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- Convenors:
-
Sona Gyarfas Lutherova
(Slovak Academy of Sciences)
Adriana Zaharijević (University of Belgrade)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Narratives
- Location:
- G01
- Sessions:
- Saturday 10 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Prague
Short Abstract:
Today, families have a decisive role when people cope with the feeling of uncertainty in their everyday lives. Family is also central to the individual and public discourse on crises. As the narratives become ideologically infused, the gap between social practices and public discourse widens.
Long Abstract:
In uncertain times, as individuals and societies, we attempt to make sense of crises. Living in a risk society (Beck, 1986), we are searching for stability, trying to understand what constitutes threats and for whom (Adam & Jost, 2004). Often, we turn to our families as the anchor in the tempestuous times, as it provides us with ties to the past but also with a promise of the future. Home and its idealized notions of intimacy and security are at the center of family life (Clarke, 2001). However, uncertain times may introduce particular tensions to the family lives or enhance those that are already present. How do we experience our family lives during the crisis? What is the role of the family in our everyday practices when coping with uncertainties? How do we reflect on this narratively?
Today the narratives on families abound, and various actors feed on our tendency to turn to family in times of crisis. Family is at the center stage of many far-right political movements, which push forcefully for a particular "natural" order of things. Hence, narratives on families clash in the fluster of meanings and perspectives, and the gap between social practices and public discourse widens. How does the crises-induced narrativization of families restrict the lived forms of familial life? How are individuals affected by the political attempts to reduce the family to a single legitimate form? How such politicization of family furthers the crisis through polarizations, erasures, and devaluates of everyday practices deemed "unnatural"?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 10 June, 2023, -Adriana Zaharijević (University of Belgrade)
Paper short abstract:
The presentation focuses on the notion that ‘gender’ threatens ‘natural family’, which propels anti-gender mobilizations worldwide. To abolish this threat, we are called to return to the natural order of things. What does this mean, and more specifically, what does it mean in Eastern Europe?
Paper long abstract:
The presentation focuses on the notion that ‘gender’ threatens ‘natural family’, which propels anti-gender mobilizations worldwide. To abolish this threat, we are called to return to the natural order of things. What does this mean? Return to where and how, to what nature and what order? To unpack this narrative, its frames and normative basis, the presentation will show that the trope of threat couples with the trope of care for the family. In a variety of narratives on family in circulation today, some of which represent the realities of families better than others, the narrative of return is a specifically normatively loaded one, belonging to the staple arsenal of (ultra)rightwing rhetoric. Feeding on crises, it struggles for a hegemonic position of the master narrative on family. Although essentially transnational, narrative of return has its particular East European, postsocialist version. In this particular context, it combines three crucial dimension: the current trend of ‘return from Europe’, rejection of ‘westernism-by-design’ and the specifically framed postsocialist capitalism.
Ana Luleva (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to show how the economic practices of coping with precarity are articulated through meanings, values and ideologies. They are seen as family strategies that are analyzed as intergenerational relations producing tensions between dependency and support.
Paper long abstract:
While over the last decade the Bulgarian public discourse has been dominated by escalating nationalism, traditionalism and idealization of distant past times of ‘traditional values’ embodied by the patriarchal family, a series of crises (economic, political, pandemic) have caused constant precarization and a sense of uncertainty among broad social strata.
The aim of this paper is to show how the economic practices of coping with precarity are articulated through meanings, values and ideologies, perceptions of masculinity and femininity, of ‘proper’ gender arrangements and family relations. Starting from the understanding that economic practices are relational and develop within certain institutional frameworks and personal relations, they are seen as family strategies that are analyzed as intergenerational relations producing tensions between dependency and support.
How do suggestions such as a ‘return to normality’ and ‘the natural essence of gender and family’, traditionalism and patriarchal order combine with a neoliberal economic order that reinforces precarity and generates the need to deal with crisis situations in the family? How does precarization affect gender arrangements in the private sphere and the public gender order? How the everyday choices of family members to cope with uncertainty are remembered and narrated? These are the questions discussed in this paper.
The analysis is based on an ethnographic study of the everyday lives of families with different social, religious and age profiles, which I have been conducting within the research project "Anthropology of Uncertainty"(2021-2024) supported by the Bulgarian Science Fund.
Nijolė Vailionytė (Vytautas Magnus University)
Paper short abstract:
The decreasing childbirth rate in Lithuania has become the object of discussions not only among scientists, but also in media. The report aims to disclose Lithuanian society’s approach to childfree people.
Paper long abstract:
The term “childlessness” can be understood differently: as a voluntary choice not to have children (being childfree), as a state determined by biological reasons (infertility) or as socially determined non voluntary childlessness. Very often the boundary between voluntary and non voluntary childlessness is difficult to grope, e. g., postponed parenthood with time may become non voluntary. However, the investigation of society’s approach and dominating stereotypes reveals the clear difference between voluntary and non voluntary childlessness. The latter kind, also, infertility, are viewed as unnatural, however, unwillingness to have children has become a taboo topic and could be treated as extremely unacceptable (Fjell 2005). Individuals, especially women, who have voluntarily chosen not to have children, are often stigmatized and questioned (Gillespie 2000).
The report aims to disclose Lithuanian society’s approach to childfree people and its change relying on the media content analysis and the data of the empirical research conducted by the author. The tasks to be performed are as follows: 1) to analyze articles concerning the topic of childlessness published on three web portals in 2020 – 2022; 2) to investigate the scale to which society’s attitude manifests itself and changes in the lives of childless women belonging to different generations – the investigation relies on exhaustive interviews conducted by the author during the field research in three Lithuanian cities in 2020 – 2022. The methods of content analysis, also, ethnographic and comparative methods have been used.
Antonina Stasińska (Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology)
Paper short abstract:
Planning and practicing motherhood within non-monogamous relationships and non-normative families in Catholic Poland will be the core of this presentation. I will focus on challenges such as time management, emotions and coping with social perception, that these familial relationships entail.
Paper long abstract:
In this presentation I will analyse planning and practicing motherhood within non-monogamous relationships and non-normative families – families by choice. I will focus on challenges, both emotional and practical, such as time management, emotions and coping with social perception, that these familial relationships entail.
This paper is a part of my wider anthropological research on women's strategies and practices of living in non-monogamous relationships in conservative Poland. Using ethnographic methods and discourse analysis around emotions and sexuality, I’m scrutinizing relationships in which non-monogamy appear from the perspective of women. I look from the angle of various social environments, also those in which potential non-monogamy is tabooed and stigmatized by a conservative world view and Catholicism.
In the center of my interests is the question of what the decision to have a child looks like and what does it change in non-monogamous relationships.
I aim to answer the following questions: How research participants function in a non-monogamous relationship and how do they emotionally cope with the difficulties and challenges that this type of relationships potentially entails? How do they manage with the thread of stigmatization that can affect both them and the child? What are the definitions of the - family, motherhood and love? How non-monogamous practices and practices of building families by choice coexist with the conservative beliefs in Poland? How are the individuals coping with the political acknowledgment and legitimization of only one form of the family? How does media and church discourse influence the transformation of morality today?
Ewa Maciejewska-Mroczek (University of Warsaw)
Paper short abstract:
Family judges' interventions may significantly influence the course of family life. In this paper I present the analysis of the family judges' opinions on the situation of children who were made available for adoption by unrelated families, as well as on the role of the judge in this process.
Paper long abstract:
I present the analysis of the family judges' opinions on the situation of children who were made available for adoption in unrelated families, as well as on the role of the judge in this process. In Poland, the model of adoption-from-care prevails.
Family judges are the group whose interventions may significantly influence the shape and course of family life. This paper aims to present and analyze the perspective of people who are “translating law into practice” (Verzelloni 2012) in the area of family life.
In the accounts of the judges I spoke with, there were key moments, turning points in the history of families. They expressed a clear tension between reluctance to radical interventions, justified by the desire to protect the existing family relationships, and the conviction of the need to intervene in the name of compliance with legal norms and the need to protect the child. Adoption decision, on the contrary, was regarded unquestionably as positive. The judges' narratives often included ambiguous terms, such as intuition, empathy. Actions and decisions, framed in a hierarchical, codified system, were, interestingly enough, associated with a large dose of arbitrariness, vagueness and uncertainty. In my presentation, I will present the tensions, discontinuities and paradoxes resulting from the expectations, often contradictory, towards judges and various limitations in the way they operate, intervening in the lives of families.
Ivana Ljustina (Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Utrecht University, NL)
Paper short abstract:
Political instability in Bosnia has affected intimate relationships. How do people care for loved ones without state support, and how do people cope with uncertainty and indignities in times of crisis through ways of thinking about familial relationships based on everyday relatedness?
Paper long abstract:
The ongoing political instability and economic decline in Bosnia have significantly impacted intimate human relationships, particularly those centred around family and kinship. With many Bosnian citizens emigrating, those who remain often face a sense of social emptiness as they struggle to maintain relationships and care for loved ones without support from the state. The global migration crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic have only exacerbated these challenges.
In this paper, I present an intimate ethnographic account of neighbours' everyday lives and relationships in a small apartment building in the town of Bihać. I focus on how these individuals navigate the difficulties of social emptiness and maintain close, intimate connections through acts of care and emotional support. Through this analysis, I aim to unpack the various forms of relatedness that emerge in times of crisis and highlight the importance of neighbourhood relationships as a source of practical social connection and substitute for traditional forms of kinship.
Furthermore, I propose new ways of thinking about familial relationships that go beyond solidarity and instead focus on the critical aspects of everyday relatedness. The stories of these individuals can provide insight into how people learn to cope with prolonged uncertainty and indignities and how the past crisis can inform our understanding of present and future crises.
Maria Reimann (University of Warsaw)
Paper short abstract:
In Poland, joint physical custody (JPC) is a new phenomenon both in legal system and in the everyday practice of families. I asked children who live in JPC about family and home. Most of the children seem to think about their families not as "broken" bur rather as one family divided into two homes.
Paper long abstract:
Joint physical custody (JPC) is a new phenomenon both in Polish legal system and in the everyday practice of Polish families. Protecting child’s best interest has become the ground rule of the Polish family law. However, what is considered to be “in the best interest of the child” is contextual and often used by the adults to reproduce power relations (Monk 2010). The debate on JPC is very heated and both sides use the best interest of the child as their main argument. The proponents believe JPC grants the children the right to be cared for by both parents, the opponents argue that frequent moving between parent’s places deprives the children form stability and having a true home which leads to emotional harm.
I would like to present findings of ethnographic research on JPC I’ve been conducting since 2021. I interviewed 21 children and teenagers (between eight and eighteen years old), who had lived in JPC for at least year. I focus on what children who live in two homes think about home and belonging and how they understand and do family. Most of the children/teenagers seemed to think about “family” and “home” in a different way than the “adult world”. The children I spoke to don’t think about their families as “broken”, but rather see them as still one family (their family) living in separate homes (their homes). At the same time, children are aware that their families are often considered inferior, which sometimes is emotionally difficult for them.
Soheila Shourbaji (University of Manchester)
Paper short abstract:
Family sets the publishing scene in Lebanon and the Arab World. Publishing functions to organize kinship such that crisis and resolve interplay along axes of kin relations. Family work sits within and against familism discourse, but how do we advance a critical political economy of kinship?
Paper long abstract:
The paper describes the socio-economic conditions of the family-based publishing industry in Lebanon. I start with the workings of one publishing house and then delineate the kin stakes of the publishing craft and the ways that different publishers claim a place in the publishing scene. I argue that family is formative to the conditions of the publishing industry so much that publishing functions as a pursuit of kinship making family a quintessentially economic pursuit and principle of social organization.
Publishing and the publishing family encompass a series of crises: boundaries around work, monetary compensation, succession, currency devaluation, printing costs, storage, and distribution. The ethnographic vignettes focus on the dialectical dynamics of obligation and desire and tension and convention. However, kin-work at the publishing house requires the transformation of kinship based in birth (Qaraba) into kinship based in proximity (Qurba) which serves to resolve the ‘kinship crisis’ at work. I begin to develop the concept of kin-work as a specific production format that mutates from the domestic economy into market settings.
This type of family work happens within a politically charged frustration and romanticization of ‘familism’ in Lebanese society. Public discourse has dominantly used familism to explain away the economic vitality of kinship or surmise it as a ‘last refuge’ and a form of political stagnation. This logic figures in anthropological literature as well. My ethnographic material and the refocus of analysis onto kin and economic strategies aims to challenge this oversight and re-politicize the economy of kinship.