Social Frames of Multigenerational Family's Memory
Abstract
The subject of the article is collective memory and its special characteristics in diachronic social group such as multigenerational family. The fact of time spread existence makes multigenerational family to memorize its experiences through years. As the result of this process family constructs its history – family story. We follow the terms of M. Halbwachs «collective memory», «social frames for memory» and his idea of the necessity of social group: its members (narrators and listeners) and instruments (language) – the story could be created. The story symbolized by language becomes the subject of memory for the next generations.
The article presents an attempt to gain the empirical evidences of more strict social determination of family’s memory. It configure a text (story) that correspond to basic social attitudes and stereotypes of the culture. Precisely four social stereotypes of discrimination nature were checked out: group membership favoritism and discrimination; age, gender and family status discrimination.
A sample of 85 multigenerational families was analyzed with multigenerational genogramm method. Its content and construct validity and normality of data distribution were previously checked out. The average (typical) multigenerational family consists of 66 members and 5,2 generations, and its chronological age is 123,73 years old. Family memory and family forgetting were tested by the material of first names of the family members mentioned in genealogical tree and family story text. Those males and females, whose first names were missed and checked by «?» sign consider as forgotten. This decision was undertaken in connection with ideas of A.V.Superanskaya according to which human name is the instrument of social legalization o human life and is a label for memories. So the whole area of family memory appear to consist of 4351 (77,5%) persons and the area of family forgetting – of 1255 (22,4%).
The main questions of the research were: «who were these missed persons», and «what was their place in family system». So four consistent hypotheses were formulated and checked out: family’s memory deletes in the first turn the names of such members, who became close relatives by marriage, but not by blood; it deletes those who did not go through marital and parental initiation such as kids and lonely adults; family’s memory deletes the names of females (wives and daughters), but not males (husbands and sons); and it deletes those, who were cohabitation partner or second and third spouse partner, but not classical monogamous partner. The results prove three hypotheses: it is of high risk that we’ll find in forgetting area females but not males (true to first, second and third generations of family tree), those members of multigenerational family who did not go through marital and parental initiation and those who became relatives by marriage, but not by blood.
