Reflections on my colleague, friend and collaborator-in-cake-eating David Morgan

• Published in: Families, relationships and societies relationships and societies, 2020-11, Vol.9 (3), p.505-506
• Main Author: Gabb, Jacqui
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Family power; Family research; Family work relationship; Imagination; Work organization
• ISSN: 2046-7435; 2046-7443
• DOI: 10.1332/204674320X16004506310790

David Morgan has been my touchstone over the past 25 years – intellectually and personally. I had the privilege of working with David on the Families, Relationships, Societies (FRS) journal – from its inception in 2011 until we handed over the reins to the new Open Space editors Esther Dermott and Tina Miller in 2018. Working with David on the Open Space section was a pleasure. His insight and imagination meant that the section was always engaging and tackled topics that might otherwise slip under the analytical radar. He’d read everything and knew everyone’s work. His early work on family structures (1975; 1985) began to dismantle ‘the family’ as a taken-for-granted institution. But it is his writing on family practices (1996) which, for me, remains his legacy to family studies. David demonstrated that families are constituted through everyday practices and interactions. Lived experiences are what makes families and how people understand their family contexts. In Rethinking family practices (2011) he returned to this topic and explored the more unsettling sides of family life and the intersections of power and intimacy in family relationships.