Oral History Studies Research Articles

May 18 Democratic Uprising and Experiences of Nursing Activities in the Gwangju Area

Purpose: This study was conducted to define the experiences of nursing activities in Gwangju area during the May 18 (5 ․ 18) Democratic Uprising over 30 years ago. Methods: Data were collected in 2010 and 2011 through individual in-depth interviews. Ten nurses who worked in general hospitals in the Gwangju area during the 5 ․ 18 Democratic Uprising were interviewed using open-ended questions. Each interview lasted about 2~3 hours. Verbatim transcripts were analyzed using Van Kaam’s method of phenomenological analysis. Results: Four categories emerged from the analysis: anxiety about the incident which was experienced for the first time; progress of the 5 ․ 18 events and relationship to participants; changes in nursing environment; retrospection and wishes related to the 5 ․ 18 incident. Conclusion: This oral history study revealed more clearly of the experiences of nursing activities in the Gwangju area during the 5 ․ 18 Democratic Uprising. The data may provide a basis for writing history nursing in the community, and can be a basis for guidelines covering nursing care in crisis.

Reflections on Oral History: Four Cities on the Social History of Telephone Technology in Turkey

AbstractThroughout the history of the Turkish Republic, the telephone has collectively been perceived as a technology of modernity, progress, wealth and cultural capital. Yet due to a deteriorated infrastructure, which has hindered penetration of the telephone to the entire country, only a small segment of society was able to install a telephone in their private dwellings as well as in their place of business. This article discusses the results of an oral history research, based on in-depth interviews with telephone users (and non-users) in Istanbul, Ankara, Kayseri and Diyarbakir, conducted during 2011–2012. Essentially, this article argues, that technology transfer does not necessarily translate itself into modes of social life as modernity, at least not uniformly so. On the contrary, our oral history study displays a variety of “modernities”, which existed side by side.

Świadek historii. Swobodne wspominanie a krytyka źródła historycznego – o ambiwalencji metody w zachodnioniemieckiej oral history około roku 1980

Only recently has the contemporary witness become the subject of academic study. The emerging scholarship views this figure as belonging to a specific historical period, namely the post-Holocaust era. Today, the narrations of the contemporary witness are commonly understood as constructs, as stories developed synchronously in the course of the interview. The article takes a closer look at the formative period of the German Oral History studies around 1980, a field deeply informed by post-dictatorial sensibilities. It locates the figure of the contemporary witness, the interviewer and the interview methods employed within the historical context in which they emerged. Moreover, if we consider other Oral History approaches developed elsewhere and compare the German approach to Fritz Schütze’s narrative interview method for the social sciences, it can be identified as a genuinely historical, diachronically operating approach.
 By letting the interviewees talk about their memories uninterrupted, they were encouraged to reflect on their lives as a whole. A the same time, pioneers of the field such as Lutz Niethammer and Alexander von Plato developed ways to verify the narrations’ plausibility and thus to evaluate the reliability of the interview as istorical source. This combination of empathy and skepticism, of unconditional interest in a person’s full life-story and its critical verification became the hallmark of German Oral history Studies, not least because emerged in a post-dictatorial society. Rather than studying memories as mere constructions of the past, they developed a methodology aimed at enabling historians to get access to the actual past experiences which they believed are contained in the retrospective testimonies of individual human beings.

Memory and history in twenty-first century Australia: A survey of the field

This essay surveys the fields of oral history and memory studies in Australia since the publication of the landmark volume Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia in 1994. It argues that the practice of oral history has been central to memory studies in Australia, and explores key texts relating to the memory and commemoration of war, colonialism, Indigenous histories, trauma and witnessing in Australian society.

Being special: memories of the Australian public high school, 1920s‐1950s

PurposeThe first state high schools in New South Wales (NSW) were restricted to children with high academic ability. The purpose of this paper is to explore the lived experience of over 70 former students from three such schools, one coeducational, the other two single‐sex, with special attention to academic and social curricula.Design/methodology/approachThe study investigates memories of a particular moment in the history of secondary schooling in NSW before the establishment of mass secondary education. The authors utilise theoretical concepts from recent oral history studies regarding memory communities and intersectionality.FindingsIn bringing ex‐students’ memories of both single‐sex and coeducational academically‐selective high schooling together, the study reports on the homogeneity of the memories of this type of schooling despite the different sexual structures of the schools. The respondents, it is argued, constitute a “memory community” in that they recalled their selection for high school as marking them out as intellectually superior, “special”. Their main differentiating feature arose from their sex and gender socialisation. Females were made more consistently conscious of their responsibilities within their schools’ gender regime.Originality/valueThe approach in this paper adjusts the focus of traditional oral history research in the history of education to “history from within” (rather than “from below”); to experiences of both academic and socialcurriculum (not “formal/informal”); to a gendered approach incorporating both sexes; and to a comparative approach across academically‐selective coeducational and single‐sex high schools.

The Reasons of Establishment as Well as Consequences of Afghan Immigrants Self-Run Schools In Isfahan (Iran)

The present study aims at finding the motives of establishment along with evaluating the consequences of Afghan immigrants’ self-run schools in city of Isfahan. As a practical research, this paper includes the principles of oral history studies. Moreover this paper employs observation, interview and questionnaire, as three main tools to collect data. The research population includes teachers, principals and also founders of self-run schools for Afghan immigrants in Isfahan. Totally 37 participants, 24 filled the questionnaire out and 13 took part in interviews. Two questionnaires have been designed by researchers for teachers and principals of self-run schools whose data is used in this research. Questions of interview and questioner mainly focus on participants’ experiences during 2005-2012 in city of Isfahan. Providing an integrative identity and self-confidence, Afghan community’s sensitivity about their children’s continuing education, providing job opportunities for Afghan women and also their presence in society are regarded as the consequences of such schools. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2013.v3n2p23

Rediscovering America: The FWP Legacy and Challenge

This article examines the New Deal’s Federal Writers’ Project’s challenge and legacy to scholars seeking to create an FWP-inspired project today. It explores how scholars in various disciplines engaged in the “public turn,” which has contributed to university-community research and teaching projects, can gain perspective and insight from learning about the FWP’s goals and accomplishments. The article focuses on the FWP’s pluralistic vision of national identity, which led national FWP officials to examine American diversity in encyclopedic guidebooks and through oral history, ethnic, and folklore studies. By exploring why the work of the FWP was ignored for a long time and how its vision and work gradually reemerged, I seek not only to provide a history of the FWPs reputation but also to shed light on the opportunities and responsibilities the FWP offers to current efforts to create new FWP-like projects for a new time.

Develeopment of an Attitude Scale toward Oral History: A validity and reliability study

The purpose of this study is to develop a scale to determine prospective attitudes towards oral history. The scale consisting of 26 items was applied to 123 prospective teachers from Department of Social Sciences Teaching and 118 prospective teachers from Department of History Teaching in Gazi University, Gazi Faculty of Education. Experts' views were given importance to ensure the content validity of the scale. Explanatory factor analysis and item discrimination powers were calculated to determine the validity of the scale. After the analysis done, it is seen that the scale has a two-factor structure. Internal consistency level was calculated to detect the reliability of the scale. Results indicated that this scale can easily be used as a valid and reliable tool to determine the attitudes towards oral history studies.

An Oral History Study of Nursing Education and Nursing Activity in the Jinju Area from 1940s to 1960s

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to define the experience of nursing education in the Jinju area of Gyeongsang-Namdo from the 1940s to 1960s. Methods: An oral history study was done using personal interviews with 8 nurses who graduated in nursing in Gyeong Nam area during the period under study. Results: In this study, the individual's educational background before entering the nursing school, school life, and life as a nurse after graduating from nursing school were defined. Conclusion: For most of the respondents, their educational background before entering nursing school was middle school. They studied very hard in poor surroundings. After graduation from a nursing school, they worked in hospitals, public health centers, midwifery centers, and schools. Half of the respondents had experience as a midwife. Their income as a midwife was relatively high at that time. They all had positive identities and lived a life devoted to the individual, society, and the nation.

The impact of globalization on professional accounting firms: Evidence from New Zealand

This study examines how the survivors survived the turbulence of affiliations and global mergers among accounting firms in the 1980s. The core data in this project are narratives from an oral history study of partners in large New Zealand accounting firms in the 1980s. The survival of accounting firms and the careers of their partners were substantially affected by their ability to form and maintain affiliations with global firms. The major benefit of Big 8 affiliation was improved auditing technology, and formerly important audit firms without an affiliation to a Big 8 firm disintegrated. Over the same period, accounting firms generally also became more managerial and bureaucratic. This was consistent with trends in other professional organizations.

Folklore Conference in Ukraine

The Kyiv based Center for the Study of Oral History and Culture, the journal Rodovid, and the Cherkasy Ethnographic Museum invite you to take part in an international conference in Cherkasy, Ukraine as well as to conduct fieldwork (if you so wish) in central Ukraine in August 1998. The conference is Problems in Oral History Research on East European Villages of the 1920's1940's. It will take place August 4-7, 1998 in the Cherkasy Ethnographic Museum. An optional additional activity is to conduct fieldwork in villages under the guidance of local ethnographers of the Center and the Museum. Field trips begin August 8, the duration of the fieldwork is up to the scholar and can continue for as many days as you wish. Both the conference and the fieldwork opportunity are geared to be of interest to ethnographers of all stripes (anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, sociologists) as well as to folklorists and historians. One of the most serious lacunae in Soviet era ethnography is oral history: not only its collection but its interpretation as well. What few oral history projects were undertaken were seriously flawed by the ideological distortions of the time. This was particularly true during the time period in question when Stalinism made any but the blandest research project impossible. From the 1950's to the 1980's little of lasting interest was accomplished in this area, and only in the last few years has competent research been undertaken. Thousands of now elderly victims/participants still live in village Ukraine who can speak to the specifics of this time period. Whatever your area of specialization, if you have an

Understated Legacies: Uses of Oral History and Tibetan Studies

AbstractThis paper aims to stimulate discussion about the complexity of oral history as a practice by recalling its origins and early associations, such as criminal confessions, war-reporting, the novel, exotic art and other early forms of first-person narratives, and by tracing some of their recurrent echoes in contemporary work. It looks at some of the uses to which oral history or related practices have been put in the field of Tibetan studies, ranging from rigorously academic studies through nostalgic political testimonies to wholly invented pseudo-histories. It discusses the importance of silent oral histories, the ones that cannot be recorded, as well as of failed ones, which are recorded but rejected by certain types of researchers because they do not meet their desires for a certain kind of narrative. Commoditisation of the archive is described, not just in the obvious cases where large amounts of money are exchanged, but also an instance in Tibetan studies in which an important archive was stolen, apparently just for the prestige of secretly possessing it. These forms of prototypical oral history and its near relatives still hover on the sidelines of the practice, despite the efforts of scholars to insulate academic practice from them. The widespread circulation of fabricated narratives produced within the contemporary Tibetan exile economy to gain access to western countries underlines the pervasive and under-acknowledged role of the state throughout all these practices, banning, allowing, celebrating, regulating and exploiting all forms of oral history.

O maior "pelego" do mundo? Fidel Velázquez e o sindicalismo oficial no México pós-revolucionário

Tomando como objeto a trajetória de Fidel Velázquez Sanchez, líder supremo da Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM) por quase 60 anos, o artigo examina os modos como o foco em história oral, livros de memórias, biografias, assim como em discursos e declarações de sindicalistas, contribui para tornar possível um novo olhar sobre a experiência dos trabalhadores sob regimes políticos latino-americanos tradicionalmente denominados "populistas".

After the Storm, Destruction and Reconstruction: The Potential for an Archaeology of Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of the United States Gulf Coast in 2005 represents a recordable, archaeological landscape of contemporary history. Archaeology has the potential to serve as an interface in the study of Hurricane Katrina devastation uniting existing public history records with oral history studies to document a lost way of life. Here the practical relevance and social significance of contemporary archaeology is presented through the example of Hurricane Katrina. This paper will discuss the significance of modern ruins, the material record of the reclamation process, and the guidance needed to preserve the historic record.

Reminiscing Television

■ This article presents and discusses the methodological issues arising in a project on the advent, diffusion and integration of Finnish television over its 50-year history. The study uses oral history, in the form of written reminiscences, to explore the changing role of television in the life of Finns. This social historical study combines methods of ethnographic television audience studies and oral history studies. This kind of approach is rarely used in media ethnography. It raises questions around themes such as the importance of context, the nature of narratives and coding methods. This article also summarizes how the project's data and methodology have served to produce a third generation media history study. ■

The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments by Lisa A. Kirschenbaum Pamyat o blokade. Svidetelstva ochevidtsev i istoricheskoye soznaniye obshchestva: materialy i issledovaniya by Marina Loskutova (review)

152 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 2OO9 Kirschenbaum, Lisa A. The Legacy of theSiege ofLeningrad, iQ4i-igg5: Myth, Memories, and Monuments. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006. xiii + 309 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Index. ?45.00: $75.00. Loskutova, Marina (ed.). Pamyat 0 blokade.Svidetelstvaochevidtsev i istoricheskoye soznaniyeobshchestva: materialyi issledovaniya. Novye materialy i issledovaniia po istorii russkoi kultury, 2. Evropeiskii universitet v Sankt-Peterburge. Novoye izdatelstvo, Moscow, 2006. 400 pp. Appendix. Bibliography. RB 250.00. These two books, written for those who have read memoirs by siege survivors and know at least some of themonuments and the literature, complement each other admirably, and suggest new ways of looking at one of the epic events of the Second World War. Although both focus on the theme of his toricalmemory (individual and collective), their authors approach the subject very differendy.Kirschenbaum ismore interested in the myths (collective memory is a term she eschews, preferring 'myth'),while the St Petersburg scholars' main focus is on the individual memories, and how they are passed on. The study of oral history and popular attitudes forms the backdrop to the St Petersburg collection; Kirschenbaum looks to the comparative literature on myths engendered by war-time traumas ? the London Blitz, for example ? and the contrasting strategies adopted by survivors to rebuild or remember the destruction of a city. At times the authors see things very similarly, at others they offer different interpretations, and this in itselfmakes the comparison between them interesting. Kirschenbaum, a historian, offers a clearer and more coherent narrative. Her aim is to trace how, between 1941 and 1995, thosewho lived through the blockade and the authorities 'remembered and recounted' (p. 3) the siege. She is interested in the relationship between individual recollections and official representations, between personal memory and myth, 'shared, simplified narratives' which may be fashioned by the state, but which cannot be 'clean ly separated' from individual memories (p. 9). Survivors needed (and adapted) the state's myths in order to organize or make sense of their memories. Kirschenbaum is in no way claiming that the twists and turns in official accounts, the shutting of the first siege museum, the downgrading of Lenin grad, the censorship of topics such as cannibalism, were accepted as 'right' by survivors.Olga Friedenberg's hostile analysis, written at the time, is given its place; she reminds us thatmany blokadniki felt (and continue to feel) that they never received compensation for their sufferings. But she wants to draw our attention to the search by themyth-makers (writers,poets, filmmakers, histo rians, artists) to produce canons thatwould work for the political leadership and for ordinary people. If, at the time of the blockade she suggests, quoting Ginzburg, a real grandmother could be heard talking like a granny in a story, something 'that has never happened before' (p. 46), both at the time and subsequendy 'the notion of heroic defense made sufferingmeaningful' (p. 178). Hers is a chronological account, strongest on the period of the war, post-war, and Khrushchev periods, although she takes the story up until the renaming of the city.This allows her to startand finish her account with the REVIEWS 153 myth of St Petersburg. She is good at drawing upon, and interweaving, a variety of sources? memoirs, including thosewritten at the time or shordy afterwards but only published much later, the poetry, the differentversions of the famous Blokadnaia knigaofAdamovich and Granin; she uses the archives to trace the fate ofmemorial projects. The storyofKaratygina's 'brigade' in the Public Library, working tirelessly to collect blockade memorabilia during the war, and the subsequent fate of itsmembers and their endeavours, seems worthy of an article in itsown right.Her account of the discussions over the design of, first,the Piskarovskoye cemetery and then theMonument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad illuminates the political and architectural issues thatpreoccupied theparticipants. She sensitivelydraws attention to the way inwhich glasnost' allowed for the revelation of dark secrets of the past (an understandable surge of anger and disgust at the lies of the past) but, at the same time, revealed the need to insist that heroism, self-sacrificeand a communal spirit (seen to be so sadly lacking in the early nineties) had been the...

Timeless projects: remembering and voice in the history of education

I want to revisit also some of the ideas that linked memory and subjectivity that were popularised in the 1970s and 1980s response to limitations of the positivist tradition. I am concerned also with the relationship between the present and the past as it gets expressed in memory work to interrogate more fully not only ‘what happened’, but also how events come to be remembered in the ways that they are, and how they come to be understood as history. These ideas will be developed by drawing on some of what I consider to be key studies that use oral history, some directly related to education, some not. I will finish with voices that are not my own. These will be the voices of participants in an oral history project with which I have been involved. They will demonstrate in a more meaningful way, the ideas presented here and how a coming together of the fields of oral history and memory studies can enrich the understandings we have of experience in the history of education.

OE Stories and Other Unexpected Outcomes in an Oral History Study of Partners from Large Professional Accounting Firms

Oral history reports are replete with discovery, an unexpected depth of emotion associated with recall, and the benefit of reflection some time after an event by those most intimately involved. A recent research project interviewing forty older partners in large accounting firms in New Zealand threw up some unexpected outcomes. The objective of this study is to isolate one such unexpected outcome, providing an angle on the working lives of young New Zealanders: that of the OE (overseas experience). It is likely this illustrates a common experience for oral histories: that the life experiences revealed in interviews do far more than provide personal narratives of familiar historical events. The project used both a survey and interviews to record reflections by partners in all of the 'Big 8' concerning their experiences as young employees in such firms. While talking through the required bibliographic detail, a number of accountants recalled trips to London or the USA. Considering the continuing popularity of OE, perhaps it should not have been so unexpected, and their obvious enjoyment of these reminiscences is reflected in this study.

Katrina Narratives: What Creative Writers Can Teach Us about Oral History

Creative writing graduate students—living in post-Katrina Louisiana and struggling for a means to aid their devastated community—ask their peers about the stories they are telling concerning the hurricanes, how their peers construct their individual hurricane narratives, and how the creative process/discipline bears on the material we call history. The authors frame the discussion around Ronald Grele and Alessandro Portelli's writings on narrative. They argue that the oral history informant and the professional storyteller are linked by certain common pursuits and practices and thereby create common byproducts as well and that these connections offer useful insights into the study of oral history. In this essay, they work to bring the two disciplines together and to explore possible overlaps so that we might benefit from a place of new understanding not yet imagined.

Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity (review)

in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity, by Karen Nakamura (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2006, 226 pp., softcover, ISBN 978-0-8014-7356-2, $19.95). Soya Mori THIS BOOK IS BASED ON Karen Nakamura s doctoral dissertation, titled Deaf Identities, Sign Languages, and Minority Social Movement Politics in Modern Japan {1868-2000), which written for her PhD in cultural anthropology at Yale University. To conduct this research, Nakamura lived in Japan in the latter half of the 19905 and based her book on the fieldwork she carried out there. Nakamura is now assistant professor of anthropology and East Asian studies in the Department of Anthropology at Yale University. She was born in Indonesia to Japanese parents, grew up in Australia and Japan, and has spent most of her adult life in the United States (186). Her background suggests that she may have experienced an identity crisis in her early adolescence; if so, it may have affected her cultural and linguistic identity such that it later became one of her main research topics. It may also have had a positive effect on her view of people as a cultural and linguistic minority and influenced her to regard them from a viewpoint of neutrality rather than pathology. This book has three parts. The first presents general information about Japanese people and Japan; the second consists of life histories of women from three generations; and the last part discusses politics in the Japanese community. Nakamura introduces her book by saying, 'This book is the story of three generations of deaf people in Japan and how the shifting political, social, and educational environment of the last century shaped their lives (2). She also states that her central thesis is that the social and institutional history of postwar deaf communities in Japan enabled an unusual form of personal and mass organizational identity politics to emerge in the 1970s and 19805 (2). Introduction to the Japanese Community Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 compose the first part of the book, which is an introduction for readers who are unfamiliar with the community and modern Japanese history. In chapter 1 Nakamura introduces the policy of the Japanese Federation of the (JFD) as fundamental Japaneseness and writes that its members believe they are similar to kikokushijo (returnee Japanese, the group to which I belong); some nikkeijin (Brazilian-Japanese): and the more assimilationist front of the Burakumin former outcast movement (2). This view is one of the book's key points. First she presents the JFD's policy background and explains why the organization had no choice but to adopt this particular stance. The leaders of the current JFD are middle-aged people who grew up in the aftermath of World War II, which explains the roots of the group's social movement. According to Nakamura, there are two important cohorts in postwar Japan. The first consists of people of the baby-boomer generation, many of whom were made postlingually deaf by the antibiotic streptomycin. The second cohort consists of people from the postmainstreaming era. The demographic interpretation of these two big postwar issues in the Japanese Community can also be applied to situations in other countries. Life History The second part of the book consists of chapters 4, 6, and 9, which present the life histories of five deaf women from three different generations. Using the oral life history studies method with Japanese Sign Language (JSL) Nakamura videotaped interviews in JSL with the women and noted variations in their sign usage. The first woman, who from the prewar generation, JSL with spatial grammar exclusively. The second three women, who were from the postwar generation, signed differently as a result of their educational background difference. The oldest of these three used a grammar system that primarily visual-spatial and with very little fmgerspelling (72-73), while the two younger women used a grammar much closer to spoken language (73). …