Milieus of relationality, family histories, graphic representations: the Malinowskis in South Tyrol

Abstract

This text traces the family story of Bronislaw K. Malinowski (1884-1942), his wife Elsie R. Masson (1890-1935) and their three daughters in South Tyrol in the 1920s and 1930s, drawing on bibliographic sources. The case of the Malinowski family will be used to propose an experimental graphic representation of the social fields and relational temporalities of family and relatedness. Concepts from the new studies of kinship and family (Carsten 2000, 2004) and the idea of environment as a “field of relations” and a “mesh of lifelines” from Ingold’s new ecology (2000, 2015) are the theoretical basis of this experiment. The proposed graphics aim to complement genealogical maps and anthropological kinship diagrams. On the one hand, they focus on the complexity of relational environments, highlighting the importance of places and the centrality of specific technologies of relation. On the other hand, they conjure the temporalities of life stories and family stories, representing the interweaving and developments of events and of experienced and narrated relationships.