The purpose of this thesis is to locate the experience of individuals in the shared experience of a cultural community, to reveal a collective experience. Further, this thesis aspires to demonstrate that the experience of trauma is transmitted, often silently, intergenerationally. This is an attempt to define a community of distant survivors, and to locate the echoes of the voice of trauma hidden in the narratives of its members. The study explores the events of the December 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami. At the moment of the tsunami disaster all the participants in this study, Indonesian International Students, were studying in Montreal Canada. The impetus behind this qualitative inquiry into the essential experience of trauma is the desire to bring the experience of distant survivors to the foreground; to recognize vicarious victims by listening for echoes in their narratives. The aim of this thesis is to (1) locate personal narratives in the context of collective grief, (2) detect the re-creation of that grief in subsequent generations. This project has been undertaken with the hope of determining ever more effective social work practices for today's survivors, and of sparking interest in trauma research for tomorrow's victims.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.112612 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Steinberg, Abby D. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Social Work (School of Social Work.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002710901, proquestno: AAIMR51431, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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