During the last decade, major transformations of the political regulation of family could be witnessed. In the case of Germany, we can refer to developments such as the introduction of same sex marriage, the reforms of parental leave and enormous investments in public childcare and the important role of family-oriented policies as part of Germany’s crisis management. These indicate the emergence of new discursive struggles over the following questions: What form is a family supposed to have? Who should be part of a family and who must not? Which (new) social tasks should be taken over by families? This leads also to analytical questions: how and through which forms of power is family governed? Family therefore is considered as power-laden construct through which privatized social reproduction and reproductive work is governed.
As part of my PhD-thesis this paper will present a theoretical concept of family which allows to analyze transformations of family policy as forms of biopolitics. Four theoretical debates are of particular interest here. First, Foucault’s writings on governmentality stress the particular forms of knowledge underlying political regulations of family. Second, feminist approaches criticize family as a de-politicized and gendered private sphere in capitalist societies. Third, Queer theory discuss family as a concept based on the norms of heterosexuality and bipolar notions of gender identity. Fourth, feminist readings of the Gramscian theory of hegemony allow analyzing family as a field of struggle between different social actors over the reproductive role of family.
In my PhD-research, these considerations build the theoretical framework for a discourse analysis of parliamentary debates and major political actors in generating family-related knowledge. In this paper I will present first findings with regard to the introduction of same sex marriage, the reform of family-policies and the role of the family in the German crisis management.
