Parental death as a vital conjuncture? Intergenerational care and responsibility following bereavement in Senegal

This article explores the ways that parental death represents a ‘vital conjuncture’ for Serer young people that reconfigures and potentially transforms intergenerational caring responsibilities in different spatial and temporal contexts. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with young people (aged 15–27 years), family members, religious and community leaders and professionals in rural and urban Senegal, I explore young people's responses to parental death. ‘Continuing bonds’ with the deceased were expressed through memories evoked in homespace, shared family practices and gendered responsibilities to ‘take care of’ bereaved family members, to cultivate inherited farmland and to fulfil the wishes of the deceased. Parental death could reconfigure intergenerational care and lead to shifts in power dynamics, as eldest sons asserted their position of authority. While care-giving roles were associated with agency, the low social status accorded to young women's paid and unpaid domestic work undermined their efforts. The research contributes to understandings of gendered nuances in the experience of bereavement and continuing bonds and provides insight into intra-household decision-making processes, ownership and control of assets. Analysis of the culturally specific meanings of relationships and a young person's social location within hierarchies of gender, age, sibling birth order and wider socio-cultural norms and practices is needed.     

‘Filial son’, the family and identity formation among male migrant workers in urban China

This article is based on an ethnographic study of life histories of 28 rural–urban (internal) migrant men located within southern China. It explores their narratives with a particular focus on changing social relations within the family, from the perspective of migrant sons. It argues that traditional gender norms, such as those attached to being a ‘filial son’, are lived out, albeit reworked, among Chinese male migrant workers across generations. The men recount the role of traditional familial gender norms, which are central cultural resources in forging their ‘dislocated’ identities within specific temporal and spatial conditions. For example, being a ‘filial son’ has become an important reference point for these mobile male workers to actively negotiate their emerging masculine identities in the process of negotiating urban lives, while living away from their rural homes. The article also explores a more complex understanding of rural–urban migration in terms of critically engaging with the men's well-being as urban workers.     

明黔国公沐昌祚墓辨讹及其相关问题——从沐朝辅妻陈氏墓志的发现谈起

南京市博物馆于1979年在南京南郊将军山南麓发掘了编号为79JJSM4的明代沐氏家族墓,其墓主人一直以来都被认为是黔宁王沐英九世孙沐昌祚夫妇.释读墓中出土残存墓志文字.可发现79JJSM4的墓主应是沐英八世孙沐朝辅及其夫人陈氏.由于沐朝辅妻陈氏在沐氏家族盛极而衰的沧桑巨变中扮演了至关重要的角色,故对残存墓志文字中有关陈...     

“Count What You Have Now. Don't Count What You Don't Have”: The Japanese Television Drama Around 40 and the Politics of Women's Happiness

Voted top new Japanese word of 2008, “arafô”, abbreviated from the English “around forty”, has been used in various media to describe women born between 1964 and 1973, who came of age during Japan's Bubble Era, and who entered the workforce as the country's Equal Employment Opportunity Lawwas being implemented in 1986. Arafô, or “forty-something women”, theoretically have more choices in relation to work and family than previous generations. During a time when society is ageing, their choices in employment, marriage and childbirth have been judged in journalistic and government discourses to be both progressive and problematic. At the same time, arafô have been associated with difficulties regarding individual freedom in the spate of television programs, books and magazines for and about them. The term and the gender trends it encapsulates were brought to national attention by the critically acclaimed 2008 television drama Araundo 40: Chûmon no ôi onnatachi (trans. Around 40: Demanding Women). We situate Around 40 in discussions about Japan's demographic crisis to argue that the series presents a wide array of life courses available for women near age 40 but ultimately recasts postwar gender roles for the 21^st-century sociopolitical climate. Around 40 shows how the diversification of life courses is interpreted in the influential medium of television drama.     

THE ROLE OF FAMILY SUPPORT AND OTHER FACTORS IN RETURNING HOME

The present study focuses on the effect of social and other support from the family in the place of origin of migrants and how it impacts upon migrants’ propensity to return. The study uses longitudinal data from a project in Northeastern Thailand called the Nang Rong Project. The analysis shows that monetary support from the family left behind has a significant effect on migrants’ propensity to return home. Household strategies of migration have played an important role in explaining migration in the Nang Rong setting. At the individual and household level, education, occupation and household size were strongly associated with migrants’ propensity to return to their original village. Among the social support variables, duration of migration has significant effects on migrants’ likelihood of returning home. Three variables—marital status, wealth index and whether the person came with an immediate family member—were found to have weak associations with the dependent variable. A major finding from this study was that migrants who have higher education are more likely to stay at the destination.     

Husband's Circular Migration and the Status of Women left behind in Lamerd District,Iran

Iranian women often serve as temporary heads of household as husbands work elsewhere, returning home at intervals for several months. Results of this preliminary study in Lamerd District in Fars Province, with a high incidence of such patterns, show that, overall, wives of migrants are not ‘left-behind women’ as reported in other countries when husbands migrate. Rather, wives of migrating husbands report a higher level of satisfaction with economic resources and no greater physical or mental health problems relative to those in non-migrant relationships. Counter to expectations, autonomy reported by migrants' wives does not differ from that reported by wives of non-migrant men. Data suggest that work-migrant males, in particular urban migrants, may be more exposed to sexually transmitted diseases. Our findings are limited, being based on data on experiences of women in one district in Iran. There is need for more comprehensive studies based on representative samples.     

Mortality Trends in Massachusetts Before 1860

The debate over whether turn-of-the-century immigrants were influenced more by their cultural heritage or by their socioeconomic circumstances when deciding to send their children either to school or to work, serves to illustrate the interplay between theory and evidence in the research process. The authors examine how ethnicity, the local economy, and the family economy affected children's participation in school and work. Using cost-of-living data from 1888-1890, they find that the effects of ethnicity on children's school participation were attenuated by local and family economy factors, and in some cases ethnic group coefficients no longer differed significantly from those of Yankees. The significant effects of ethnicity on children's work participation, however, persisted even when local and family economy factors were taken into consideration.     

拊葬墓与古代家庭

在以血缘为纽带的社会组织中,其成员死后的埋葬方式直接与家庭、家族和宗族相联系。“袝葬”现象揭示了以家庭为核心的生产关系和生活方式。拊葬墓是以一人为主,其他人从属,多人共用一墓的墓葬。考古学研究中墓室的多少常常与墓主人的身份、等级联系在一起。但袝葬现象直接表现在墓葬形制特征上,是墓葬类型的一种特殊形式,因袝葬需要出现的多室墓并非是墓主人身份的象征,不能作为判别墓葬等级的标准。汉代的袝葬墓一般不改变流行的墓葬形制,而是改变某些空间的功能,西晋以后袝葬墓影响到墓葬形制的改变。拊葬墓的流行,是因为社会组织中血缘关系密切的家庭的地位增强,土地所有制、生产经营和财产关系发生了变化。     

辽代世家大族文化活动述论

作为辽朝统治阶级中的核心阶层,世家大族在发展过程中进行了大量文化活动,并取得了一定的文化成就.虽然在中国历史的长河中并非十分突出,但却体现出这一时期民族融合的诸多特点,这是由当时特定条件下的社会需要促成的,值得后人珍视.