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University of Groningen Family History Dobbelaar, Tanny DOI: 10.33612/diss.111649309 IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2020 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Dobbelaar, T. (2020). Family History: Relatives, Roots, and Databases. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. https://doi.org/10.33612/diss.111649309 Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 26-09-2021 Family History Relatives, Roots, and Databases © 2020 Tanny Dobbelaar, Groningen ISBN: 978-94-034-2338-8 (printed version) ISBN: 978-94-034-2339-5 (electronic version) Cover and book design by Erik van Gameren © Photos Cover: sgpozhoga/depositphotos.com. Chapter openings: chapter 1: ekina1, chapter 2: Dimijana, chapter 5: Leonardi, chapter 6: marenka1, chapter 7: VLADJ55; all /depositphotos.com; chapter 3 and 4: Erik van Gameren. Drawings of genealogical charts: Erik van Gameren. Cover and inside pages of family histories: Tanny Dobbelaar. Printing: Pumbo, Zwaag. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system of any nature, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission by the author. Family History Relatives, Roots, and Databases Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. dr. C. Wijmenga en volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties. De openbare verdediging zal plaatsvinden op donderdag 23 januari 2020 om 16.15 uur door Anthoinette Julma Cornelia Dobbelaar geboren op 29 juni 1965 te Sittard Promotor Prof. dr. C.W. Bosch Copromotor Dr. S.I. Aasman Beoordelingscommissie Prof. dr. E.J. Korthals Altes Prof. dr. E. Wesseling Prof. dr. E. Timm Voor Harry & Annemiek Contents CHAPTER 1 Written family histories as a popular historical practice 11 1.1 The story behind this study 11 1.2 Selecting the object of research 14 1.3 Selecting family histories at the CBG 17 1.4 The institutional context of this corpus: the CBG 19 1.5 How to study family histories? 27 1.5.1 Psychological and sociological explanations of family history 28 1.5.2 Disqualifications of family history30 1.5.3 Family as an imagined community 33 1.5.4 Family history as doing memory 37 1.6 From corpus to research question 40 1.7 Approach, scope and objectives of this analysis 43 CHAPTER 2 Three networks of associations 49 2.1 Genealogy/family history 50 2.1.1 Four uses of the term ‘genealogy’ 51 2.1.2 Names as family signifiers52 2.1.3 Genealogy as critical analysis 56 2.2 Biology/genetics 59 2.2.1 The ‘arborification’ of family60 2.2.2 Genetic genealogy 67 2.3 Kin/relatives/family 69 2.4 Three shorthand notions of family 73 CHAPTER 3 The digital shaping of ‘me’ and ‘my relatives’ 77 3.1 Doing family history in a digitizing age 77 3.2 Digitizing archives in the CBG and beyond 83 3.2.1 Changing ideas about archiving 86 3.2.2 From physical to digital records 88 3.2.3 From disturber to consumer 93 3.3 From records to data 95 3.4 Me and my relatives in GEDCOM 98 3.5 Conclusions 103 CHAPTER 4 Constituent timelines between ‘me’ and ‘my relatives’ 107 4.1 The past constructed along timelines 107 4.2 Generations as units of time 113 4.3 From ‘me’ to my eldest ancestor 118 4.4 From first ancestors to their descendants in the present 128 4.5 Does the ‘me’ signify the end or the beginning of a family history? 142 4.6 Conclusions 147 CHAPTER 5 Repertoires in the writing of family historians 151 5.1 Family historians as writers 151 5.2 Motivated from within 153 5.2.1 ‘I want to know my roots’ 153 5.2.2 ‘I am addicted to this hobby’ 160 5.3 Driven to do research 163 5.3.1 ‘I just write down the facts’ 165 5.3.2 ‘I have a specific question’168 5.3.3 ‘I belong to a lineage of family historians in my family’ 169 5.4 Focused on family 172 5.4.1 ‘I bring my ancestors back to life’ 172 5.4.2 ‘I want to complete this project’ 175 5.4.3 ‘I observe a very special family – which is mine!’ 177 5.5 Conclusions 181 CHAPTER 6 Who belongs? 185 6.1 Writing creates flexibility 185 6.2 Biological associations with relatives 187 6.3 New hybrids: family organizations 191 6.3.1 Association of the Salm family 194 6.3.2 The Blokhuis Family Foundation 198 6.4 Exclusion, and the response of family historians to exclusion 201 6.4.1 Institutional exclusions 202 6.4.2 Genealogical exclusions 204 6.4.3 Gender exclusions 206 6.5 Conclusions 212 Final reflections 215 Samenvatting 228 Acknowledgements 235 Notes 238 APPENDIX Titles of family histories in this study 273 Works Cited 279 CV 291 chapter 1 Written family histories as a popular historical practice ‘We have long known that the role of philosophy is not to discover what is hidden, but to render visible what precisely is visible, which is to say, to make appear what is so close, so immediate, so intimately linked to ourselves that, as a consequence, we do not perceive it.’ 1 Michel Foucault 1.1 The story behind this study This book is centred around the shaping of concepts of ‘me’, ‘my relatives’ and ‘family’ in a specific historical practice, that of contemporary family histories, written by men and women, here referred to as family historians, about their own relatives. It draws on various topics, in disciplines such as history, memory studies, anthropology, and digital humanities, and is inspired by the work of the philosophers Bruno Latour and Annemarie Mol, the anthropologist Katherine Verdery, and in her wake the sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel. Before delving into the theories of these scholars, I will first explain the personal and professional reasons that led me to explore this particular historical practice. Every study arises somewhere from an author’s experience of reality, and this was mine: Some years ago, I was invited to a surprise party for my uncle and aunt, to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. I travelled four hundred kilo- metres to join this party for relatives I had not seen for many years. In the cour- se of the festivities, as I met my aunt and uncle’s neighbours, former colleagues, and friends from their sport clubs, I discovered that we, as the couple’s relatives, were assigned a special status. We were expected to be the first to congratulate the couple when they entered the room. There were others present who were 11 far more intimate with them and had been sharing their lives for many years, but in this context the relatives were privileged, even those who were raised in a different part of the country and had hardly shared the same world as the couple celebrating their anniversary. Observing this, I naively asked myself: in what sense do I belong to these people? I realize that this question is a superfluous one for many humans all over the world, for whom the nature of family relations is self-evident, and who think: ‘Relatives are part of myself’, or the other way around, ‘I am part of my relatives’. The terms ‘relatives’ or ‘family’ could then be shorthand for a range of associations, like connections with the past, places of origin, love and loyalty, or even simply life itself. The absence of these relationships with ‘family’, including all the associa- tions that go with this concept, may be experienced as a deeply felt deprivation.2 As the anthropologist Catherine Nash writes: ‘Being able to account for oneself in terms of ancestry and roots, a version of the self that seems increasingly nor- mative and normalized, can be a matter of cultural capital for some and a coer- cive requirement for others.’3 Self-descriptions that include family in one way or another as an essential part of a person can have an enormous social, political, and emotional impact, as they challenge meritocratic ideals and investments in models of a self-fashioning, autonomous subject that is free of family ties and other determinants of human life. Thus, the question of the meaning of family ties is never an isolated one. The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor would classify this question as a typically modern one, belonging to a subject that desires to live a self-defined life. In Sources of the Self, Taylor gives a precise account of the emergence of this self-fashioning subject, which he locates in the 18th century. He points to Herder and Rousseau as the first to express this notion of the subjective self, with its inner life and its desire to articulate itself.4 Formed by this notion, agents strive for autonomy, fulfilment, and authenticity.