Rethinking the Horizontal Family
Research Question
Which practice-sensitive legal recognition and regulation (if any) is desirable to accommodate relationships between adults that go over the lines of sexuality, coupledom and/or a household?
Project Description
The objectives of this project are to put to the test of collected data on actual practices, the current and desirable (if any) legal recognition and regulation of alternative horizontal relationships. This project will include polyamory, shared domesticity of non-sexual couples and larger groups, and other significant intimate relationships outside sexuality and domesticity. Even though existent and in need of recognition, these relationships are as yet uncharted territories in the Low Countries’ kinship studies, particularly legal studies. Studying them will allow further developing kinship studies outside the dyadic and sexualised grid and to address the concept of intimate citizenship. Applying a law-in-context approach, legal research methods are integrated with regulatory theory and different methods of social science data collection and analysis in synchronized comparative research.
Selected Publications
Frederik Swennen, Het personen- en familierecht. Identiteit en verwantschap vanuit juridisch perspectief, Antwerpen:Intersentia, 2015-581 p.
Frederik Swennen,Mariano Croce. The symbolic power of legal kinship terminology : an analysis of ‘Co-motherhood’ and ‘Duo-motherhood’ in Belgium and the Netherlands, Social and legal studies-ISSN0964-6639-(2015) p.1-23.
Frederik Swennen. Private ordering in family law : a global perspective, in Swennen (ed.), Contractualisation of family law : global perspectives, ISBN978-3-319-17229- Heidelberg Springer, 2015, p.1-59.