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Documenting disordered lives: family relations and problematic forms of social capital in Wuthering Heights

Documenting disordered lives: family relations and problematic forms of social capital in Wuthering Heights
Documenting disordered lives: family relations and problematic forms of social capital in Wuthering Heights
Documenting Disordered Lives: family relations and problematic forms of social capital in Wuthering Heights.
The use of non-traditional data sources within sociology has seen considerable development within recent years. It will be argued in this paper that descriptions and analyses of social institutions found in fiction can be highly reflective, in Raymond Williams’ terms, of “authentic personal or family experience” . The paper posits that the disordered family life depicted in Wuthering Heights throws light upon some largely unexplained features of the concept of social capital and goes someway to refining the definitions of positive and negative forms of social capital. These issues will be explored and examined through Emily Brontë’s dissection of unresolved familial conflict in Wuthering Heights - between the natural and the cultivated, the passionate and the restrained, the violent and the peaceful, and between family members who either deny time or accept narrative. This theme is explicated by a discussion of open and closed social capital resources within the family and the structural embedding of interactional relations as a consequence of (a) rigid patterns of legal inheritance, (b) misplaced intense affect and (c) atomistic commercial practices.
Wuthering Heights, biography, social capital
Erben, Michael
5c72b25b-7c00-409d-a850-1a7654be0858
Erben, Michael
5c72b25b-7c00-409d-a850-1a7654be0858

Erben, Michael (2006) Documenting disordered lives: family relations and problematic forms of social capital in Wuthering Heights. 15th Conference of BSA Auto/Biography Group, Leicester, England. 12 - 14 Jul 2006.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Documenting Disordered Lives: family relations and problematic forms of social capital in Wuthering Heights.
The use of non-traditional data sources within sociology has seen considerable development within recent years. It will be argued in this paper that descriptions and analyses of social institutions found in fiction can be highly reflective, in Raymond Williams’ terms, of “authentic personal or family experience” . The paper posits that the disordered family life depicted in Wuthering Heights throws light upon some largely unexplained features of the concept of social capital and goes someway to refining the definitions of positive and negative forms of social capital. These issues will be explored and examined through Emily Brontë’s dissection of unresolved familial conflict in Wuthering Heights - between the natural and the cultivated, the passionate and the restrained, the violent and the peaceful, and between family members who either deny time or accept narrative. This theme is explicated by a discussion of open and closed social capital resources within the family and the structural embedding of interactional relations as a consequence of (a) rigid patterns of legal inheritance, (b) misplaced intense affect and (c) atomistic commercial practices.

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More information

Published date: 2006
Venue - Dates: 15th Conference of BSA Auto/Biography Group, Leicester, England, 2006-07-12 - 2006-07-14
Keywords: Wuthering Heights, biography, social capital

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 26721
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/26721
PURE UUID: e99fbdd0-a6f9-4b6b-bd19-0c3923ddd02d

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Date deposited: 10 Apr 2006
Last modified: 11 Dec 2021 15:02

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