ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the micro-sociology of the household. It applies neoFoucauldian concepts of power and negotiation as these are expressed in terms of discursive practices that relate to decision-making about prioritisation of careers. This framework emphasises practices and relations of negotiation, accommodation, contestation, resistance and compromise (Jarvis 1999: 2). Moreover intra-household power relations are also crucial in the understanding of a partners’ access to, and experience of leisure, or lack of it (Gilroy 1999: 155) (see Chapter 5). Negotiation is thus explored in very much an interactionist sense, drawing on the notion of human agency (Giddens 1991). Households are seen as dynamic, changing domestic contexts rather than stable, unchanging ‘institutions’ (Gilroy 1999: 158; see also Ackers 1998; Beck 1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995). To comprehend the circumstances, dynamics and trajectories of dual career households it is necessary to discern not only the interaction of housing and labour markets and the configuration of transport systems as well as gender relations, but to understand how dual career households navigate a course through the complex web within which they are ‘situated’ (as argued by Jarvis et al. 2001). In this analysis I draw heavily on the questionnaire survey and interviews with the British and the North American dual career households (see Chapter 1).
