Trees are a common symbol for genealogy. Like lines of ancestry, trees contain many branches that are united through a common trunk but grow in their own direction. And like family history, we often only see the complexity of their roots when we start digging.
In a previous post, I outlined strategies on conducting the research of one’s home, and offered some thoughts on why home history is one of the most common ways in which ordinary people are interested by, think about, and interact with the past. These “resident histories” seem to have some commonalities with family history, as both topics connect the past with very intimate aspects of the everyday lives of people in the present. Like a home, a family is an emotional site that embodies the physical continuities with the past. Family history also illustrates change over time at a microcosmic level and within wider historical contexts.
Over the past year, my father has begun to research the history of my family. This weekend, I had an opportunity to sit down to ask some questions about his own experiences. Continue reading
Faced with humanitarian crises, outbreaks of civil war, and working in some of the world’s most unstable places, United Nations peacekeeping missions are taxed to their limit. This month, historian Donald Hempson traces the evolution of United Nations peacekeeping over more than six decades to highlight the challenges associated with an ever more robust approach to international peacekeeping and conflict resolution. The limitations of the current model force supporters of UN peacekeeping operations to confront the hard questions of whether or not the United Nations is equipped for missions that now entail more peace implementation and enforcement than peacekeeping, especially in an environment of evermore diminishing resources and international will for prolonged and complex peacekeeping initiatives.