Suchergebnisse

This essay undertakes a provisional reading of spray-painted writing on a dilapidated rural bus shelter that I encountered while investigating cultural practices that evoke and invoke the East German past in contemporary Germany. The graffiti, which read "DDR lebt!" ("East Germany lives!"), appeared in large red letters and was accompanied by the shape of a heart. I propose interpretive possibilities for the themes to which the graffiti allude, acknowledging that I construct a translation that others may not share. The bus shelter with its adornment serves as entry point into interrogating how East Germany is remembered and historicized today. Drawing on Slavoj Žižek (2002) and Svetlana Boym (2001), I point to the limitations of applying the construct of nostalgia to practices that appear to appraise positively Germany's socialist past. Alaida Assman's (1996) use of the trace, Kevin Hetherington's (2010) theorizing on the ruin, and Walter Benjamin's dialectical image emerge as alternative possibilities for interrogating how individuals intervene in unconventional, unpredictable, and contradictory ways as they connect what has been to the present.

This article undertakes a reciprocally informed analysis of Michel Foucault"s concept of heterotopia and the temporary exhibition Aufgehobene Dinge: Ein Frauenleben in Ost-Berlin (Kept Things: A Woman"s Life in East Berlin), on display in Eisenhiittenstadt, Germany, from March 28,2010, until May 5, 2011. The exhibition emerges as site and practice that questions fundamentally how other contemporary museums represent East German everyday life. At the same time, Kept Things renders visible the mechanisms by which museums construct knowledge. The foundation for this article consists in an interrogation of the concept of heterotopia that emphasizes its methodological possibilities and capacity to reveal knowledge. The application of dimensions of heterotopia explicates how spatial, temporal, and political contexts shape the exhibition"s meaning while simultaneously gesturing towards the possibility of more nuanced representations of the East German past than circulate currently.

A response to Peter D. Brandon & Gene A. Fisher (2001) explores issues regarding the interrelationships of welfare, family structure, & child well-being. Two future areas of research that may benefit from a direct survey of welfare recipients &/or low-income single mothers are proposed: patterns for adaptive strategies when in financial distress, & where children go when not living with the residential single parent. It is suggested that the impact of lower welfare benefits on parent-child dissolution may be weaker than reported. 9 References. I. Sharp

Abstract. Despite the rapid increase in families headed by single mothers, sufficient attention has not been paid to the living arrangements of these families. Most prior research has generally relied on Bureau of the Census definitions as household head and subfamily head to categorize single mothers' living arrangements. This two part grouping, however, obscures the actual diversity of living arrangements undertaken, including cohabitation with unrelated males. This paper moves beyond the standard two part grouping of single mothers and instead provides a detailed taxonomy of single mothers' living arrangements using data from the Current Population Survey. Among the findings, the economic status of families headed by single mothers varies tremendously by living arrangement, a fact which has been entirely overlooked in earlier research.