For one Oroqen family, ethnic identity appears to be changing form across the generations rather than simply disappearing. The oldest participant linked belonging to embodied memories of hunting and gathering. The middle generation focused more on preserving traditions that were fading, while the youngest participants emphasized selected symbols and digital communication.
The study uses “identity anchors” for the memories, traditions, symbols and forms of communication people draw on to express who they are and where they belong. Its central finding is an interpretive pattern within a single family, not a fixed map of how every Oroqen person experiences identity.
Language followed a similarly shifting path. The study describes the relationship between Oroqen language and ethnic identity as more absolute in the grandparent generation, more practical and compromise-based among the parents, and more fluid among the grandchildren. Each position carried its own emotional burden, according to the author.
For the grandchild generation, digital media offered a new setting in which identity could be reshaped and communicated more widely. The author also connects that wider communication with less direct, lived experience of older cultural practices. The interpretation is limited to the grandchild narratives in this qualitative study.
A close look at one family
The research followed five members of one family across three generations. It was a close family case study, designed to examine meanings and relationships rather than produce statistical generalization.
Researchers used photo-elicitation interviews, a method that asks people to explain photographs in order to open up memories and reflection. Each participant brought one or two photographs representing Oroqen identity; all five supplied images, and four brought two. They also selected and ranked six personally significant images from a standard set of 16.
The home interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Each lasted between 60 and 120 minutes and was conducted mainly in Mandarin, while Oroqen phrases were preserved. The analysis combined six-phase reflexive thematic analysis, which develops themes through repeated interpretation, with elements of narrative analysis. Inductive coding produced 379 initial codes and 29 descriptive categories.
The study reports institutional ethics approval and written consent for the interviews, recordings, photographs and publication. The photographs and de-identified transcripts supporting the findings are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Identity as a family’s shared work
The author describes the family as an identity ecology, with different generations contributing different kinds of authority. Grandparents provide first-hand experience, parents act as guardians of memory, and grandchildren carry cultural material into public communication and creative adaptation. In this account, identity is made through relationships among family members, not held by one generation alone.
The account moves from lived experience to memory-keeping and narrative reconstruction, while suggesting that identity can be reworked under language decline rather than simply lost. Digital communication becomes part of that reconstruction for the youngest generation.
The evidence is deliberately narrow. The family case captures only a possible transfer pattern, cannot support broad generalizations, and lacked independent coding by another researcher. The findings should therefore be read as a family-level interpretation, not a general rule about Oroqen identity.
The work received support from the National Social Science Fund of China through its Special Project for Rare and Endangered Studies. Its main contribution is a detailed account of how cultural belonging may be carried, revised and communicated within one family as generations change.
Paper data and sources
Original title: Generational compression and the shifting anchors of identity: a photo-elicitation nostalgia narrative study of identity construction across three generations in an Oroqen family
Authors: Cong S
Journal/Repository: Frontiers in psychology
Status: Peer-reviewed
First online: 2026-10-10
DOI: Not available
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