Between Generations: Family Models, Myths, and Memories
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Contents |
Background
Between Generations: Family Models, Myths & Memories was originally published in 1993 by Oxford University Press and represented the second work in the series International Yearbook of Oral History and Life Stories. New material to the 2005 edition, and the reprint of the earlier addition, are printed by Transaction Publishers by arrangement with Oxford University Press. This book was edited by Daniel Bertaux and Paul Thompson.
Summary
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 family dynamics and on social change. The volume includes contributions from the Americas and Asia as well as from Western and Eastern Europe.1
A key idea that the book communicates is that memories and traditions are not merely passed down from one generation to the next, but there is a complex blending of generations that occurs during the transfer. One generation consciously or subconsciously decides which traditions or parts of a tradition to adopt or to reject, thereby creating new memories and traditions. Both generations are changed by the transfer of information, culture, and identity. Marjorie McLellan argues that the studies in Between Generations look at:
The meaning and significance of family and life histories through the lens of a family system approach and combine scholarship from the fields of family therapy, oral history, folklore, sociology, and social history. This volume explores in fascinating detail the realm of meaning, identity, myth-making, silence, and collective memory. 2
This theme is articulated throughout the work, as each section further explores the relationship between family ties, transmission of memory, and the relationship of both as families deal with issues like collective experience, trauma, family secrets, and social mobility. 3
Memory and Narrative Series
Between Generations: Family Models, Myths, and Memories is also part of the Memory and Narrative Series. This series is a larger collection of works on memory and transmission through narrative. Paul Thompson notes that three parts of the series, the first of which is Between Generations: Family Models, Myths, and Memories, represents the starting point from which two other works were created. The second book in the series is Pathways to Social Class, and the third is Growing Up in Step Families. Each part represents an individual project, but all three are studies on transmission between generations and social mobility. All three are grouped within the larger Memory and Narrative Series, which is edited by Mary Chamberlain and Selma Leydesdorff.1
The Memory and Narrative Series consists of:
Between Generations: Family Models, Myths, and Memories (Paper) by Daniel Bertaux and Paul Thompson
Commemorating War (Paper) by Timothy Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper
Dwellers of Memory (Cloth) by Pilar Riano-Alcala
Environmental Consciousness (Paper) by Stephen Hussey and Paul Thompson
Family Love in the Diaspora (Cloth) by Mary Chamberlain
Gender and Memory (Paper) by Selma Leydesdorff, Luisa Passerini, and Paul Thompson
Living Through the Soviet System (Paper) by Daniel Bertaux, Anna Rotkirch, and Paul Thompson
Memory Cultures (Paper) by Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone
Memory and Memorials (Paper) by Matthew Campbell by Jacqueline M. Labbe by Sally Shuttleworth
Memory and Totalitarianism (Paper) by Luisa Passerini
Memory, History, Nation (Paper) by Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone
Migration and Identity (Paper) by Rina Benmayor and Andor Skotnes
Narrative and Genre (Paper) by Mary Chamberlain and Paul Thompson
Narratives of Exile and Return (Paper) by Mary Chamberlain
Text and Image (Paper) by Richard Candida Smith
The Clash of Economic Cultures (Paper) by Junko Sakai
The Migration Journey (Paper) by Gadi BenEzer
The Stasi Files Unveiled (Paper) by Barbara Miller
The Uses of Narrative (Paper) by Molly Andrews, Shelley Day Sclater, and Corinne Squire
Trauma (Paper) by Kim Lacy Rogers and Selma Leydesdorff 2
Reviews
One review found in The Oral History Review, Vol. 23, No.2 by Marjorie McLellan notes that:
I Found both my own experience and much of my research reflected and crystallized as I read these studies of "generational work." Thompson and Bertaux make both coherent and beautifully engaging the many contexts and strategies presented. This window on the contemporary schoolarship of memory, oral history, cultural transmission, and family dynamics will challenge researchers arcoss many disciplines. 4
References
1 Paul Thompson, "Introduction to the Transaction Edition," in Between Generations: Family Models, Myths & Memories, ed. by Daniel Bertaux and Paul Thompson (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2005), 1.
2 Marjorie L. McLellan, "Review," in The Oral History Review, Vol. 23, No.2 (Winter, 1996), 98.
3 Ibid., 98.
4 Ibid., 98-99.
