Peer Reviewed Articles by Melanie Lorek
Food, Culture & Society, 2022
This paper explores the social and symbolic meanings of recipes in the creation of community imag... more This paper explores the social and symbolic meanings of recipes in the creation of community imagined online. Linking scholarship on the social relevance of recipes with research on food memories, identity, as well as research on memory in the digital age, I examine how internet users remember the German Democratic Republic (GDR) through recipes they post and discuss online on the two most popular German-based recipe sharing websites. My findings show that sharing and commenting on recipes is a form of collective identity labor through which Internet users create, negotiate and maintain symbolic boundaries between East and West Germany. Specifically, I identify key dynamics of how recipes – as vehicles of identity labor – perform collective GDR identity: negotiations about authenticity and collective affirmations of GDR identity which both serve as symbolic demarcations within a Western-centered reunified Germany.
Symbolic Interaction
How do individuals make sense of events that are associated with major social-systemic changes? T... more How do individuals make sense of events that are associated with major social-systemic changes? The paper explores the relationship between “German reunification” and processes of meaning making and identity formation by former citizens of the German Democratic Republic. Analyzing twenty-six in-depth, life-history interviews of East Germans born in two different generational cohorts, I examine the various narrative strategies employed that allow these East Germans to embed the experience of the German reunification through means of narrative emplotment. Diverting from a notion that it is historical events that shape our autobiographical memories, I argue that historical events are selected from a historical tool kit which provides individuals with narrative resources from which narrative identity can be formulated. A video abstract is available at https://youtu.be/d69JXE0Ryqw.
edited volumes by Melanie Lorek
Die Generation der Wendekinder - Elaboration eines Forschungsfeldes, 2016
In Stellungnahmen jüngeren Datums wurde von Mitgliedern des „Netzwerkes 3te Generation Ost“ auf e... more In Stellungnahmen jüngeren Datums wurde von Mitgliedern des „Netzwerkes 3te Generation Ost“ auf eine besondere Eigenschaft jener hingewiesen, die der „3. Generation Ostdeutscher“ zugehörig sind: Transformationskompetenz. An der Spitze der Debatte steht die Politikwissenschaftlerin Adriana Lettrari, eine der Gründungsmitglieder des „Netzwerkes 3te Generation Ost“, die in einer Transformationskompetenz jene besondere Fähigkeit sieht, mit plötzlichen und unerwarteten Systemveränderungen umgehen zu können. Die Erfahrungen und die Bewältigung des Ereignisses Wiedervereinigung, so das Argument, bilden einen Erfahrungsschatz im Umgang mit sogenannten Umbrüchen generell. Grob zugespitzt: Hat man einmal eine schwere Krise durchgemacht, kommen einem die Krisen des Alltags eher klein vor, oder auch „kennst du einen, kennst du alle“.
Papers by Melanie Lorek
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Peer Reviewed Articles by Melanie Lorek
edited volumes by Melanie Lorek
Papers by Melanie Lorek