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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.