The framework of studying personal and family stories about material loss and defeat

Abstract

In this pa­per I sug­gest the analyti­cal fra­me­work for in­ter­pre­ting per­so­nal and fa­mily sto­ri­es abo­ut the loss of pos­ses­si­ons, ric­hes, job, re­pu­ta­tion and sta­tus. I find the the­o­re­tic fo­ot­hold in the de­ca­des long fol­klo­ri­stic and anthro­po­lo­gi­cal stu­di­es of per­so­nal sto­ri­es and li­fe hi­sto­ri­es, then in the con­cept by Gary Alan Fi­ne, a so­ci­o­lo­gist and fol­klo­rist, abo­ut the idi­o­cul­tu­re of small gro­ups thro­ugh the di­scus­sion of the fa­mily fol­klo­re, and last in the di­scus­sion of the hi­sto­ric, so­cial-eco­no­mic and ide­o­lo­gi­cal con­text whe­re per­so­nal and fa­mily los­ses oc­cur. The in­cen­ti­ve for me to deal with this type of sto­ri­es re­si­des in the fact that they ha­ve not been the su­bject of sci­en­ti­fic analysis, ne­it­her in the world, nor in our co­un­try, ex­cept one work by an Ame­ri­can fol­klo­rist Stan­ley Bran­des from 1975, which ser­ved as my in­spi­ra­tion and mo­del. The ma­te­rial for the analysis was col­lec­ted in the form of term pa­pers writ­ten by fo­ur ge­ne­ra­ti­ons of et­hno­logy and anthro­po­logy third year stu­dents, at­ten­ding the co­ur­se in Fol­klo­re anthro­po­logy at the Et­hno­logy and Anthro­po­logy De­part­ment of the Fa­culty of Phi­lo­sophy of Bel­gra­de Uni­ver­sity. A typo­logy of the­se sto­ri­es has been do­ne, and they are di­vi­ded in­to two gro­ups with subtypes: sto­ri­es abo­ut per­so­nal ca­u­ses to ma­te­rial ruin, and abo­ut fa­ith (de­stiny) ca­u­sing the ruin. Furt­her on in the analysis I fo­cu­sed only on the con­text of the sto­ri­es with the so-cal­led "pre-de­sti­ned (fa­ith)" ca­u­ses of ruin, i.e., on the hi­sto­ric, so­cial-eco­no­mic and ide­o­lo­gi­cal chan­ges in Ser­bia, which hap­pe­ned du­ring the 20^th and at the be­gin­ning of the 21^st cen­tury. The con­text of the re­vo­lu­ti­o­nary ta­ke­o­ver of po­wer by the Com­mu­nists af­ter the World War Two is di­scus­sed, as well as the vi­o­lent dis­pos­ses­sion of what was un­til then pri­va­te pro­perty of many fa­mi­li­es in Ser­bia, and tran­sfer­ring that pro­perty in­to sta­te and so­cial pos­ses­sion (the so-cal­led sto­ri­es abo­ut na­ti­o­na­li­za­tion), and al­so the spe­ci­fic con­text of post-So­ci­a­list tran­sfor­ma­tion and tran­si­tion in Ser­bia du­ring the 1990s and the first de­ca­de of the new mil­len­ni­um (the so-cal­led sto­ri­es abo­ut the hybrid transition and the sto­ri­es abo­ut the true tran­si­tion). The nar­ra­ti­ve struc­tu­re of this sto­ri­es which are dif­fe­rent one from the ot­her is per­ce­i­ved. It is con­clu­ded in the end that for the nar­ra­ti­vi­za­tion of per­so­nal and fa­mily sto­ri­es abo­ut ma­te­rial loss and ruin a cer­tain hi­sto­ric dis­tan­ce is ne­e­ded in or­der for them to en­ter the tra­di­tion of the fa­mily story tel­ling.