Articles

Coffee and Bun, Sergeant Bonnington and the Tornado: Myth and Place in Frankton Junction

This article explores the complex meanings implicit in three stories resonant in the memories of a railway community in New Zealand during the middle decades of the twentieth century. In the stories individuals and events become synonymous with the physical landscape. The symbolic and moral significance invested in the key figure or event also gives the stories a profoundly rhetorical and persuasive intent. In these stories a sense of place, and of community, are inseparable.
Author(s): Anna Green
Keywords: Lost community; stigmatized place; symbols and archetypes; rhetorical stories; gender

Dispossession and Memory: The Black River Community of Cape Town

Many families in South Africa were victims of forced removals in the apartheid era. This article looks at one community in Cape Town. It focuses on the memories of Black River residents in respect of, first, what they say about their past life in Black River and, second, how they tell the story of their removal. It argues that dispossession plays a significant role in the way in which they depict their lives in Black River. Other sources such as photographs and the official archives fill out the silences of the interviews. In respect of the actual removals what is not spoken about is as important as what is spoken about.
Author(s): Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie
Keywords: Forced removals; Cape Town; memory

Talking Atoms: Anti-Nuclear Protest at Diablo Canyon, California, 1977-1984

In the 1950s and 1960s, a pro-nuclear narrative, largely established by government officials, dominated discourse on the nuclear age. Anti-nuclear protestors in the 1970s faced the challenge of countering years of atomic rhetoric. Drawing on substantial oral interviews conducted in the late 1990s, this article considers the language of hope and fear expressed by opponents of nuclear energy in California. In particular, it explores the relation- ship that evolved between activists, their dialogue of 'anti-nukespeak', and their place of protest, Diablo Canyon. Talking Atoms' notes the high value protestors afforded to free discussion and expression, and suggest oral history as an appropriate medium for understanding a loquacious popular movement.
Author(s): John Wills
Keywords: Diablo Canyon, California; anti-nuclear protest; environmental thought

Preparing the Waste Places for Future Prosperity? New Zealand's Pioneering Myth and Gendered Memories of Place

This paper is based on a study of the narrative construction of memory and gender identity among the men and women who settled in the pumice lands of the central North Island of New Zealand after the Second World War. Interviews were conducted using an interactive technique. There was a gender-specific relationship between the meanings of place and a sense of autonomy in the oral testimony. Men's narratives were constructed around the myth of the pioneer settler, focusing on their interactions with the landscape of their farms and the valley in which they lived. Women's narratives exhibited a tension between the identity of mother and helpmate and that of independent woman. The women created their identities within a variety of different settings.
Author(s): Jane Moodie
Keywords: Narrative; gender; rural; New Zealand

'I Was Content and Not Content': Oral History and the Collaborative Process

This article examines the role of collaboration in oral history research. It explores the story of Linda Lord, a former poultry worker in Belfast, Maine (USA), and her experience of plant closure as a single working-class woman, as well as her role in our collaborative book project. The article considers the challenges of creating oral history-based manuscripts involving multiple co-authors and project interviewees. Collaborative work of this kind -though sometimes difficult- can yield more complex interpretations than traditional non-collaborative approaches; may help break stereotypes that oral history research can sometimes engender; and offers us new insights into methodologies that can significantly alter our research findings.
Author(s): Alicia J. Rouverol and Cedric N. Chatterley
Keywords: Collaboration; shared authority; plant closure; women workers

Tourism and the Loss of Memory in Zelve, Cappadocia

This paper addresses the types of memory presented and experienced for and by tourists at the Zelve 'open-air museum' in Cappadocia, central Turkey. In the museum the valleys are presented as a mainly Christian site, housing many caved Byzantine churches which date from almost 1,000 years ago. Meanwhile the previous 700 years of habitation seem forgotten, even though recent memory is very much alive in the Zelve community who live and work just outside the museum boundary. Also, the visiting tourists complain that this loss of recent memory has rendered the site somewhat dry and devoid of emotion. The paper discusses these memories and considers their apparent loss in relation to the politics of local and national identity, heritage and place.
Author(s): Hazel Tucker
Keywords: Turkey; heritage presentation; contested memory; tourist experience

Public History

History and the Radio Ballads

The Radio Ballads, produced by ABSTRACT 1 Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger in the late 1950s and early 1960s, were a new type of radio programme. This article charts their origins in the Second World War and postwar social democratic movement and radical cultural activities; their distinctive use of working people's own voice and histories; and their impact on a democratic public history.
Author(s): Alun Howkins
Keywords: Public history, radio, working class history

The Value of Home Movies

Oral history and moving images have considerable potential synergy. A very short history of amateur film in the USA is derived from the only extant book length history of amateur film. This article provides an introduction to some detailed reviews of British home movies, mostly on 8mm. The value of home movies is considered both as a pictorial record and also as an artform in its own right. The relevance of an early definition of home movies which located them entirely within the private sphere, is put into question as the article examines some European examples from the 1940s, '50s and '60s. This article also argues that there is a need for more detailed research into existing archived footage.
Author(s): Stefan Szczelkun
Keywords: Amateur film; Home movies; Working class culture; the sixties

Funding

Bountiful Harvest? Oral History and the Local Heritage Initiative

Reviews

The Voice of the Past

Oral History, Health and Welfare

Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India

Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Britain in the 1940s

Speaking from Memory: The Study of Autobiographical Discourse

Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa

A Woman's Place: A Celebration of Women's Lives in Brighton over the Last 25 Years

Common Women, Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham

Deep Sea Voices: Recollections of Women in Our Fishing Communities

Unsung Voices