ABSTRACT
It is certainly not an exaggeration to regard the family as one of the core categories of sociology. Its social significance and different facets, dynamics, and the potential link to other research fields has produced numerous studies in the past decades. But it has never been an exclusive domain of sociology. This is even more true for space, which we have put next to the family at the centre of this book. The present collection of chapters brings together scholars from different but related fields of social sciences – sociologists, geographers, and anthropologists. The contributions differ not only in terms of topics addressed, such as migration, fatherhood, pregnancy, mobile family communication, or multi-local family life, but also in terms of conceptual backgrounds, empirical and methodological approaches, and in their way of addressing family and space. To both give an overview of the paths taken in this collection and address new questions that are opening up for us, we want to give a brief analytical synopsis of the contributions presented here and would like it – as well as the chapters themselves – to be understood as a continuation of previous work in the field of family and space studies and an invitation to further scientific and public discussion.
