Dependency: Personal and Social Relations

Dependency is commonly conceptualized in terms of separate problems or age groups - focusing mainly on finance. Each problem becomes the centre of intense political or gender debate. Beryl Day examines these different approaches, by way of case illustrations and research from a number of disciplines, and argues that such fragmentation hinders the understanding of dependency and its place in society. She proceeds to shift the focus from money to time, and from separate problems to a concept of dependency. In the process, dependency is revealed as a complex set of relationships - between individuals, families, groups and the State. The book concludes with a model suggesting steps by which dependency may be theorized as a social relation, and with a challenge to researchers in each discipline involved to pursue the necessary interactive process further.

Table of Contents:
Dependency versus enterprise - conflicting definitions; current issues; introduction and outline; categories of dependency, outline of chapters; children and parents - anatomy of dependency; time dependency; what is a child?; case illustrations; motivating forces; experts, psychoanalytic, sociological and environmental factors, state intervention, social reproduction, towards conclusions; summary; elderly dependants - demographic time bomb; financial dependency; case illustration; complex motivation, employment culture, social factors; pecking order for caring; gender, kin and community responses, attachment revisited; comparisons and conclusions; mental and physical impairment - problem related dependency; mental illness; historical, medical and psychiatric models, social learning, social and structural causes, mental illness and dependency; mental handicap, physical disability, discussion; dependence on the state - introduction; state theory; welfare state; state as social relation; the dependants' perspective; implications for dependency; conclusion; conflicting and converging theories - from problems to theories; intra- and interpersonal factors; genetic, psychological and psychoanalytic, social processes and dependency; anthropology, social structures and norms, deviance, state intervention, work and employment, significance of social definitions, typologies of need; interacting theories; towards a concept of dependency - contributory factors; theories of interaction; people and social structures, abstract and concrete, people to people, model of dependency relationships; interdependency and power; power and conflict, reciprocity, dependence, interdependence, independence, summary and conclusions. Appendix: households interviewed.