Genealogy, Volume 4, Issue 2 (June 2020) – 33 articles

Drawing on a combination of oral history and archival research, this article reconstructs a historic view of death and dying in areas of the province settled by Scottish Gaels. It discusses beliefs and customs associated with death, giving special attention to traditional house wakes. Inspired by studies in culturally related communities in Ireland, Scotland, and Newfoundland, this study highlights insider perspectives of local customs and beliefs in order to develop a clearer understanding of the relationship previous generations had to death in Gaelic Nova Scotia. This study concludes by suggesting why some mortuary customs were abandoned during the second part of the twentieth century. Full article

This editorial article introduces the seven contributions to the special issue “Fathers and Forefathers: Men and their Children in Genealogical Perspective”. It highlights the geographical, historical and methodological diversity of the contributions, as well as their commonalities, and the different ways in which they use a genealogical perspective to explore the relationship between past and present fatherhoods. The special issue, as a whole, aims to deepen the understanding of this relationship and to point the way for future theoretical and empirical work on this important topic. Full article

Critical family history challenges historians to ask about their ancestors. Who else (what other groups) was around, what were the power relationships among groups, how were these relationships maintained or challenged over time, and what does all this have to do with our lives now? These are different questions from the questions most family historians ask. This introductory essay elaborates on what critical family history is and where the concept came from, then provides a brief overview of the articles included in this Special Issue. Full article

One of the most moving tributes to the dead is the playing of the Highland bagpipes during funeral services, whether in the church or at the graveside. This custom has a long history both in Scotland and in areas of North America settled by Scottish immigrants over the past 300 years, and for lovers of bagpipe music it is an essential part of the funeral ritual. Throughout its history the piper’s lament has transcended social class structure and has been performed for paupers and presidents alike. Despite being deeply rooted in tradition, the music and function of this musical practice have changed over time. Drawing from printed texts of the 19th and 20th centuries, recent scholarship and local folklore surrounding funeral customs and music, this paper examines the origins of the funeral piping tradition in Gaelic Scotland and its evolution in North American society. Full article

There is equivocal evidence on how being a child in a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) immigrant family affects internalizing symptoms such as anxiety. This cross-sectional study examined the relationships between peer friendships and anxiety/depression symptoms in BAME immigrant adolescents (IA) and white native adolescents (WNA). Method: Sixty-two adolescents from the UK (IA = 26, WNA = 36, mean age = 14 years) were assessed on close friendship, social competence, social anxiety, and depression. Immigrant family parents (n = 23) were also assessed on cultural orientation. There were no significant differences in anxiety and depression between groups. Bayes factors supported the conclusion that the groups did not differ. However, IA and WNA groups had different patterns of associations between close friendship/social competence and anxiety and depression symptoms. Close friendships were more strongly associated with lower anxiety/depression in IAs than WNAs, and social competence was more strongly associated with lower anxiety/depression in WNAs than IAs. Moderation analyses indicated that the relationship between close friendship and social and separation anxiety was significantly moderated by ethnic group, as was the relationship between social competence and generalized anxiety. The findings suggest that social and separation anxiety are more strongly associated with close friendships for BAME immigrant children than for non-immigrant adolescents. As such, activities that help BAME immigrant children to foster close relationships may have positive effects on their well-being. Full article

The purpose of this study was to characterize the first Japanese women psychologists, pre-WWII, as identified by their published work in psychological journals and by their conference presentations at meetings of the Japanese Psychological Association. From my archival survey, I collected data on the education levels, degrees, marital status, and careers of eight women. Three earned PhDs from US universities; five earned BAs from national public universities. All eight psychologists found teaching jobs at colleges. As the centenary of the JPA draws near, this work calls attention for the need to integrate women into the pre-WWII history of psychology when the school system and matriculation prerequisites for women differed from men. Full article

I examine whether undue power and privilege allow families in India to use force to incarcerate their wives, daughters or other family members who may deviate from the “norm”. Using my own personal experience, I examine the intersectionality of gender, violence and privilege to see how several systems are broken. I also argue psychiatry and the patriarchy are tools of oppression and how India and most other societies continue to perpetuate trauma in those they are trying to help. In addition, families become “allies” to psychiatry and medical systems unwittingly and become “keepers” of their broken people. By citing other writing and memoirs, I will show how stories like these have been happening since before Victorian times to the present. Full article

Emotional restraint was the norm for the bereaved during and after the Second World War. Displays of individual grief were discouraged, and overshadowed by a wider concern for mass bereavement. There is limited archival evidence of the suffering that fathers of sons killed in action endured. This article draws upon and analyses a powerful memoir written by my grandfather, lamenting the death of his only son killed in action near the end of the War. While most men contained their emotions in such circumstances, this extended lament expresses a range of deep feelings: Love and care for the departed son, tenderness towards other family members, guilt at sending his son away to boarding school, loss of faith in (Christian) religion, and a sense of worthlessness and personal failure. Of particular interest is the impact of geographical distance over which this narrative is played out, and what it reveals about the experience of one white British middle-class family living overseas, but strongly interconnected with ‘home’ (and specifically Scotland). It also documents the pain of prolonged absence as a result of war; often boys sent ‘home’ to board were separated from their parents for much of their childhood, and were forced to ‘become men’—but not as their parents had envisaged. The article concludes by exploring the implications of this private memoir and what it reveals about memoir, masculinity, and subjectivity; gender and grieving; connections with ‘home’; and constructing meaning after trauma. Full article

In this genealogical narrative, the author researches her deceased maternal grandmother Eula Mae’s life and explores ways that various events created the social climates that drove her grandmother’s decision-making and influenced her family’s trajectory. The author uses Black Feminist Theory to understand and reflect on relevant factors such as the presence of oppression and mental health issues, while applying information passed down from relatives with artifacts obtained through Ancestry.com, to gain appreciation for her grandmother’s choices. This document details a grandmother’s fight to create a new normal for her children by persevering through figurative chains of White supremacy and systemic racism and a granddaughter’s journey to obtain answers for the questions she didn’t have an opportunity to ask. Full article

This study explores the experiences of the black children and young men that attended a Youth Offending Team (YOT) in Liverpool, a city in the North of England, UK. It focuses on the perspectives of both the YOT practitioners and the black children/young men as they develop working relationships with each other. Through this two-way prism the back children/young men reflect on what is important to them before and after they enter the criminal justice system. Likewise, the YOT practitioners provide their understanding of the key issues in the young people’s lives—in particular, how the black children/young men made sense of their lives in Liverpool with a particular identity with place, space, class and race. A genealogy of race/class prism, along with an intersectional and appreciative inquiry methodology, was employed that encouraged the youth justice workers and young black men to explore the strengths and realities of their lives. Focus groups were undertaken with seven YOT practitioners and managers, along with semi-structured interviews with five black children/young men. The methodology focused on points of intersection of power, difference and identity. Findings that emerged from the participants included the experience of racism within the criminal justice system, the community and the wider city, along with the importance of education, employment and relations with the young people’s family. A core theme was an identity of black children/young men from a specific region. This intersection was as Scousers, black boys/young men, the contestation over space and their negotiated identity regarding race. The ambivalence and (un)certainty that these identities evoked provide possibilities for youth justice practitioners engaging with young black men involved in serious and repeat offending. Full article

Many problems exist for United States (U.S.) descendants of Cabo Verde (In 2015, the government of Cabo Verde asked in the United Nations that the official name be Cabo Verde in all documents, opposed to the colonial version, “Cape Verde”) Islands seeking dual citizenship. Much of this is due to multiple 20th century racial discriminatory practices by the U.S. in soliciting cheap labor from Cabo Verde Islands, including changing the birth names of Cabo Verdean immigrants when they entered the United States. Without knowing the true birth names of their ancestors, descendants such as myself have no access to proof of birth in the dual citizenship process. Years often pass by as Cabo Verdean Americans search for clues that may lead to proving their legal status through family stories, and track related names as well as birth and death records. For many, dual citizenship may never be granted from the Cabo Verdean government, despite having U.S. death certificates that state that the family member was born in Cabo Verde. This autobiographical case study explores why so many Cabo Verdean Americans seek dual citizenship with a strong desire to connect to their motherland. Moreover, issues related to language, class and colorism discrimination between Cabo Verdean-born immigrants and descendants in the U.S. are explored. In so doing, the researcher hopes to ameliorate the divisions between the current government policies and Cabo Verdean American descendants, as well as build greater intracultural connections between those born in the Cabo Verde Islands and those born in the U.S. and elsewhere. Full article

The fortunes of older people in late nineteenth-century England varied considerably. At the two extremes were a comfortable retirement and complete reliance on the New Poor Law, but most older people got by on some combination of part-time work, familial support, and transfer payments from the New Poor Law. This paper considers the extent to which access to resources during working age affected the risk of becoming pauperised (that is, dependent on transfer payments from the New Poor Law) in old age. We hypothesised that access to resources was an important determinant of old age pauperisation and that such access was associated with household living arrangements in earlier life. The analysis was conducted at both aggregate and individual levels and was based on a sample of small areas in England. We linked census data to New Poor Law records to assess the extent to which individuals relied on payments from the New Poor Law in their old age. We distinguished between those who, in their old age, received transfer payments while living in their own homes and those who were institutionalised through admission to the workhouse. The main finding is that people who, in earlier adult life, lived in households containing extended family members were less likely to have recourse to the New Poor Law in their old age than those who, in earlier adult life, lived with only their spouse and offspring. The results also support previous work that has found that females were more likely than males to be supported by the New Poor Law, but that males were more likely than females to enter workhouses. Full article

With more than 25 million tests sold by early 2019, direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry tests expose the public to critical issues of genetics, ancestry, and identity. This study examines how individuals understand the results of a genetic ancestry test. Twenty undergraduate students viewed and interpreted an unfamiliar individual’s ancestry results. In in-depth interviews, students indicated that the results were easy to read and understand, but that they had difficulty articulating the meaning of the ancestry groups presented in the results. Participants could not accurately paraphrase the test’s scientific explanation. Those who engaged with the scientific explanation developed doubts about the test’s credibility. There was little consensus about the legitimacy of identity claims from low-proportion ancestry groups. Some students reserved judgment while others identified specific thresholds for what ancestry proportions legitimize identity claims. Results contribute to the literature on the public’s understanding of ancestry, genetics, and data interpretation. Full article

This paper thematizes the topic of the eyewitness report based on Miriam Katin’s transgenerational point of view on the Holocaust, which has a cathartic impact on the author through self-reflexivity. In We Are On Our Own, Miriam Katin draws on her own cultural and transgenerational memory, which is heavily influenced by her mother. The author unveils her parents’ story and elaborates on how she, as the child of Holocaust survivors, has dealt with the atrocities of the Holocaust throughout her life. In her second memoir, Letting It Go, Katin expands this point of view and not only addresses the Holocaust from the view of the second generation, but adds another layer to dealing with the Nazi past, namely the point of view of the third generation. Accordingly, it is through Katin’s son, Ilan, that Miriam learns not to encounter Berlin stereotypically and embittered anymore. Modern day Berlin welcomes Katin and her family with open arms and is not comparable with the former capital of National Socialism anymore. Therefore, both graphic memoirs can be regarded as a process of coming to terms with the trauma of the Holocaust through the technique of self-reflexivity. Full article

The Orthodox concept of autocephaly, a formerly organizational and administrative measure, has been a powerful nation-building tool since the 19th century. While autocephaly could be granted—from the perspective of the Orthodox canon law—in an orderly fashion, it was often the case that a unilateral, non-canonical way towards autocephaly was sought. This usually took place when the state actors, often non-Orthodox, intervened during the nation-building process. We investigated the effects of unilateral declarations of autocephaly (through a schism) by comparing Bulgarian, Northern Macedonian, and Montenegrin examples. We contend that the best success chances are to be expected by the ecclesiastic body that is less willing to make major transgressions of the canon law, than to radicalize the situation after the initial move. This is mostly because autocephaly’s recognition requires a global acceptance within the circle of the already autocephalous churches. We also suggest that the strong political backing of the autocephaly movement can paradoxically have a negative impact on its ultimate success, as it can prolong the initial separation phase of the schism and prevent or postpone the healing phase, and with it, the fully fledged autocephaly. Full article

Global environmental changes can happen quickly or over extended periods and have compounding effects. Indigenous communities experience environmental changes that can lead to a decline in quality of life, illness or disease, and unwelcome cultural adaptations that extend to future generations. Due to limited resources and political marginalization, members of these communities may not be able to respond to or prevent these conditions. Cultural connections to the land and community, along with limited resources, impact Indigenous peoples’ willingness and ability to relocate to different geographic locations experiencing less damaging ecological changes or environmental risk. In this article, we respond to the Special Issue prompt probing “[m]ethods in which Indigenous communities engage within their environment and on the land to conduct research”. We begin by describing environmental change, followed by a scoping review of Photovoice studies focused on environmental issues. Environmental changes affecting Indigenous groups are discussed, including a case study and a discussion of the ways that Photovoice can support and honor Indigenous peoples’ connection to the natural environment. This article is not intended to be an exhaustive review, but rather seeks to understand how Photovoice is being used to respond to and document environmental change, and how such visual methodologies can be used in Indigenous communities. Full article

Black boys and young men are over-represented in the youth and adult justice systems in England and Wales. Despite the Lammy Review (2017) into the treatment of and outcomes for Black, Asian, and minority ethnic individuals (BAME) in the criminal justice system, the disproportionate numbers of Black boys and young men at all stages of the system continue to rise. There has been limited qualitative research of Black boys’ and young men’s experiences with the justice system in England and Wales. In particular, there is a lack of evidence on their experiences with sentencing and courts. What is known tends to focus on Black, Asian, and minority ethnic and/or Muslim men’s experiences more generally. A lack of critical understanding of the specific experiences of desistance by young Black men has been criticised in the literature. Set in this context, this review of UK literature focuses on the following questions: (1) What are Black boys’ and young Black men’s experiences with the youth and criminal justice systems in England and Wales? (2) What does research tell us specifically about their experiences with desistance? Full article

This paper deploys narrative inquiry and analysis to capture the oral history of two families’ intergenerational memory of an African American woman named Celia who was hanged in 1855 for killing her owner Robert Newsom. It is the first scholarly investigation into the intergenerational memory of both black and white descendants of Robert Newsom, and the first to be conducted utilizing the theory of critical family history. Through the paradigm of Black Feminist Thought, the paper analyzes the power imbalances embedded in the narrative about family relations, especially those that conjure race, gender roles and class produced through oral history. Full article

In his critique of religion, Hume envisages forms of religious ritual disconnected from the superstitious “neurotic” mindset; he considers simple rituals fostering moderation. In this paper, I claim that one can profitably interpret Hume’s obsession with secular rituals, such as French highly ceremonial manners, in the sense of anxiety-soothing institutions that bind citizenry without the appeal to a civil religion, properly speaking. Let us call this path the Old Regime’s civil ritualism”. Overall, Tocqueville conceives rituals in a Humean spirit, as existential anxiety-soothing institutions. Moving beyond the Humean line of thought, he focuses on the ambiguous role of religious rituals in the context of democratic faith and the Christian civil religion that he deems appropriate for the US. Yet, he also detects novel forms of superstition firmly embedded in secular, democratic faith. Full article

This paper examines the role of narrative as an avenue for critically unpacking family history. In this case, the narrative grows out of the preparation and performance of a one-person play, “A Conversation with Alana: One Boy’s Multicultural Rite of Passage.” Through continuously rethinking family history during the rehearsal and performance process, the intersection of marginality and privilege within a single life trajectory is analyzed. Full article

Critical family history illuminates societal relations of inequality through focusing on the experiences and trajectories of particular families. Here, I focus on unequal relations between white settler colonizers and indigenous communities within Aotearoa, New Zealand. I use data gathered from family wills and archival research to sketch aspects of the economic privilege of branches of my own ancestral families in contrast to the economic dispossession and injustices faced by the Māori communities alongside whom they lived. The concept of historical privilege forms the analytic basis of this exploration, beginning with the founding historical windfalls experienced by the Bell and Graham families through their initial acquisition of Māori lands and the parallel historical trauma experienced by Māori at the loss of these lands. I then explore how these windfalls and traumas underpinned the divergent economic trajectories on both sides of this colonial relationship, touching on issues of family inheritance and structural and symbolic privilege. Neither the Bells nor the Grahams accumulated significant wealth, but the stories of such “middling” families are helpful in illuminating mechanisms of historical privilege that we inheritors of such privilege find it difficult to “see” or remember. Full article

Centuries before W.E.B. DuBois named the colorline—i.e., racism—as the problem of the 20th century, skin color stratification was a persistent phenomenon. In 1983 Black feminist, scholar, and Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker termed “colorism” as “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their [skin] color”. Using the tools of genealogy, I conducted a critical family history of my parents, Lem and Mae’s, pursuit of their American Dream. Such exploration digs deep to decipher the nexuses of a family’s evolution. Dr. Maya Angelou routinely shared stories about her past to impart the importance of embracing one’s history. For my parents, the American Dream meant opportunity, which included home ownership. Their American Dream began as African Americans in the United States’ Jim Crow south. Lem was a light-skinned man; Mae a dark-complexion woman. They met, married, and bought a small home in segregated Columbia, South Carolina. Bearing the cloak of oppression, my parents joined millions of southern Blacks in the Great Migration relocating to northern cities—my parents landed in Boston, Massachusetts. Throughout their journey, Lem and Mae reached back to their ancestors, and drew from within themselves to improve their circumstances. Full article

Current interest in genealogy and family history has soared, but the research journey may be fraught. Original intentions may be inhibited and inevitably altered as the actual historical details are revealed and documented through recorded evidence. While liberties may be taken with memoir and even autobiography, critical family history requires scrutiny of the lived events uncovered—some of which may be in sharp contrast to family myths passed down through generations. I traveled to three states and conducted archival research in local libraries, court houses, historical county archives, and museums in my search for original sources of authentic information about the names listed on a family tree over centuries. This article reports on how and why research on the genealogy of two families joined by marriage shifted from a straightforward recording of chronological facts to the development of a novel. The case can be made that fiction provides an effective and engaging tool for the elaboration of interconnected lives through the addition of historical context, enriching personal details, and imagined dialogue. Key accuracies needed for a critical family history can be preserved but in a genre that enables characters and their stories to come to life. Full article

While the last few years have witnessed an upsurge of studies into enslaved motherhood in the antebellum American South, the role of the enslaved father remains largely trapped within a paradigm of enforced absenteeism from an unstable and insecure familial unit. The origins of this lie in the racist assumptions of the infamous “Moynihan Report” of 1965, read backwards into slavery itself. Consequently, the historiographical trajectory of work on enslaved men has drawn out the performative aspects of their masculinity in almost every area of their lives except that of fatherhood. This has produced an image of individualistic masculinity, separate from the familial role that many enslaved men managed to sustain and, as a result, productive of a disjointed and gendered genealogy of slavery and its legacy. This paper assesses the extent to which this fractured genealogy actually represents the former slaves’ worldview. By examining a selection of interviews conducted by the Federal Writers’ Project under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s (the WPA Narratives), this paper explores formers slaves’ memories of their enslaved fathers and the significance of the voluntary paternal presence in their life stories. It concludes that the role of the black father was of greater significance than so far recognised by the genealogical narratives that emerged from the slave communities of the Antebellum South. Full article

Where communities are ecological and humans are nature, ways of reimagining and regenerating communities as human and more, offer a timely response to the call of the Anthropocene for worldly justice. We, the authors, as women and mothers, look into time, place and space, harvesting our ‘becoming (undone)’ for the reader, seeded in the botanical world. Creeping and whispering, still and subtle, plant species are ever present in our survival yet often go unnamed and unnoticed, and to date are under-represented in multi-species becoming research. Via Foucault’s shining light upon power, we muse with Barad, Haraway and Grosz—how does growing (with) plant-life, amongst what is ‘said’ and ‘unsaid’, matter (to) the world as it turns? We have been returned to the same sediment after a decade: Our bowed-together life revived in the childhood–motherhood–nature community entanglements of the Anthropocene. Now, this paper, waters plant–human relationalities living beyond the traditional parochial human-to-human role. We accept our humanness in its onerousness and ownership but look to the leaf litter to reacquaint with our multispecies lives in a garden that has, at times, been sacrificed and lost. Our contribution is chlorophyllic. New ideas enfold and energise what constitutes a community. As women woven with botanica and academia, where mothering is a collaboration rather than a raising, we invite the reader to journey with us into the worldly, life-giving relations that garden a community undone. Full article

What is the role of mothering in the early childhood classroom? Given the focus of the field of “professionalization” and “scientific” practices, how might the role of maternal nurturance be woven into our understandings of pedagogies? This paper addresses the disempowerment experienced by an early childhood practitioner when maternal subjectivities and practices are framed as oppositional to the “professionalization” of the field. Through narrative research as a teacher-scholar, I explore my own experiences around my role as “not-mother” in the classroom, looking critically at the interwovenness of mothering and teaching in classroom relationships and communities. Through this narrative examination, I explore the role of maternal relationships in early childhood, in conversation with my practices of mothering as the teacher-not-mother. Through narrative inquiry and analysis, I attempt to make visible the forbidden subjectivities of the not-mother, and her centrality to meaningful early childhood pedagogy. Full article

People of BAMME (Black, Asian, Minority, and Migrant ethnic) heritage in the UK experience various anomalies when engaging with mental health services. Typically concentrated at secondary and secure levels of care, these discrepant experiences interact with a reticence to uptake mental health support at the primary care level. Official, national anti-stigma campaigns often reproduce messages that do not connect with BAMME communities, raising questions about how best to challenge stigma in this context. This research paper describes a case study of an alternative means to address stigma, drawing from a dramatic comedy performance, Plant Fetish, written and performed by an artist who carries a diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (Complex PTSD). The study comprised of an individual interview with the artist, audience feedback, and a group discussion conducted after the show. Data were subject to interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings are discussed in relation to the importance of using creativity to increase public awareness of mental health and inform efforts to reduce stigma. We conclude that such approaches show promise and merit further exploration in a context of growing discursive interest in mental health amidst acknowledged deficiencies of contemporary anti-stigma efforts, especially as they apply to BAMME people, their families, and their communities. Full article

In this paper, we seek to unsettle and extend understandings of what constitutes the contemporary family in Western minority world society and consider the material politics that follow from such a reconceptualization. We do this by offering a situated exploration into the caring relations and shared biographies that routinely evolve between children, other than human animals and toys within the family home. An emergent field of scholarship (Hohti and Tammi 2019; Taylor 2011; Malone 2015) reveals child–animal relations to be charged with various pedagogical and ideological assumptions, which we argue are partly exported to the relations that form between children and their toys. We undertake a close examination of the relationalities between humans and a range of toys as a means to explore the ways in which care and liveliness materialize in childhood play and what this means for our conceptualizations of ‘the family’. We put to work the idea of queer worlding (Haraway 2008; Osgood and Andersen 2019) and animacy (Chen 2012) alongside Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2017, 2011) feminist ethics of care. We then specifically focus on the materiality of robotic toys to illustrate some crucial connectivities and erasures to examine how the queer human–animal and animate–inanimate boundaries are reworked and negotiated in childhood play. These processes create a shift in understanding what matters in children’s lives and how materiality and affective forces co-constitute the posthuman family. This paper engages critically with the ambivalences and tensions that emerge within the domestic menagerie and extend to a planetary scale in ways that are inherently political. Full article

Home-school relations, home learning and parental engagement are prominent educational policy issues, constituting one aspect of a wider parenting support agenda that has suffused the landscape of social policy over the last two decades. This article examines a parenting support initiative distinctive for its use of link workers in mobilising ‘hard to reach’ parents to engage more effectively with their children’s education. Drawing on qualitative data gathered during the evaluation of the initiative, the article frames link worker–parent interactions as a form of everyday government and pastoral power. Link workers constitute a new educational pastorate; through friendship, care and control they exercise pastoral power over parents. Building on recent research into the role of ‘pastors’ in producing neoliberal subjectivities within the National Health Service, the article foregrounds their efforts to foster responsible, self-disciplined agency in parents. Link workers, it is argued, contribute to a responsibilisation and pedagogicalisation of the family, which has produced new figures of mothering/parenting, reconfigured the meaning of the home and extended the scope of state intervention into family life. Full article