Abstract
As the strongest predictor of a sense of meaning in life, Erikson’s psychosocial concept of generativity provides a framework that enables the exploration of meaning-making during middle adulthood. This theoretical lens provides a comprehensive view for the psychobiographer of the developmental precursors and adult expressions of generativity in an individual’s life. Should the eugraphic psychobiography of a single life illuminate important individual strengths and resiliencies, a comparative eugraphic study of individuals navigating life in a similar context, could facilitate a more in-depth understanding of adaptive and optimal human functioning. This comparative study will use purposive sampling to select previously unstudied subjects from a pool of female anti-apartheid activists for comparison to gain deeper insight into extraordinary lives and contributions to society. The authors found similarities in the achievement of potential meaning in the lives of Albertina Sisulu and Ruth First through their successful development of generativity against the background of their shared, as well as different personal and contextual factors.
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Notes
- 1.
Joe Slovo, a communist deeply involved in anti-apartheid activism, was well known for his work as a defence lawyer in political trials. He was also one of the earliest members of the military arm of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and later became Chief of Staff of MK (Wieder, 2013a).
- 2.
The Junior Left Book Club was a socialist group that had weekly meetings to discuss political books and assigned research on issues of oppression and racism in South Africa and throughout the world (Wieder, 2011).
- 3.
The ANC became the dominant force in the anti-apartheid movement, collaborating with other political groups such as the South African Communist Party. Banned for three decades, it operated underground and outside of South Africa until 1990. It became the governing party of South Africa with the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela (Giliomee & Mbenga, 2007).
- 4.
Referring to the apartheid government’s prioritisation of Christianity as well as Afrikaner interests, culture and language which emerged from the descendants from European immigrants (mainly Dutch, but also French and German) who had colonised the Cape Colony (Giliomee, 2003).
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Burnell, B., Nel, C. (2021). A Comparative Psychobiographical Exploration of the Role of Generativity in Meaning Making for Two Women in the Anti-apartheid Movement. In: Mayer, CH., Fouché, P.J., Van Niekerk, R. (eds) Psychobiographical Illustrations on Meaning and Identity in Sociocultural Contexts . Sociocultural Psychology of the Lifecourse . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81238-6_5
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