Volume 33, No 1 (2005) Abstracts
MYTHOLOGISING AL-NAKBA: NARRATIVES, COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AND CULTURAL PRACTICE AMONG PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN LEBANON by Diana Allan
Keywords: National history; Personal memory; Imagined nostalgia; Communication technology; Palestine ; Lebanon ; refugees
Abstract: As the ranks of first-generation Palestinian refugees continues to thin and hope of return appears remote, the symbolic value placed on 1948 as the key date in Palestinian history continues to rise. Since most first-generation refugees with memories of Palestine are illiterate, oral history has been assumed to be the principal means for sustaining national history and identity among refugees. This article reconsiders the emphasis on 1948 narratives in the production of national belonging in Shateela camp, Lebanon . It suggests that cultural transmission depends less on oral performance and commemorative practices memorialising 1948 than on fragmentary moments that make up the idiomatic fabric of everyday life. New communication technologies are altering the form and content of historical discourse, with the processes of transmission becoming less narrative-based, more visual and increasingly individuated.
GYPSY ORAL HISTORY IN SERBIA : FROM POVERTY TO CULTURE by Jelena Cvorovic
Keywords: gypsies; tradition; ethnic identity; Serbia
Abstract: This account presents the voice of a Serbian Gypsy who still remembers his heritage and traditions. The Gypsy oral history presented here demonstrates that Gypsy behaviour can be better understood by bringing together the narration of local people with the objective data produced by anthropology: this story tells as much about the Gypsy present in Serbia as about their past, and Gypsy traditional behaviour, usually taken as the result of poverty, is better understood.
HEARING WOMEN'S VOICES: FEMALE MIGRATION TO CANADA IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY By Marilyn Barber
Keywords: migration; servants; Scotland ; Canada
Abstract: Oral history interviews are a key source for interpreting the migration of women who are often voiceless in the historical record. Interviews with Scottish women who came to Canada as domestic servants between 1912 and 1929 reveal how these women perceived their choices within the gender expectations of their class and culture. As working women with limited opportunity in Scotland they responded to the possibility of changing their lives through migration. Personal as well as cultural values shaped the women's stories. A comparison of the narratives of two pre-war migrants illustrates the importance of how the women scripted their interpretation of their lives.
‘I DON'T THINK THEY EVER REALLY WANTED TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT US': ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS WITH LEARNING DISABILITY NURSES by Duncan Mitchell and Anne-Marie Rafferty
Keywords: Learning disability nursing; history of nursing; history of learning disability
Abstract: This article considers the work of a small group within the nursing profession in the period after the Second World War when they were responsible for running the UK 's large institutions for people with learning disabilities. The oral histories provide a story of work within difficult and isolated conditions. The article discusses a complex history with interviewees relating a combination of discomfort about their memories of work within the institutions, together with a pride in certain aspects of the work. The material is organised into five themes: insights into the institutions; the residents; the isolation; insights into the work; recruitment.
BURY ME IN PURPLE LUREX: PROMOTING A NEW DYNAMIC BETWEEN FASHION AND ORAL HISTORICAL RESEARCH by Geraldine Biddle-Perry
Keywords: fashion and dress history; academic prejudice; multidisciplinary approaches
Abstract: In the field of the historical study of fashion and dress the use of oral history as a research methodology to date is limited. The purpose of this essay is to reflect why this might be, situating such lack in relation to both oral and fashion historical studies' own battles with academic prejudice and, further, to disciplinary disjunctures within the field of fashion and dress itself. More controversially, it will suggest that the resulting historiographical lacuna is one equally inflected with prejudices from within both fields towards each other. At the same time however, it also hopes to demonstrate the ways in which dress-based oral history testimonies might contribute to a progressive and mutually informative dialogue between clothing and oral historians and their research.
APPLYING TO THE HERITAGE LOTTERY FUND: THE PORTSMOUTH EXPERIENCE by John Stedman
Keywords: funding; Heritage Lottery Fund; project management; ethnic minorities; finding interviewees
Abstract: Portsmouth Museums and Records Service and its partners The University of Portsmouth and the Portsmouth Royal Dockyard Historical Trust have twice successfully applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund for support for oral history projects. This paper describes how the first, Oral History in Portsmouth, was planned in 1999-2000, the modifications made to it as a result of the HLF's demands, how the project ran in practice, how that experience directed a new application to the HLF in 2003, and the changes the HLF requested to this new application before granting it in 2004. It outlines our perceptions of the changes in the HLF's policy over this five years and draws lessons from our successes and failures in running the first project.