and Montouri (2007), "supports, nurtures, and actualizes life by increasing the number of choices open to individuals and communities." One aim of this book, therefore, is to investigate the social, collaborative, and creative interactions in contemporary family and kin formations in Europe. Second, the volume examines how new media and technologies are entering and shaping everyday family lives. Technological transformations and adaptions have not only enabled the creation of new forms of families and ways of family living, but also challenged the established constellationsof gender and family arrangements. The present volume addresses these issues from multiple perspectives and in different contexts, and explores the involvement of different actors. By problematizing the creativity of becoming and "doing" family and kinship, the authors acknowledge the increasing fluidity of gender identities, the evolving diversity of relationships, and the permeation of technology into daily life.
List of contents
1. Introduction: Creative Families: Gender and Technologies of Everyday Life.- 2. Creatively Becoming a Family in the Fertility Clinic? Matching Donors with Non-heterosexual and Single Recipients in Commercial Care.- 3. Confronting Monomaternalism in Italy: Non-heterosexual Mothers Accessing ARTs.- 4. Images of Parenthood, Family Life, and Reproductive Strategies among Gay Men in the Czech Republic.- 5. 'What Family Actually Means': Rearticulations of 'Family' in and around Netflix's Sense8.- 6. 'Doing' and 'Displaying' Family in Polymediatic Environments: Conceptual Tools for the Analysis of Teenagers' Digital Practices.- 7. Creative Forms of Family Intimacy: Managing Family Bonds across Distances.- 8. 'She's Nice Company and a Good Friend': Thinking with Haraway to Reconceptualize Children's Playful Interactions with Alexa in the Family Home.- 9. Being Creative: Fluid Boundaries of Everyday Family Life and Creative Home-Based Online Work.
About the author
Jana Mikats is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Graz, Austria. She specializes in family sociology, gender studies, and qualitative research methods.
Susanne Kink-Hampersberger is Lecturer in the Department of Education Research and Teacher Education at the University of Graz, Austria. Her research interests include sociology of gender, education and technology, and feminist and queer science and technology studies.
Libora Oates-Indruchová is Professor of the Sociology of Gender at the University of Graz, Austria. She is the author of
Censorship in Czech and Hungarian Academic Publishing, 1969-89: Snakes and Ladders (2020) and co-editor of
The Politics of Gender Culture under State Socialism: An expropriated voice (2014).
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