Karen Barad’s posthumanist relational ontology: an intra-active approach to theorising and studying family practices

Over the past two decades sociology, including sociology of family and personal life, has seen a ‘relational turn’ with growing body work seeking to explain ‘social’ by taking social relations as primary object sociological analyses. Relational sociologies theorise in terms either inter-actions or trans-actions. Inter-actions are that bring separate entities together, while trans-actions posit relation interdependence between entities. This article introduces third way conceptualising relationality intra-actions drawing on posthumanist relational ontology proposed feminist philosopher physicist Karen Barad. Intra-actions understood social-natural material-discursive ontological inseparability mutual constitution. Using illustrative examples from author’s research, suggests Barad’s offers fruitful distinctive underpinning for approaches theorising studying practices.