AustLit

'In the context of debates on personal identity and social relationships in late modern societies, this article explores several narratives through which the Australian Generations Oral History Project's interviewees make sense of themselves. As they ‘re-member’ family connections formed in specific time and place—and often recalled through emotionally significant material objects—some tell life stories marked by stability, others by contingency, while others construct so-called ‘do-it-yourself’ biographies. I conclude that the complexity of these lives, and of their telling, reveals the ways in which a sense of generational location mediates other dimensions of identity and shapes responses to broad structural and cultural developments.' (Abstract)