Modern Identities and the Creation of History: Stories of Rescue among the Jews of Denmark

Buckser, Andrew

doi:10.2307/3317569

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The issue here is the version of anti‐Semitism the immigrants choose to present while confronting the national narrative in the host society. This version is not at all obvious, as the memory kit that the immigrants carry with them consists of versatile ready‐to‐use narratives that render them free to maneuver between different interpretations of anti‐Semitism (Buckser 1999; Reinharz 1987).…”

Section: Anti‐semitism In Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recollection and Relocation in Immigration: Russian‐Jewish Immigrants “Normalize” Their Anti‐Semitic Experiences

Rapoport

Lomsky‐Feder

Heider

2002

Symbolic Interaction

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This study conceptualizes the relationship between recollection of the past and relocation in the context of immigration. Combining symbolic interactionist and narrative paradigms, it explores how immigrants'representations of past experiences inform their identity construction and the process of entering the host society. Our interpretive analysis of personal narratives related spontaneously by eighty‐nine Russian‐Jewish immigrants in Israel and Germany reveals that they choose to “normalize” their anti‐Semitic experiences by representing them as secondary, expected, and “normal.” They do so via four narrating tactics of normalization: obscuring, self‐exclusion, vindication, and essentializing stigma. Each tactic devalues the cultural depiction (grand narrative) of anti‐Semitic experiences as transformative and traumatic. By normalizing their past, the immigrants deconstruct and resist the authority and moral commands of the national narrative they encounter in both societies. Putting forward normalization as an alternative interpretation, the immigrants claim ownership of their biography and cultural identity.

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Section: Anti‐semitism In Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recollection and Relocation in Immigration: Russian‐Jewish Immigrants “Normalize” Their Anti‐Semitic Experiences

Rapoport

Lomsky‐Feder

Heider

2002

Symbolic Interaction

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“…According to Rapaport, then, the mistrust and fear that has followed the Holocaust is the principle perpetuating the German-Jewish boundary. However, Buckser (1999), studying Jewish identity in Denmark, emphasizes that the tension inherent in identifying both with Denmark and Jewishness, leads to individualized historical narratives of the relationship between Jews and Danes during the war.…”

Section: Jews In Sweden and Previous Research On Jewish Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, Jews across contexts have been shown to hold on to their Jewish identities (cf. Rapaport 1997;Buckser 1999). The subject of how European Jews view their ethnicity and their place in the national community has, however, not been given extensive attention by social scientists in the constructivist tradition, which tends to focus on more stigmatized or socioeconomically disadvantaged categories.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resisting assimilation – ethnic boundary maintenance among Jews in Sweden

Grobgeld

2021

Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory

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This article evaluates Andreas Wimmer's theory of ethnic boundary making by applying it to the maintenance of Jewish ethnic identification in Sweden, as expressed in interviews with Swedish Jews. Wimmer proposes that ethnic conflict routinizes and entrenches perceptions of ethnic difference; we argue that the antisemitic persecutions of the twentieth century have entrenched the perception of the ethnic distinctiveness of Jews among Jews themselves. These persecutions also contribute to alienation from Swedish society, which does not share the same frames of understanding. These factors motivate the interviewees to maintain the ethnic boundary between Swedes and Jews and guard it against assimilation. We propose a nuancing of the debate between instrumentalist and primordialist conceptions of ethnic identity by arguing that while our interviewees express a taken-for-granted view of their ethnic identities, they advance ethnic discourse strategically in order to protect the Jewish community from losing its distinctness, especially through assimilation.

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“…Individual understandings expressed in life stories are therefore the stuff of which the group is made, and the way these understandings are formed determines the group's shape. The past figures critically in this process (Buckser, 1999). By telling narratives of the past, individuals construct communities and locate themselves socially, temporally and spatially.…”

Section: War and Evacuation As Collective Narrativementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The bonds with the family also create a link with the mentality and 'genetic heritage' of the group. She perceives the Karelian identity in primordial terms, as something inscribed in their bodies and blood as well as in their emotional and social life (see also Buckser, 1999):…”

Section: Karelia As a Communit Y Of Memory And Textualit Ymentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructions of nation, family and gender

Komulainen

2003

Ethnicities

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The article investigates the collective nature of stories of war and the constructions of nationality embedded in these narratives. The material comes from a larger study, `Gender and Nationality in the Finnish Language Secondary School', and consists of 17 life stories of women who studied in secondary school in eastern Finland between 1927 and 1970. For the women, nationality — being a Finn — appears as a self-evident context of living, but stories about Karelia and the war form a theme with the help of which the banal nature of nationality is put to question. Narratives about the war are thus a part of the collective living tradition through which belonging to a (national) community can be constructed. What is crucial, however, is that the women use the concept of the family to reflect on their sense of belonging to a national community. The narrators equate Finns or Karelians with the extended family, a unit based both on familiar sentiments, such as loyalty, and hierarchies of gender and age. The article consequently examines two intertwined themes: 1) the collective nature of stories by Karelian evacuees, of whom there were about 420,000 after the wars between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1939—40 and 1941—44; and 2) the construction of abstract nationality with the help of the image of the family and the gendered construction of family loyalty. The article explores how the boundaries of nationality and the integrity of the community are conveyed and constructed by the metaphors of kinship, family and gender.

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Modern Identities and the Creation of History: Stories of Rescue among the Jews of Denmark

Cited by 6 publications

References 35 publications

Recollection and Relocation in Immigration: Russian‐Jewish Immigrants “Normalize” Their Anti‐Semitic Experiences

Recollection and Relocation in Immigration: Russian‐Jewish Immigrants “Normalize” Their Anti‐Semitic Experiences

Resisting assimilation – ethnic boundary maintenance among Jews in Sweden

Constructions of nation, family and gender

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