Narrating our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral HistoryCambridge University Press, 13.04.1995 This study looks at how oral histories are constructed and how they should be interpreted, and argues for a deeper understanding of their oral and social characteristics. Oral accounts of past events are also guides to the future, as well as being social activities in which tellers claim authority to speak to particular audiences. Like written history and literature, orality has its shaping genres and aesthetic conventions and, likewise, has to be interpreted through them. The argument is illustrated through a wide range of examples of memory, narration and oral tradition, including many from Europe and the Americas, and with a particular focus on oral histories from the Jlao Kru of Liberia, with whom Elizabeth Tonkin has carried out extensive research. Tonkin also draws on and integrates the insights of a range of other disciplines, such as literary criticism, linguistics, history, psychology, and communication and cultural studies. |
Inhalt
Introduction | 1 |
an introductory case study | 18 |
authors and their authorisations | 38 |
the work of genre | 50 |
narrators and their times | 66 |
Subjective or objective? Debates on the nature of oral history | 83 |
Memory makes us we make memory | 97 |
Truthfulness history and identity | 113 |
Notes | 137 |
Bibliography | 153 |
163 | |
169 | |
Plate section | 172 |
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Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History Elizabeth Tonkin Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 1995 |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
African analysis anthropologists argue argument audience autobiography Blamo Kofa Blists Hill chapter claim cognitive complex consciousness construction culture described developed discourse discussed distinctions Eliduc English evidence examples experience explain eyewitness genealogical grammaticalisation H. M. Chadwick historians human individual instance interpretation itän Jeto's Jiao's Jlao Jua Sieh knowledge language Liberia Liberian English linguistic listeners literacy literate literature lives look Marxism means memory mode Mormon narrative narrators occasion oracy oral accounts oral art oral genres oral history oral literature oral tradition organisation orientation oriki panton performance periodisation perspective political Portelli practices present recall recognised reference relations representations of pastness Samuel points Sasstown sense sequence Sieh Jeto Sieh's significance social action social identity socialisation society speakers story structuralist structure tellers telling temporal theory Tonkin town understand Vansina W. G. Hoskins words Yoruba