ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the conceptual and methodological issues arising from a re-study. At the beginning of the 1960s, Colin Rosser and Chris Harris undertook a research project which explored the family and social change. It investigated how the family had been affected by social change since the early years of the twentieth century, and its findings were published in 1965 (Rosser and Harris 1965). Our re-study, which began in 2001, investigated the nature of social change and how it had affected families in the four decades since 1960. We did this by replicating, as far as possible, the original study in order to be able to compare the findings of the two studies. In this chapter we explore some of the methodological issues raised by our re-study and the extent to which such a re-study can contribute to our understanding of social change – both empirically, in terms of changing family practices, and theoretically, in terms of how social change is conceptualised. In the process we reflect on how studies of family and community (in particular places at particular times – or in this case at two particular times) can illuminate general theories of social change.
