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On Family, Friendship and the need for ‘Cultural Fuss’

During 2000 and first half 2001 I interviewed people in the Netherlands on the theme of family and friendship. This was part of a larger research undertaken with Indian colleagues (two anthropologists and one economist) on the retracting Dutch welfare state and the (experienced) impact on people's care and security arrangements (Ganesh forthcoming; Krishnaraj 2000; Palriwala 2002; Risseeuw 1999). Alongside the economic analysis of change, the two anthropologists concentrated on the urban part of Holland (the 'Randstad'), each focusing on a target group which potentially could experience frictions with the public and private care arrangements available: Single parents and senior citizens, especially in the lower income groups. The emphasis here was on the networks of senior citizens or single parents and the ways in which support arrangements took shape, at times in cooperation with professional (governmental) care services. Were retracting government services (becoming) a factor to be reckoned with? Was increasing support required from family, neighbours, friends, commercial services? As the local counterpart, I provided an overview of Dutch historical, sociological and policy literature on the development of the private domain, especially changing 'family life' and domestic sociability. Towards the end of the project, I added a series of interviews and conversations on how people experienced their primary networks, attempting to highlight the nature of the social domain, while keeping the larger research theme on public and private care arrangements in mind. Besides family, friends, neighbours, topics of discussion therefore also included governmental policies involving notions of family (home-care services; care-leave or other issues the respondents raised including hospital