Family History, Historical Consciousness and Citizenship: A New Social History

Description

Family history is one of the most widely practiced forms of public history around the globe, especially in settler migrant nations like Australia and Canada. It empowers millions of researchers, linking the past to the present in powerful ways, transforming individuals’ understandings of themselves and the world. This book examines the practice, meanings and impact of undertaking family history research for individuals and society more broadly. In this ground-breaking new book, Tanya Evans shows how family history fosters inter-generational and cross-cultural, religious and ethnic knowledge, how it shapes historical empathy and consciousness and combats social exclusion, producing active citizens. Evans draws on her extensive research on family history, including survey data, oral history interviews and focus groups undertaken with family historians in Australia, England and Canada collected since 2016. Family History, Historical Consciousness and Citizenship reveals that family historians collect and analyse varied historical sources, including oral testimony, archival documents, pictures and objects of material culture. This book reveals how people are thinking historically outside academia, what historical skills they are using to produce historical knowledge, what knowledge is being produced and what impact that can have on them, their communities and scholars. The result is a necessary revival of the current perceptions of family history. Cover Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: The origins and practice of family history in Australia, Britain and Canada 1 ‘Giving Little People a Voice’: Family historians, the ‘new social history’ and public history 2 ‘She told me I had destroyed her memories’: How family historians work with memory 3 It ‘makes me come alive’: The emotional impact of family history 4 ‘Random acts of genealogical kindness’: How family historians share their knowledge and break down national boundaries 5 ‘I’m much more empathetic now’: Family history, historical thinking and the construction of empathy 6 ‘I don’t want my life to mean nothing’: The future of family history Epilogue Appendix – Survey and Interview Questions Notes Bibliography Index