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Genealogy
Special Issues
Ethics and Family History: Challenges, Dilemmas and Responsibilities
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Ethics and Family History: Challenges, Dilemmas and Responsibilities

A special issue of Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778). This special issue belongs to the section "Family History".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 February 2024) | Viewed by 4625

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Helen Scholar

E-Mail
Guest Editor
Independent Scholar, Greater Manchester, UK
Interests: family history; digital family history; Irish family history; children and family social work; social work professional education

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Genealogy invites contributions on the topic of ethics and family history: challenges, dilemmas and responsibilities.

Family history is a popular leisure pastime, with millions of people using pay-to-view and sometimes free online tools and resources to research their family stories. Over the last ten years or so, genetic genealogy—DNA sequencing and matching services—has provided powerful new tools to researchers. In collecting data from millions of people, DNA testing services and comparison websites offer, as Julie Creet puts it, “infinitely expanding relatives and infinitely receding origins” (de Groot, 2019).

This has provided new opportunities for researchers to extend the range of their research, and to find connections with more distant living and dead relatives. In the process, we may discover personal secrets about individual family members, or uncomfortable truths about our family history requiring us to make decisions about whether and how to share this information (Smart, 2009). This is difficult for any family historian, but perhaps more so for ‘non-professionals’ working without the experience of research codes of practice and formal ethical guidelines.

Commercially run family-tree websites and DNA comparison websites contain billions of records worldwide, and inevitably encounter conflicting objectives, including making money and managing privacy and data protection concerns, as well as providing accurate scientific and historical content. In changing social, political and scientific contexts - for example, developments in forensic genetic genealogy, and the testing of samples of deceased relatives (McKibbin, Shabani and Larmuseau, 2023) - there are likely to be new challenges, and it is timely to consider how these conflicts may be managed ethically, and what principles should be applied.

This Special Issue aims to bring together a collection of work on current and developing ethical issues in the field of family history, and their implications for professional and non-professional practitioners, members of the public, commercial organisations, and institutions, policy makers and legislators. Contributions are invited from any relevant discipline (including humanities, law, genetics, health and social care, sociology) and from practitioners and professional genealogists.

Topics relevant for this Special Issue include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • How family historians perceive and manage ethical concerns in practice.
  • Telling difficult stories ethically.
  • The ethical relationship between family history research and current/historical issues of social justice.
  • Genetic genealogy and the interests and rights of indigenous people.
  • Ethical responsibilities to the dead.
  • The implications of the commercialisation and commodification of family history research.
  • Consumer DNA testing and the rise of forensic genetic genealogy.
  • Codes of practice and ethical guidelines.

The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication will be waived for papers accepted for this special edition.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor ([email protected]) or to the Genealogy editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review. Potential authors may contact the guest editor by email for informal discussion if required.

References

de Groot, J. “The Genealogical sublime”: An Interview with Julie Creet. Int. Public Hist. 2019, 2. https://doi.org/10.1515/iph-2019-0017.

McKibbin, K.; Shabani, M.; Larmuseau, M.H.D. From collected stamps to hair locks: ethical and legal implications of testing DNA found on privately owned family artifacts. Hum. Genet. 2023, 142, 331–341. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-022-02508-y.

Smart, C. Family Secrets: Law and Understandings of Openness in Everyday Relationships. J. Soc. Policy 2009, 38, 551–67.

Dr. Helen Scholar
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • ethics and family history
  • ethics and genetic genealogy
  • family secrets
  • data privacy
  • ethical responsibilities to the living and dead

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 240 KiB  
Article
Adoption in the Era of Secrecy: Practical and Ethical Challenges Facing Adult Adoptees in the Search for Birth Families
by Patricia Robinson
Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 63; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020063 - 20 May 2024
Viewed by 679
Abstract
This article explores findings from research into the impact of adoption throughout the life course of adults who were adopted in the era of secrecy, the 1940s–1970s. A narrative approach was used to explore their reflections, and semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 11 [...] Read more.
This article explores findings from research into the impact of adoption throughout the life course of adults who were adopted in the era of secrecy, the 1940s–1970s. A narrative approach was used to explore their reflections, and semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 11 adults. The findings were then analysed through the lens of the Life Course Perspective. Previous studies on adoption have largely explored the outcomes of searching for birth family members, but few have focused on how adoptees went about this, the challenges they encountered, the decisions made and what happened as they began to dismantle layers of secrecy surrounding their adoption. For most of the participants, resources such as genealogical websites and particular guidance were not available at the time they were searching for birth information or attempting to make contact with birth families. Their accounts highlighted how social workers with potential birth information did not appear to be able to consider the broader emotional impact this might entail for adoptees. Initial meetings were described by some adoptees as hurdles to be overcome, and little birth information was given. Some continued to search for birth relatives without support, using random methods to gain contact. The ways in which adults went about their search sometimes appeared to suggest a lack of consideration or awareness on their part of the possible impact on others involved. In reality, they were faced with obstacles and barriers as they attempted to learn about their origins. Their stories provide a valuable insight into how adult adoptees sought to dismantle layers of secrecy, highlighting the complex, challenging and isolated situation they found themselves in as they searched for birth information and birth families, as well as the ethical challenges and dilemmas they had to negotiate in order to do so. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Family History: Challenges, Dilemmas and Responsibilities)
8 pages, 192 KiB  
Article
Hidden from Family History: The Ethics of Remembering
by Martin Robb
Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 51; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020051 - 1 May 2024
Viewed by 1057
Abstract
This article draws on case studies or ‘microhistories’ from the author’s own research to explore the ethical responsibility of family historians to represent the experiences of those whose lives have been ‘hidden from history’, and in particular the lives of one’s female ancestors, [...] Read more.
This article draws on case studies or ‘microhistories’ from the author’s own research to explore the ethical responsibility of family historians to represent the experiences of those whose lives have been ‘hidden from history’, and in particular the lives of one’s female ancestors, as a way of correcting the omissions and erasures of official histories. It also discusses the ethical dilemmas posed by the discovery that one’s ancestors were involved in activities that are now regarded as morally suspect, such as profiting from the ownership of slaves. Finally, the article debates ethical arguments about respecting the rights of the dead to privacy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Family History: Challenges, Dilemmas and Responsibilities)
12 pages, 266 KiB  
Article
“The Past Is Never Dead. It’s Not Even Past” (Faulkner, 1919 Requiem for a Nun p. 85): Mapping and Taking Care of the Ghosts in Adoption
by Gary Clapton
Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 37; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020037 - 1 Apr 2024
Viewed by 1121
Abstract
The Code of Ethics of the Association of Professional Genealogists promotes the communication of coherent, clear, and well-organised information). It is not that simple when adoption features in a family’s history. This paper suggests that standard approaches to family tree-construction will struggle to [...] Read more.
The Code of Ethics of the Association of Professional Genealogists promotes the communication of coherent, clear, and well-organised information). It is not that simple when adoption features in a family’s history. This paper suggests that standard approaches to family tree-construction will struggle to capture the complexities, gaps, and challenges posed by adoption. Firstly, the paper makes the case for family historians having an alertness to adoption by noting the number of people affected by adoption. It then goes on to look at the literature that argues that adoption involves erasures of birth families and makes ghosts of them. Adoption also creates possible selves and lives; the adopted person’s “could-have-beens” had there been no adoption, the biological child that the adoptive parents might have had and could not, the birth mother’s life with the child lost to adoption. These presences and possibilities haunt all involved in adoption, and writers have posited the existence of a “ghost kingdom”. This paper maps out a greater ghost world of adoption, paradoxically full of life, and because of access to birth records, a world that offers a much greater potential for materialisation. The paper avoids the traditional notions of ghosts as things to be shunned or as representatives of pathologies. Instead, it asks for respect for the “not-dead”/“not-past” of adoption and for family history researchers, a capacity to embrace the jumbled, the murky, and the disorganised. People everywhere are increasingly constructing their own family trees, with all the potential for pleasant surprise but also the shock that this might bring. Should genealogists overlook adoption’s ghosts then they overlook the opportunity to professionally map a rich and varied world of family knowledge and connections. The paper concludes with this observation coupled with a discussion of other associated ethical implications of family history work where adoption features. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Family History: Challenges, Dilemmas and Responsibilities)
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