Personal and Public Lives and Relationships in a Changing Social World

Book excerpt: The field of personal life is a relatively new area of sociological study that seeks to understand the complexities of contemporary personal and social relationships. This includes exploration of the impact of social, economic, legal, and political change on personal experiences, opportunities, and life-styles. This ground breaking edited collection presents research on personal and public lives in a period of rapid social and political change. Relatively little is known about how personal and public aspects of life inter-relate and even less about how the outcomes of this relationship shape different areas of life. This book aims to capture and understand the effects of these overlapping spheres on the everyday lives of people in different geographical, cultural, and spatial settings. It brings together research in four key areas; migration and displacement, gender, sexuality, and health, with two main overarching themes. The first theme is how individuals cope with social, political, geographical, and cultural change in these diverse settings. The second relates to how these changes produce diverse inequalities that impact on relationships, roles, and responsibilities. The book thus seeks to increase the visibility of particular aspects of life that have often been neglected in social science research and subsequently open them up to further research and debate.