Most people believe it is simple and straightforward to ask their parents or grandparents about August 1968, the Velvet Revolution, or even just whether during the era of ‘Real Socialism’ bananas ...were indeed so hard to get and what it actually implied. Yet between simple questions about the past and a scientific applicability of answers which are given spans a relatively wide and rather complicated gap. Especially in the last twenty years, oral history became in the Czech environment a very popular method, used by various individuals, institutions, and non-profit organisations with the aim of mapping recent history. Yet its spread also poses various questions and brings some fundamental theoretical and practical problems. What is debated is the ‘scientific’ value of the method, limits of its applicability, possibilities of combining it with other methods, etc. There is no general consensus as to whether spoken word is a specific historical source and even whether oral history is a method or a sub-discipline of historiography. Upon a closer look, it may seem that in this area, there are more questions than answers. We view the following papers as contributions to a ‘discussion about a method’. We have addressed several important Czech institutions or individual linked to important projects in this field and asked them to formulate in writing their views of the problems of oral history. The following three contributions, which in a way represent the activities of particular institutions, contain mainly reflections of the author’s own experiences and difficulties. Pavla Frýdlová wrote her contribution after several years of work in an international project ‘Women’s Memory’. Jana Poláková shows limitations of this method in connection with her work in the Museum of Roma Culture, and Pavel Mücke is a representative of the Centre of Oral History of the Institute of Contemporary History of the Academy of Science of the Czech Republic. The last contribution, Jan Gruber’s, focuses on the abovementioned wide popularity of oral history.
This article examines trans oral history within the current context of both increased trans visibility and neoliberal storytelling. We ask whether trans oral history projects simply exemplify a trans ...visibility that intensifies surveillance and neoliberal representational politics, endangering the most marginalized of trans people, or, rather, offer a different kind of political intervention, the careful gathering of trans narratives as a form of radical trans care. We explore the politics of visibility and transtemporal solidarity in a range of trans-specific and queer oral history projects unfolding in the US and Canada, including our own-the trans activism oral history projects at the LGBQT Oral History Digital Collaboratory (Toronto) and the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies (Minnesota). In pursuing these questions, we examine the political implications of our trans archival and public humanities work through the lens of what Hil Malatino has recently described as an ethos of "trans care." We offer a set of reflections, anxieties, and strategies that have guided us in pursuing transcentric public humanities work that resists neoliberal narrative arcs and pursues the creation of a usable past through an ethos of radical trans care and mutual aid. We conclude our essay with a set of observations, drawn from our own work as well as that of other queer and trans oral history projects, that speak to four elements of most university-community partnerships concerning oral history: research design, the interview, metadata and archiving, and public engagement. We argue that trans oral history projects, created in collaboration with narrators, community members, archivists, artists, and others, can create alternative visual and narrative structures that are created, circulated, and viewed within a network of mutual aid defined by an ethics of trans care, rather than extraction.
El estudio del papel de las multinacionales occidentales en América Latina ha crecido progresivamente en la última década. La pregunta por la complicidad de las grandes empresas con las dictaduras de ...los años ’70 todavía moviliza a tribunales e investigadores. El objetivo de este artículo es reconstruir el papel de la automotriz italiana Fiat en Chile, Brasil y Argentina durante la Guerra Fría. Sostenemos que la multinacional implementó un modelo de relaciones laborales cuyo objetivo era la transformación de sus obreros en “Peones Latinos Fiat”, es decir, en trabajadores no conflictivos. A la vez, reconstruimos las políticas pragmáticas de Fiat, que la llevaron a colaborar tanto con dictaduras militares como con gobiernos populares y socialistas en la región.
This research deals with the culinary system produced by the community of Azorean immigrants of São Paulo. It is methodologically based on Oral History, which allowed us to observe how ...(re)constructed dishes represent flavors of memory, ancestrally elaborated on the islands and ritualistically re-elaborated during holidays and savored by the immigrant community, their descendants and others. We observed how the gastronomic practices were developed on holidays, main dishes, ingredients, preparation, forms of presentation and what are the different values assigned to them by the group.
This article compares research and analytical approaches with biographical materials in the fields of biographical research in sociology and oral history practised by a historian. The reflection is ...based on the experience of long-term cooperation between biographical sociologists and oral historians in the Polish research context. These contacts have created a space for the fruitful exchange of experiences in the field as well as for strengthening the researchers’ distinctiveness and disciplinary identity. It also makes it possible to identify various concerns, both mutual and individual, for each research field. The main objective of this article is to share perspectives, highlight the similarities and differences between the two disciplines, and to show concerns related to the practice of oral history and biographical research, especially those close to the boundaries between the two approaches when they use the same tool, that is, the autobiographical narrative interview. The first section of the article focuses on the specifics of each approach. It then describes the different results of the common research practice and their consequences in relation to anonymising, archiving and reanalysing the data. Ethical issues are embedded into the whole course of our argument.
This article presents the results of an ethnological fieldwork conducted bythe authors in the summer of 2014 in the border region of Petrich, Bulgaria,and Strumica, Macedonia, within the framework of ...events on the occasion of1000 years of the death of King Samuel. Based on the theoretical treatment ofcultural memory as constant and continuous process of social construction,the study aims to show the two-way relation between cultural memory andcultural policies or in this particular case how the cultural memory of KingSamuel and the Battle of Belasitsa is influenced by the cultural policies pur-sued during the years and vice versa. According to the main hypothesis of theauthors, today, among the population of the studied border region, the culturalmemory of Samuel and the Battle of Belasitsa exists undoubtedly but not asa knowledge handed down from generation to generation for 1000 years. It is(re)constructed as a result of the influence of various factors and institutionsand the pursuing of policies on different levels – national and local. Althoughopposed to one another, these processes run in a similar manner on both sidesof the Bulgarian-Macedonian border.Key words: 1000 years of the death of King Samuel, cultural memory,Petrich, Bulgaria, and Strumica, Macedonia.
There is not any oral tradition in the villages located in the Bulgarian part of the mountain Belasitsa about the decisive battle that took place there in 1014. The paper explores how the discovery ...of a medieval fortress and its transformation into a park-museum influences the local community and whether it takes place in its everyday life and /or festive cycle. The author notes that the memorial park „ Samuel’s Fortress“ is a source of inspiration for local amateur historians . Moreover, it is also a place where the local population communicates with representatives of the State and people from other areas of the country.
The paper aims at studying a local version of the narrative about tzar Samuel,who killed his Brother Aaron – an event, dating from the last quarter of X c.More than a century later Gregorius ...Antiochus evidenced, that Bulgarian people were still singing about „that reputable Samuel, who is still in their mouths“.The text is a result of a field research, conducted in 2014, being tied to jubilee,dedicated to 1000 years since the death of that Bulgarian ruler.From source data collected it became evident, that it is impossible to claim there are long-lasting tradition of remembering and reproducing the legend on the level of folklore memory. It is obvious that local traditional narratives are not as ancient as XIX c. Most of them were initially codified at the end of XIX or at the beginning of XX c. Earlier records, as far as they exist, proved the mas typical folklore texts with no personal data included. And no options to tie them to a particular episode of the past was implied.
La historia oral es una metodología útil en el análisis de la cultura escolar y en la construcción de memoria escolar. En este texto analizo cómo desde el presente los involucrados en una entrevista ...evocan el pasado y negocian significados a partir de sus preocupaciones y circunstancias particulares. Busco comprender cómo fueron apropiadas ideas y modelos de la pedagogía española de principios de siglo XX al interior de una Escuela Normal de la ciudad de Pachuca, México en los años cuarenta y cincuenta del siglo XX, a través del trabajo de tres profesores exiliados de la dictadura de Francisco Franco. Para ello se realizaron entrevistas colectivas e individuales a exalumnos de los maestros y observaciones etnográficas que permitieron ir del pasado al presente y viceversa. La historia oral permite captar de manera especial dos componentes muy importantes de toda relación pedagógica ser en buena parte una actividad de tipo oral y caracterizarse por ser una relación afectiva. Ambas cosas pueden ser captadas por la conversación, que muestra cómo las tradiciones pedagógicas son apropiadas sin que necesariamente haya una explicitación racional al respecto pero que se ven reflejadas en las identidades y formas de actuar de los estudiantes. In this text, analyze how from the present stakeholders in an interview evoke the past and negotiate meanings from their concerns and circumstances. Seek to understand how were appropriate ideas and models of the Spanish pedagogy of principles of century XX to the inside of a school Normal of the city of Pachuca, Mexico in the years forty and fifty of the century XX, through the work of three professors exiled of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. With this purpouse, we made etnographic observation and conducted collective and individual interviews to the alumni of these teachers, that allowed us to go from the past to the present and viceversa. The oral history allows to capture two very special components very important of all pedagogical relationship: to be in a good part an oral activity and characterize it by being an affective relationship. Both can be picked up by the conversation, showing how the pedagogical traditions are appropriate without having necessarily a rational explicitation in the respect but which are reflected in the identities and ways of acting students Entre o pasado, o presente, a memória escolar e a História Oral: a pedagogía española na Educação Normal no México através do exílio A história oral é uma metodologia útil na análise da cultura escolar e na construção da memória da escola. Neste texto, analiso como os envolvimentos presentes em entrevistas evocam o passado e negociam significados a partir de suas preocupações e circunstâncias particulares. Busco compreender como foram apropriadas ideias e modelos da pedagogia espanhola no princípio do século XX no interior de uma Escola Normal na cidade de Pachuca, no México, nos anos quarenta e cinquenta do século XX, através do trabalho de três professores exilados da ditadura de Francisco Franco. Para isso, realizaram-se entrevistas coletivas e individuais com ex-alunos desses professores e observações etnográficas que permitiram ir do passado ao presente e vice-versa. A História Oral permite captar de maneira especial componentes muito importantes de toda a relação pedagógica: ser em boa parte uma atividade de tipo oral e caracterizar-se por ser uma relação afetiva. Ambas as coisas podem ser captadas pela conversação, que mostra como as tradições pedagógicas são apropriadas sem que necessariamente haja uma explicitação racional a respeito, mas que se veem refletidas nas identidades e formas de atuar dos estudantes. Palavras-chave: História Oral; Escola Normal; Memórias docentes e discentes
PDF