ABSTRACT
Towards the end of his life Karl Marx remarked that ‘To save the Russian commune a Russian revolution will be necessary’ (in Nicolaievsky and Maenchen-Helfen 1976: 422). This is one of several social scientific paradoxes that take the form of identifying that things need to change if things are to stay the same (Crow 2005). Community and family relationships are prominent among these demonstrations of how analysis in terms of a simple opposition between either continuity or change has serious limitations, because continuity and change are often to be found together. It has long been recognised that the reproduction of patterns of family relationships involves frequent adjustment to change by the individuals who participate in them, for example the reworking of the ties between family members of different generations as they age. Families work towards children becoming more independent and setting up their own households in order that they can continue to function as supportive family or kin networks. Leaving home is thus a time of change and continuity: ‘material and emotional support for children at this time of household disruption is a means by which family solidarities can be sustained despite the changes occurring’ (Allan and Crow 2001: 44, emphases in original). Another illustration of this point about things changing in order for things to stay the same is Bill Williams’ notion of ‘dynamic equilibrium’ in his study of the adjustment of farming families to the variations in their needs and capabilities over the course of what used to be called the life cycle. These farming families expanded or contracted their land holdings according to the availability of family labour on which they could draw, with the result that ‘the social structure as a whole appears relatively unchanged and unchanging’ (Williams 1963: xviii, emphasis in original). At the same time, individual families and their members could undergo dramatic changes of fortune involving upward or downward social mobility.
