From Generation to Generation: Maintaining Cultural Identity Over Time

by Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz (Editor)

This book applies various social approaches to investigations of real people as they function in a specific context, the family. Of all the social facts we construct, identity is probably the most critical. And of all our identities, cultural identity is one of the most central to who we think we are. We learn our cultural identities first within families. The authors all examine the families they know best, their own. The chapters examine four critical how family members jointly work to construct identity; how parents convey that identity to their children; the conflict between mainstream expectations and the traditions of discrete cultural groups; and the range of possible ways to display identity within and across groups.

Maintaining Cultural Identity Over Time, Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz. Homemade Language, Identity, and Other Mexican Legacies for a Son's Cultural Competence, Patricia Covarrubias. Cultural Identity Among A Microethnographic Study of Family Home Evening, Curtis D. LeBaron. Communicating Chinese Heritage in A Study of Bicultural Education Across Generations, Casey Man Kong Lum. (Re)defining Turkish Identity Across Politics of Home, Nation, and Identity, Nazan Haydari. I, Too, Am a Coal Miner's Maintaining Identity in Hillbilly Land, T. Ford-Ahmed. "Be a Mensch": Judaism as Ethnic and Religious Identity, Wendy Leeds Hurwitz. Our Roots are in Transferring Icelandic Cultural Identity Over Generations, Erla S. Krisjánsdóttir. My Mother is Greek and My Father is Growing Up Greek in America, Elenie Opffer. Surviving Cultural Sharing and Transferring Ojibwe Identity in Lac du Flambeau, Selene Phillips. Transmitting Cultural Identity from Generation to Generation in Tibetan Diaspora, Tenzin Dorjee. Am I an Albanian American, Katherine Gregory. "Mommy, I Like Hamburgers and Indian Food": Good Parenting and the Limits of Identity Politics Discourse, K. E. Supriya. Both Sides Raising Colombian Americans, Kristine Fitch. Braiding Raising African-Pacific-Asian Children In-Between Homes, Fay Yokomizo Akindes. Author Index. Subject Index.

358 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2005

About the author

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz is Director of the Center for Intercultural Dialogue, operating under the auspices of the Council for Communication Associations, and Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. She has been Harron Family Endowed Chair of Communication at Villanova University, Chercheur invité at the Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, France, Senior Fellow at the Collegium de Lyon Institut d’études avancées, and Fulbright Senior Specialist at the Instituto Politécnico de Coimbra, Portugal. She has served UNESCO as an expert on intercultural communication, presented at the World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue in Azerbaijan, and organized conferences on intercultural dialogue held in Istanbul, Turkey and Macau, China.

Leeds-Hurwitz is interested in how people construct meanings for themselves and others through interaction; how cultural identity is constructed and maintained; and how conflicting identities or meanings can be conveyed simultaneously. She studies disciplinary history to learn why scholars examine particular topics in specific ways, often stops to consider particular research methods or theories, and always takes an interdisciplinary approach to problems.