Oakley, A;
(2016)
A small sociology of maternal memory.
The Sociological Review
, 64
(3)
pp. 533-549.
10.1111/1467-954X.12367.
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Abstract
Memory is an enormously important resource for the social sciences. This paper takes the subject of maternal memory to examine a corpus of work in the sociology of childbirth concerned with how women remember the experience of childbirth. It suggests that the sociology of memory has been more concerned with collective than individual experiences, and that women's memories of childbirth have generally been treated as a special case, rather than as a route to enhanced understandings of how memory works in relation to the all-important topics of time, identity and social change. Drawing on data from a 37-year follow-up to a study of childbirth conducted in the 1970s, it argues that maternal memory shares key characteristics with other kinds of memory, but can be significant in allowing women to reposition themselves as active social selves in a process that is remembered as not allowing much agency or autonomy.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A small sociology of maternal memory |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/1467-954X.12367 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12367 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Oakley, A. (2016), A small sociology of maternal memory. The Sociological Review. doi: 10.1111/1467-954X.12367, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12367. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving. |
| Keywords: | Memory; childbirth; gender; identity |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1492894 |
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