ABSTRACT
The family-history project The Social History of Poverty in Slovakia terminated in 1997, more as a result of lack of funding than of the topic being exhausted. In this research, the family-history approach took the form of collecting and interpreting the narratives of family members of the three 'non-advancing' generations. Like numerous other life-history researchers, the authors were interested in how the subjects described political and historical events in their narratives. To avoid the artificial eliciting of information and composition of narratives, the authors avoided direct questions about history or politics. Although hard work is seen as the important measure of human character, the narratives suggest that the official labour market and personal income have never been seen as the main arena for the testing of this quality. The hard-and-fast rule of sharing household resources is represented in all the narratives of the older or middle generations.
