1st Edition

Between Generations Family Models, Myths and Memories

By Daniel Bertaux Copyright 2005
    204 Pages
    by Routledge

    204 Pages
    by Routledge

    Between Generations concerns powerful memories that continue to shape the present, but in this case in almost all families throughout the world. What is it that parents pass down to their children? How can we understand the mixture of conscious and unconscious models, myths, and material inheritance that are intertwined in both family and individual life stories? These questions turn out to be unexpectedly complicated, and answering them has suggested how a life-story approach can provide a new key to research on the dynamics of the family and on social change.

    Because culture is the essence of what makes individual humans into a group, the core of human social identity, its continuity is vital. Cultures are always changing, but the stability of languages, religions, and cultural habits can be astonishing. In contrast to the claims of culture to represent tradition over centuries, stands the sheer brevity of individual human life. Hence, the universal necessity for transmission between generations exists.

    This paperback edition in the Memory and Narrative series, brings together, contributions from the Americas and Asia as well as from Western and Eastern Europe. They combine the techniques of life story research with the insights of family therapy. Interdisciplinary and intellectually stimulating, the volume will appeal to students in many areas, including history, sociology, literature, psychology, and anthropology.

    Introduction to the Transaction Edition/PAUL THOMPSON -- List of Contributors -- i. Introduction/DANIEL BERTAUX and PAUL THOMPSON -- 2. Family myth, models, and denials in the shaping of individual life paths/Paul Thompson -- 3. The Pull of family ties: intergenerational relationships and life paths/Isabelle Bertaux-Waime -- 4. Religion, family, and industry in the transmission of values: the case of women textile workers in Antioquia, Colombia/Luz Gabriela Arango -- 5. Social change, family histories, and attitudes to money in a rural community in Epirus/Klimis Navridis -- 6. Attitudes towards marriage and divorce among women in modern China/Weiyan Farmer -- 7. A Hitler youth from a respectable family: the narrative composition and destruction of a life story/Reinhard Sieder -- 8. Transgenerational transmission in the families of Holocaust survivors in England/Natasha Burchardt -- 9. Grandmothers, mothers, and daughters: intergenerational transmission in displaced families in three Jewish communities/Lena Inowlocki -- 10.Memory of slavery in black families of São Paulo, Brazil/Maria de Lourdes Monaco Janotti & Zita de Paula Rosa -- 11. Spoken and unspoken words in the life of a Cypriot woman: a life story by her granddaughter/Elena Georgiou -- 12. Kichuk Paris: a Bulgarian family story/Valentina Stoev.

    Biography

    Daniel Bertaux, Paul Thompson