Legislatures and their past: The History of Parliament project and the significance of history

Using interviews with Conservative MPs, three aspects of the Poll Tax not covered by the extant literature are examined. Conservative backbenchers are shown to be more supportive of the tax than in previous accounts. The nature and effect of both the legal and non‐legal protests against the Poll Tax are discussed. The effect of petitioning is found to be minor, but the amount and (especially) the nature of post which MPs received had more impact. Other than the quantity, five characteristics are identified which contributed to making this post more significant than other ‘issue’ post received by MPs. The extra‐parliamentary action is also shown to have had a surprisingly strong effect on Conservative MPs.     

East German dissident biographies in the context of family history

A case reconstruction study of the biographies of women in the former dissident movements of East Germany exemplifies how empirical results are dependent on the choice of data gathering and analytical methods. The primary result, on the one hand, is that the political activity of the women studied was closely related to their family histories, especially with respect to the Nazi period in Germany. On the other hand, different dimensions of family history become apparent depending on the method of analysis applied. Therefore, the respondents' self-analyses cannot substitute for a reconstruction meant to determine exactly which part of the family history is significant and what its function is.     

The history of family and colonialism: Examples from Africa,Latin America,and the Caribbean

The historical study of the family started later in the “Third World” than in Europe and North America, and the link between colonialism and family structures in the colonized or formerly colonized countries has not been explored thoroughly. In this issue we have chosen examples from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean in part because the importance of people of African background in both continents provided a certain link. The main connection, though, was the fact that all examined cultures had to cope with Christian-European family norms and with the values of the colonizers. The aims, forms, and historical circumstances of the colonial situation were quite different in all the cases examined. When changing conditions made traditional kinship bonds less reliable or less workable, people turned to alternative institutions such as gynaegamy or gender groups. If there is one conclusion to be drawn from all the examined cases, it is that colonized societies had the ability to use a variety of family forms as they adjusted to new situations.     

The history of family and colonialism: Examples from Africa,Latin America,and the Caribbean

The historical study of the family started later in the “Third World” than in Europe and North America, and the link between colonialism and family structures in the colonized or formerly colonized countries has not been explored thoroughly. In this issue we have chosen examples from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean in part because the importance of people of African background in both continents provided a certain link. The main connection, though, was the fact that all examined cultures had to cope with Christian-European family norms and with the values of the colonizers. The aims, forms, and historical circumstances of the colonial situation were quite different in all the cases examined. When changing conditions made traditional kinship bonds less reliable or less workable, people turned to alternative institutions such as gynaegamy or gender groups. If there is one conclusion to be drawn from all the examined cases, it is that colonized societies had the ability to use a variety of family forms as they adjusted to new situations.     

The flavour of history: Food,family and subjectivity in two Indo-European women's memoirs

This article examines two autobiographies written by women with family connections to the former Netherlands Indies (colonial Indonesia): Marguerite Schenkhuizen's Memoirs of an Indo Woman (1993 Schenkhuizen, M. (1993). Memoirs of an Indo Woman: Twentieth Century Life in the East Indies and Abroad. Edited and translated by Lizelot Stout van Balgooy. Athens, OH: Ohio Centre for International Studies: Monographs in International Studies. Southeast Asia Series Number 92.  [Google Scholar]) and Karina Schaapman's Motherless (2007 Schaapman, K. 2007. “Motherless: A true story of love and survival”. London: John Murray. Translated by Rosalind Buck [Google Scholar]). Particular attention is given to the customs surrounding the preparation, consumption and distribution of food within these women's families, practices that illuminate the formation and expression of identities across generations of Indo-European migrants, and between the colonial and post-colonial periods. Studies of colonial identity often essentially focus on how aspirations for group membership are expressed. Such emphasis can exaggerate the stasis and cohesion of colonial cultures at the expense of a more nuanced analysis of the varied, sometimes contradictory range of identities that exist within specific historical contexts. To approach identity and subjectivity as related but not necessarily congruent constructs provides significant insight into how ethnic identities that were formed in a family context altered in response to twentieth century decolonisation. The memoirs examined demonstrate that subjectivities formed with reference to foodways in Indo-European (Indo) families were gendered and raced. The colonial identities that were informed by these subjectivities found new and altered expression in the post-colonial era.     

The flavour of history: Food,family and subjectivity in two Indo-European women's memoirs

This article examines two autobiographies written by women with family connections to the former Netherlands Indies (colonial Indonesia): Schenkhuizen, 1993, Schaapman, 2007. Particular attention is given to the customs surrounding the preparation, consumption and distribution of food within these women's families, practices that illuminate the formation and expression of identities across generations of Indo-European migrants, and between the colonial and post-colonial periods. Studies of colonial identity often essentially focus on how aspirations for group membership are expressed. Such emphasis can exaggerate the stasis and cohesion of colonial cultures at the expense of a more nuanced analysis of the varied, sometimes contradictory range of identities that exist within specific historical contexts. To approach identity and subjectivity as related but not necessarily congruent constructs provides significant insight into how ethnic identities that were formed in a family context altered in response to twentieth century decolonisation. The memoirs examined demonstrate that subjectivities formed with reference to foodways in Indo-European (Indo) families were gendered and raced. The colonial identities that were informed by these subjectivities found new and altered expression in the post-colonial era.     

The history of the family in Spain: past development, present realities, and future challenges.

"The article presents a brief overview of the historical study of the family in Spain, and deals with household work patterns, labor migration, adaptive strategies of households, and property devolution. From a belated and rater timid beginnings in the early part of the 1980s, the growth of this field in recent years has been noteworthy. The articles included in this volume are fitting testimony to the maturity achieved by this discipline in a very short amount of time. There are many important methodological and conceptual challenges facing family historians in Spain today. If they are able to respond to them successfully, the future of the discipline will be a bright one indeed."     

The history of family and community life through the study of civil registers: Paros in the 20th century

A plenitude of information can be shed on family history and community life by studying civil registers. The case study here is the island of Paros in the period 1894–1997. This period of one century saw the transformation of the insular rural society to one dominated by the third-sector economy and the passage from illiteracy to total literacy. These structural socio-economic changes influenced the timing at which people were procreating, marrying and even dying. The labour-intensive hard work in the fields, as well as religious regulations, had shaped a highly seasonal pattern in conceptions and consequently in births, which was in action well into the first half of the twentieth century, but is attenuating as we approach the present day. Marriage remains a seasonal phenomenon in the examined population (although not to the extent it used to be) because the canon rules of the Orthodox Church are still determining the timing of weddings. Mortality was highly seasonal for infants and children up to the 1940s, revealing that certain diseases (mainly diarrhoea and contagious diseases) were striking at certain periods of the year, while adult mortality presents a different seasonal pattern. Causes of death, which are available from civil registers, were used to explain the seasonal variations of deaths. Civil registers are also used to study the famine which struck the island (along with the rest of Greece) in 1941–42 as a direct effect of the Second World War.     

East German dissident biographies in the context of family history: Interdependence of methodological approach,and empirical results

A case reconstruction study of the biographies of women in the former dissident movements of East Germany exemplifies how empirical results are dependent on the choice of data gathering and analytical methods. The primary result, on the one hand, is that the political activity of the women studied was closely related to their family histories, especially with respect to the Nazi period in Germany. On the other hand, different dimensions of family history become apparent depending on the method of analysis applied. Therefore, the respondents' self-analyses cannot substitute for a reconstruction meant to determine exactly which part of the family history is significant and what its function is.     

A history of the use of the concept of parental alienation in the Australian family law system: contradictions,collisions and their consequences

ABSTRACT

This paper presents insights into the history and current deployment of the concept of parental alienation in the Australian family law system. It begins in 1989, when an article on parental alienation syndrome was first published in an Australian law journal. It then traces aspects of the socio-legal and social science research, gender politics, law reform and jurisprudence of the following 30 years, paying attention to moments of significant change. The impacts of major amendments that emphasise the desirability of post-separation shared parenting outcomes in 1996 and 2006 are specifically considered. More recently, in 2012, reforms intended to improve the family law system’s response to domestic and family violence were introduced. The history reveals an irreconcilable tension between the ‘benefit’ of ‘meaningful’ post-separation parent-child relationships and the protection of children from harm. When mothers’ allegations of violence in the family are disbelieved, minimised or dismissed, they are transformed from victims of abuse into perpetrators of abuse – alienators of children from their fathers. Their actions and attitudes collide with the shared parenting philosophy. This is arguably an inescapable consequence of a family law system that struggles to deal effectively with family violence in the context of a strong shared parenting regime.     

Surnames,marriage, and consanguinity in eighteenth and nineteenth century haute-provence

A study of the stem family system in a group of villages in Haute-Provence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reveals the existence of a high degree of isonymy (same-namedness). The sources employed were marriage contracts and parish registers permitting genealogical reconstitution. Does isonymy always signify a marriage between close relatives bearing the same name? In fact, although the spouses might share a common ancestor, that ancestor might date back many generations. The relatively frequent occurrence of marriages among homonymous spouses should not be interpreted as absolute proof of a union between close relatives. Indeed, heteronymic alliances, even exogamic ones, can hide a marriage between first cousins, if consanguinity is transmitted by the mothers.     

A survey of data sources for studies of family and population in Korean history

Compared to China and Japan, family and population studies of pre-modern Korea have not been widely available to scholars outside Korea. As a necessary step to increase scholarship in Korean historical demography, we introduce major historical materials currently available in Korea as useful for historical studies, summarizing demographic variables provided, the type of population covered, and the historical period referred in those historical materials. In particular, we focus on genealogies and household registers that provide demographic information of Korean population before the 20th century. We describe major features of those Korean materials as demographic sources, highlighting similarities and differences as compared to corresponding Chinese historical materials. Korean historical data showing their unique features, along with comparability with other East Asian data, have potential to expand the field of historical demography in East Asia.     

Narratives on World War II in Poland: When a life story is family history

Memories of the World War II in life stories about its events and experiences are part of every Polish family history. The analysis of life stories of wartime helps to discover the meaning of past events and experiences to individuals, as well as to whole social strata. The role of family affiliations in Polish narratives about the war is briefly discussed, and chosen details of historical background are characterized in one case, using the biographical narrative interview. Two sisters, when telling their own biographies, present the history of their family. Their reasons for concentrating on the collective aspect of their war experiences are explained, and significant social and historical processes exemplified in their story are described. The sisters' family history represents a part of tradition that has been forgotten in postwar Polish society. Pauperization of the landowner stratum prevented the process of transmitting this part of cultural heritage to forthcoming generations. Communist authorities welcomed this process of forgetting, whereas the important aspect of Polish cultural and social heritage based on the lifestyle of the countryside estates was emasculated.