Abstrakt
Mothering as a social phenomenon and everyday practice is loaded with normative expectations, multi-layered meanings, and everyday negotiations. Based on the analysis of contemporary scholarship on motherhood and mothering and recent biographical and narrative interviews of mothers from all over the world (several countries in western and eastern Europe, Iran/western Asia, Canada/North America, Australia and Kenya/East Africa), that have been conducted and analysed by fifteen authors, the editors of the book Lyudmila Nurse, Lisa Moran and Kateřina Sidoropulu-Janků put together a co-edited monograph Biographical Research and the Meanings of Mothering. Life Choices, Identities and Methods, which will be presented in this talk. The special focus will be put on the normativity and intersectionality of mothering as a platform where identity negotiations and life choices take place. The first part of the talk will present the normative layers and dynamics of mothering and demonstrate how mothering as a social phenomenon affects mothers, as well as non-mothers. Further, the analysis of narratives of mothers and non-mothers from all over the world will provide a multi-layered perspective on mothering as an everyday practice and platform for realised identities and life choices. The talk presents mothering as a vivid phenomenon that, when researched from an everyday perspective, has great potential for understanding the dynamics of social reproduction and meaning-making.
Bio
Kateřina Sidiropulu-Janků, Ph.D is a senior researcher at the Institute for Applied Research on Ageing, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Klagenfurt am Wörtersee, Austria. She studied sociology at the Masaryk University in Brno, specialising in ethnographic sociology, research ethics, and inter-ethnic relations. She is a member of the European Sociological Association’s Research Network 03 „Biographical Perspectives on European Societies“, and her research includes biographical interviews with people from ethnic minority backgrounds and with migration experience. Kateřina also focuses on PAR and interdisciplinary research. Her recent work includes interdisciplinary research on the development of public open spaces, ageing and health, and assistive technologies in the context of small cities and rural areas.