To browse Academia. The article discusses the challenges historians face in accurately documenting automobile racing history, highlighting the importance of references and citations. It distinguishes professional historians from enthusiasts and genealogists, emphasizing the need for reliable sources. The text also outlines rules related to car classifications in racing events, detailing specifications for piston displacement and weight requirements, as well as race results from specific events.
The aim of this study is twofold. On the one hand, the article provides an overview of current research in the field of family memory, amateur family history and genetic genealogy, emphasizing a few areas that are of interest for professional historians. These include the close links between the stories transmitted in families and family identity, its functioning and family resilience; the potential of family history to reveal alternative versions of the national past; and finally, genetic DNA genealogy, which has won the favour of tens of millions of adherents worldwide and which is able to redefine historically traditional social structures such as family or kinship.
Investigative genetic genealogy is a fresh and burgeoning field that gives amateur family history new dimensions by including it into the investigative leads of law enforcement authorities. In the second line, the article provides examples of research done in the Czech Republic that allow for contextualizing the place and status of genealogy and genetic genealogy in the given country.
The article contrasts the optimistic views of researchers about amateur family history, based on its position in countries such as the US, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, with the far less favourable situation in the Czech Republic.
Genealogy necessitates historical records, the majority of which derive from government sources, despite families' "private" lives. State records weren't intended to service future family historians, but were a means to state-formation and power. Consequently, records used by family historians reflect statist concerns, not state subjects'.
