Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the memory practices and visions of family history and future of one West African extended family. We also reflect on our collaborative work, highlighting our experience of researching and writing on family memory as both scholars and members of the extended family under study.

Paper long abstract:

Family memories, not just material resources, bind families together and chart their path into the future. In much of Africa, narratives of ancestral migrations, recollections of genealogical ties, stories of past solidarities and conflicts, and many forms of ceremonial life help define and keep the family together. Throughout the past century, increasing mobility through labor migration, access to school education and new urban job opportunities have led many individual family members to live away from their ancestral houses and villages. More recently, new opportunities of higher education, transnational migration, and the spread of (social) media have further exposed family members to new possible lives and futures, encouraging them to fashion themselves as autonomous individuals. Without living in rural homesteads and hearing stories about the family past from the older generation, how do African families create, maintain, and deepen a sense of belonging to a wider network of kin? How do the various family members deal with the challenges that geographic dispersal, professional diversification, and different lifestyles pose to family cohesion? In which ways have practices of remembering, and the images of the family’s past and future that they project, changed over time? Drawing on insights from fieldwork (resulting in a published monograph), this paper explores the memory practices and visions of family history and future of one West African extended family. We also reflect on our collaborative scholarly experiment, highlighting our experience of researching and writing on family memory as both scholars and members of the extended family under study.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines how family cohesion and mutual support are preserved through the practices of memory-making within several Ghanaian families. It discusses how family history serves as a source of inspiration for desirable futures of family members.

Paper long abstract:

“Now, let me explain to you: When we look at the Baffour family as we see it today, this group has one patriarch, and that patriarch is Robert Patrick Baffour the first” – in that way, the Baffour’s family historian started his account of the family history on a get-together of US-based relatives. In this paper, I examine the practices of memory-making within this transnational family network hailing from Southern Ghana. I will discuss what exactly is remembered, on which occasions and through which practices. I will contextualize the memory-making within that family by comparing it to other family networks from Southern Ghana. Growing up in Elmina, the so-called founding father of the Baffour family got educated by European missionaries in the nineteenth century. Stories about influential family members who my interview partners described as founders, mothers, and architects of their families were frequently told on different occasions. Family history is remembered through the drawing of genealogies, the writing of biographies, the setting up of family foundations, birthday celebrations for well-known deceased family members and stories about ancestors on informal family gatherings. I will discuss how family cohesion and mutual support within the family network are created and preserved through these practices and how family history serves as a source of inspiration for the younger generation within the family.

Paper short abstract:

Privacy in sexual relations is problematic for family memory. Moral and health discourses are cultural strategies via which such actions are revealed. In this paper, Dagara notion of sexuality in marriage is confronted with the moral visions of colonial and missionary agents on African family.

Paper long abstract:

My grandparents were enjoying adolescent years when colonial rule began in northwest Ghana. The colonial officers held the view “that the present family system should break down as soon as possible for the sake of the future welfare and prosperity of the country.” To them Dagara “women did not make good wives; the unfaithfulness of wives had led to a considerable amount of armed conflict before colonial intervention; and the disputes over the custody of children were so common between rival males that, quoting a line from Homer’s Odyssey, ‘it is a wise child that knows his father’. (Hawkins, 2002:229). Shortly after, the missionary fathers came and launched their missionary campaign. My grandparents had just settled down as couple with two boys following their prescribed cross-cousin marriage. Soon after, my grandfather, took on the second wife when the missionaries and colonial government began to appropriate family farmlands for public buildings (parishes, schools, hospitals etc.). The missionaries also stipulated monogamy as requisite condition for Christian baptism which soon became the most significant symbol of social identity. Individual migration to southern Ghana for fortune (which my grandfather effected only to return a dying man); drafting of males into the army to fight in foreign lands (which happened to his junior brother with young wife and child); and the collective family migration within the region in search of farmland remain disruptive situations within family memory. In this paper I discuss the moral and medical languages developed to deal with private and painful memories.

Paper short abstract:

Based on qualitative research conducted in Ghana, this paper investigates how Ghanaian parents foster the place-belongingness of their American 'jackpot babies' upon their return to Ghana from the United States.

Paper long abstract:

The number of planned binational families (PBFs) of Ghanaian origin has grown as globalisation allows Ghanaians to participate in international mobility. The PBF is a family unit in which at least one child is an American ‘jackpot baby,’ which is considered unusual and a novelty in Ghanaian society. There has been a little empirical study on the lived experiences of Ghanaian parents in PBFs in developing their American ‘jackpot babies’ sense of belonging outside the United States during childhood. Also, where do these American 'jackpot babies' belong when they reach maturity, between Ghana and the United States? This paper, based on qualitative research done in Ghana, investigates how Ghanaian parents nurture the place-belongingness of their American ‘jackpot babies’ upon their return to Ghana from the United States. It contends that the sense of belonging of American ‘jackpot babies’ in Ghanaian PBFs is mixed. Thus, they ensured their American ‘jackpot babies’ place-belongingness to Ghana as children by non-disclosure of their US citizenship and upbringing. Furthermore, as adults, these American ‘jackpot babies’ grew appreciative of their Ghanaian parents’ efforts in nurturing their sense of belonging to Ghana, since they felt more at home in Ghana even after their selected migration to their birth country, the United States. These parents, however, are unaware of the difficulties associated with an ambivalent sense of belonging, such as enmity among siblings with different citizenships, their American ‘jackpot babies’ struggling with identity crises, and enduring social exclusion.

Paper short abstract:

Hunter-gatherer societies have been known as societies without history. However, in the context of political trends, their societies themselves are reconstructing their past (memories of being a minority) and making their future (bonds made with a sense of we-ness that reflects their identities).

Paper long abstract:

The San, known as the hunting and gathering society in Botswana, is the collective name for dozens of family groups that speak Khoisan languages. This study analyzes how they are evocatively connected as "the San", triggered by the death of a family member or companion.

In the past, the San’s residential area changed every few weeks in search of food. However, the Botswana government implemented the Remote Area Development Program from 1970s to modernize the San. It was recommended that the San not live a nomadic life, but stay in the settlements and live a settled life.

It is forbidden to enter their former living areas. For example, in 2022, the issue of the government's ban on burying the bodies of the elderly where was once their living area, because it is now a government-controlled area, was brought to court. The San do not have formulated beliefs about an afterlife, but in this trial the San argue that the land is their "ancestral land."

They understand the loss of their families as overlapping with the loss of their former way of life and death. The San themselves are forming a sense of "we-ness" that reflects their collective identity as the San, at variance with the Botswana state's policy of making the San "nationals" who have benefited from its development programs.

Paper short abstract:

The study explores the social changes that occur in Botswana when husbands return home permanently following labour migration. Husbands' absence and return have an impact on Botswana's communities and labour division.

Paper long abstract:

This study seeks to analyse the shifting positions and responsibilities in Botswana society that occur when husbands returned to their families permanently after a period of labour migration. Being a patriarchal society, the protracted absence and subsequent return of ‘husbands’ impacts the configuration of communities and the division of labour in Botswana. In most cases when husbands were absent, in most cases wives became family heads. This involved adopting responsibilities normally reserved for the husband in patriarchal societies. In some cases, the husband was absent for decades, which consequently meant the woman raised children and developed the homestead alone. In articulating these nuances, the study will examine the factors influencing the return of the labour migrants including retirement due to old age, illness, and the desire to be part of raising a family personally. Therefore, this study examines how women react and hand back the responsibilities they had for years over to their husbands. It elucidates the impact of the return of long-term labour migrants (husbands) on women’s position in the family and society. It will examine how women’s decision-making powers are affected by the presence of the returned husband, and assess which rights and responsibilities women had to give up due to the return of the husband. It will also analyse the transition of women from being single parents to accommodating their husbands after they return home and lastly investigate the power relations between a migrant husband and the stay-at-home wife.

Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic research in south-eastern Nigeria, this paper presents two contrasting manifestations of family memory in the context of the Nigeria-Biafra war (1967-1970), and the impact of national heritagisation policies on how families remember and forget.

Paper long abstract:

Family memory allows for the formation of generational identity through shared experiences. This identity is often in reference to, or constituted around, status or remarkable events, such as war. Many works in the field of memory studies, especially in the context of 20th century conflicts, have focused on the intergenerational transmission of memory (and trauma) within the family unit. Less studied, however, is the outcome of the intersection of family memory and national heritagisation policies. That is, what happens when a family’s memory is also at the centre of a nation’s history? How does the socio-political dynamics brought about by national heritagization policies affect the remembrance processes of families in the context of past conflicts? Drawing on the ‘Biafra war’ (1967-1970) and ethnographic research in south-eastern Nigeria, this paper presents two contrasting manifestations of family memory: Family A – with no ‘official’ heritage recognition – quietly celebrates the memory of their grandfather who as a king during the war and helped recruit soldiers and distribute relief materials for the Biafran side; Family B is irked by the myriad of issues caused by the official recognition of their grandfather’s house – where the peace treaty that ended the war was signed – as a national monument. Both family memories are entangled in the same war but only one must carry the ‘burden’ of remembering for themselves but also for the nation. This paper explores the impact of heritagisation on the (re)generation and propagation of family memories and memorial practices in the aftermath of violent conflicts.

Paper short abstract:

The family is a vital part of African life, and a central unit of belonging. Drawing on oral history research in central Kenya, this paper looks at family memory as a space where history and politics with emotion and experience, a potent space for individual and collective self-imagining.

Paper long abstract:

The family continues to play a vibrant role in African life, and remains a central unit of belonging and solidarity. This paper draws on oral histories conducted in central Kenya, using them as a case study to explore wider questions of family history and memory in African futures. By exploring the ways intergenerational memory-work has shaped the history of Mau Mau in post-independence Kenya, the paper looks at family memories in the wider context of the nationalisations and contingencies of post-colonial African nationhood and belonging. Within this context, the paper examines the role of personal archives and material culture in the creation and propagation of family memories, and explores how these might feed into a reimagining of African archival futures. Thus, the paper also brushes up against some key methodological and ethical questions around using family memories to write African histories in the global post-colonial context. Through exploring these questions within the central Kenyan post-colonial context, the paper presents wider assertions about the place of family memory in individual and collective self-imagining. By looking at both the content and the context of family memories in Africa, this paper demonstrates that family memories are a space where history and politics blend with emotion and experience to become a potent space for solidarity, belonging and identity-formation.