3/4 Past and Future

Question 1

Does everyone treat the past the same?

Answer 1

No.

1. Scottish adoptees seek their identity in their past and, in particular, with their biological parents.
2. Langkawi adoptees forge their identity through a collective act of “forgetting” (‘genealogical amnesia’) and look towards the future in constituting ties of kinship.
3. Ancestor worship (Martin 1991; Kwon 2008)

Question 2

How is the past transmitted?

Answer 2

1. Oral histories

2. Documented histories

Question 3

What are the problems with histories?

Answer 3

1. Present motives tend to affect the nature of the histories.
   e.g. Prostitutes tend to recreate present-day/future indentity from multiple personas of past - in reality making sense of a fragmented history (Day 2008)
   e.g. Battle between ancestral/state loyalty in Vietnam (Kwon 2008)
   2, Myth and history tend to merge

Question 4

Can we control our future?

Answer 4

1. Yes w.r.t. some relationships:
   e. g. Mr Zhang through patterns of reciprocity (Stafford 2007)
2. No limited by ‘habitus’
   e. g. social status is outcome of capitals which are restricted by habitus (Bourdieu 2000)

Question 5

How is the past reconfigured into aims for our future?

Answer 5

1. Nostalgia
   e. g. reincorporation into mainstream world or return to homeland for prostitutes (Day 2008)
2. ‘Habitus’ which is learnt from surroundings limits and shapes our ambitions for the future

Question 6

Does everyone treat the future the same?

Answer 6

No.

1. Stafford (2007) outlines several different approaches to future
   a) Weber’s Calvinists = ‘enterprising hopefulness’
   b) Bourdieu’s sub-proletarians = ‘daydreaming hopelessness’
   c) Vezo’s ‘indifference’ to future
   d) Chinese = both “controllable” and “uncontrollable” - cosmology
2. Higher social status tend to have more realistic ambitions because their habitus is more in line with their dreams (2000)