Oral History Research Articles

Research, HIV/AIDS, and Turning Waria into a Key Population in Indonesia: An Ethnographic Oral History

Research, HIV/AIDS, and Turning <i>Waria</i> into a Key Population in Indonesia: An Ethnographic Oral History

Urban forest and sustainability: the historical perspective of Limbe in the Southwest Region of Cameroon

ABSTRACT Projected rapid urbanisation and climate change will increase the risk of natural disasters in fragile coastal African cities. Strategically planning and managing the urban forest can help to build resilience. This study aimed to document urban forest development and sustainability in Cameroon using the city of Limbe as a baseline through the classification of urban forest elements; description of their developmental history and assessment of the level of sustainability to inform strategic planning. Data was collected using a forest ethnology approach. Two groups of stakeholders’ representatives of public institutions (Group 1), Non-Governmental Organisations and educated indigenes (Group 2) provided oral histories of tree planting. Face to face interviews with 15 stakeholders were conducted guided by semi-structured questionnaires. From these results, there are four types of urban forest. Limbe Botanical Garden (LBG) developed during the colonial era was the most prominent. Municipal authorities by law should create different types of urban forest but their actions have been limited to Roadside Trees (RT) planting. The absence of budget, policy and inventory was responsible for the low level of urban forest sustainability. Increasing awareness of the effectiveness of urban forest nature-based solutions in tackling deadly landslides and floods in Limbe can promote urban forest sustainability.

Profiles in intelligence: an interview with the 17th Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon

ABSTRACT During the summer of 2023, I conducted an interview with Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon, a veteran of over 30 years in key roles within the Israeli Defense Forces. As a leading authority on national security and intelligence, Ya’alon provided critical insights, particularly regarding the intelligence failures of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and how these failures inform present-day security dilemmas. Although this interview was conducted three months before the surprise Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, Ya’alon stressed the significance of lessons from previous conflicts and significant geopolitical developments. He also underscored the importance of cultural and emotional factors in intelligence failures and the dynamics of Israel’s relations with the Five Eyes alliance, offering insights that illuminate some of the challenges Israel would encounter three months later. This interview is part of an ongoing oral history project designed to gather diverse perspectives on intelligence and national security leadership in Israel, enhancing our understanding of the security dilemmas of the Middle East and the world of espionage.

Minor Architectures of the Plantationocene: A Colonial Family Romance

This article unfolds environmental stories of a plantation house and grounds on the Seychelles archipelago by reclaiming the importance of the minor architectures that support and resist its imperial hold. The Seychelles, first colonised by the French, then ceded to the British, claimed independence in 1976, before a coup d’état brought about a single party state that maintained power for fifteen years. Using feminist autotheory and field philosophy as its primary methodologies, the article draws on oral history interviews with Seychellois cultural workers, family archives, and spatial memories passed down through the generations of a former plantation owning family. Thinking with the scholarship of decolonial feminist scholar and activist Françoise Vérges, a colonial family romance is satirically told of the blind spots and lacunae articulating spatial memories of colonial architectures. How can alternative spatial and environmental narratives be foregrounded that seek emancipation and resist power when it becomes most oppressive?

Decolonizing the Library: Considering the Movement in the Irish Colonial Contexts

Abstract Decolonization is a concept which has been rapidly gaining traction in the library community, particularly in England, the United States, and Australia. This article addresses the question: “what does decolonizing the library look like in the Irish colonial contexts?” The role which libraries play in reckoning with colonial pasts cannot be understated. This paper will explore what decolonization can look like through Irish libraries both north and south of the border. This will be examined through Irish language revitalization, the presence of oral histories in library collections, and how libraries respond to underserved communities. This study also establishes areas for further research in this nascent field as well as outlining practical steps to implement the concept of decolonizing the library in the Irish contexts. Drawing on qualitative data pulled from interviews this paper will offer the latest information on the Irish library landscape and its relation to the broader decolonization movement. This paper aims to demonstrate the value of using the decolonization framework to address the colonial past which has impacted the way in which the information services function in modern day Ireland and pave the way towards an inclusive and equitable future.

Reshaping the field: technocratic facts, high wheat yields, and the making of an ecological disaster

ABSTRACT Today the Yaqui Valley, a renowned farming region in northern Mexico, is a top emitter of greenhouse gas. Made famous as the birthplace of the Green Revolution, the high-yielding seeds that transformed the world’s farming were engineered in the research station located in the valley. Research led by agronomist Norman Borlaug not only transformed seeds but significantly altered the contemporary understanding of fertilizer use. Five times as much fertilizer as had previously been used became part of the needed recipe to produce high yields of wheat. Decades later, soil and groundwater contamination could be traced to the heavy use of agrochemicals. This article examines pre-1970s writings, both scientific publications and an oral history, to understand how this leap in fertilizer use became normalized and persisted for nearly seven decades.

Transmission of Spatial Experience in the Context of Sustainability of Urban Memory

Urban memory involves the re-creation of a city’s physical, historical, social, and cultural elements in the memories of its inhabitants. However, urban transformation and commercial tourism-oriented projects may threaten the continuity of this memory. This study aims to provide an understanding of the relationship between urban memory and spatial experience while exploring how urban memory elements convey meanings to daily users and local inhabitants of a touristic settlement. The research focuses on Misi Village in Bursa, Turkey, a settlement with a 2000-year history known for its traditional architecture and natural beauty. Over the past two decades, local authorities have pursued extensive restoration projects to rebrand Misi Village as an Art and Tourism Village. The research employs the oral history method, focusing on two user groups: tourists and locals. The findings reveal that while tourists appreciate Misi Village for its natural beauty and recreational activities, they lack a deeper understanding of its history and the transformation of its identity. Instead, they mostly focus on commerce-oriented spatial experiences. In contrast, local residents emphasize daily life and traditional practices as they strive to sustain their livelihoods. By highlighting this difference, strategic planning is proposed to preserve Misi Village’s unique urban memory and promote sustainable, culturally centered tourism.

Dancing in the archive: Bodily encounters, memory, and more‐than‐representational participatory historical geographies

AbstractThis paper explores the potential of participatory methods and practices to address the methodological difficulties surrounding the historical geographies of dance, and moving bodies, within archival research. Dance has long challenged traditional notions of the ‘archive’. While non‐representational cultural geographers have privileged dance's ability to generate affect and embodied expression, historical geographers have predominantly struggled to engage with moving bodies through traditionally ‘disembodied’ archives. Ephemeral and embodied, dance escapes conventional historical documentation; this methodological challenge demands a more creative, participatory, and more‐than‐representational approach to historical geography and its privileging of the ‘archive’. Focusing on tap dance and its circum‐Atlantic performance, this paper will explore how bodily encounters with and within the archive can lead to new research questions, through contemporary embodied participation in creative practices. By combining participatory approaches with more‐than‐representational historical geographies, it is possible to reconcile the history and politics of dancing bodies with corporeal and affective dimensions of the past. This dual approach demands working with creative communities as a researcher, in the past and the present, to draw out previously marginalised voices. This paper discusses three specific methods: oral histories and records of lived experiences; approaching the ‘body’ as an archive; and fostering public historical geographies, including walking tours, memorials, and festival participation. The paper finally considers how these participatory approaches work to build memory, community, and place‐making through shared heritage.

Cross-cultural agenda in a theological institution: A review of St. Andrew’s Kabare, Kenya

This research article sets out to understand the extent to which a cross-cultural agenda of inclusivity and the appreciation for the ‘other’ (ubuntu) was addressed at St. Andrew’s College of Theology and Development, Kabare, Kenya, which has been viewed as a conglomeration of diverse ethnic groups, races, and nations. Despite her leadership’s acknowledgement of her rich cross-cultural diversity, as they celebrated 40 years’ of institutional existence, from 1977 to 2017, its execution was not spelled out explicitly. While appreciating the barriers of cross-cultural engagements as including, but not limited to: language, conflicting values, irrelevant studies and knowledge for diverse assemblages, geographical distance, ethnocentrism, bad-mouthing and character assassinations, and stereotypes, our main concern remains: what were the deliberate steps that were employed at St Andrew’s Kabare to promote a cross-cultural agenda? In its methodology, it employs hybridity in data gathering. That is, it utilised an in-depth interview (IDI), the use of key informant interviews (KIIs), the use of unpublished Church Synod reports, and a review of relevant literature in order to unveil the problem under consideration.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This research article contributes to the intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications by demonstrating how cross-cultural agenda is a matter whose interplay goes across the disciplines of theology, communication, culture, oral history and church history, among others.

Досвід фіксації свідчень про голодомор 1932–1933 рр. та організації його дослідження в окремому адміністративному районі

Oral history is an important source of national and historical memories of a people, especially in relation to those periods of the life of an ethnic or national community that are existential for it, when it struggles for its survival and existence and when few written documents have survived. Therefore, in order to fully and completely record the testimonies of eyewitnesses of events of great importance in the history of the nation and the state, the state authorities, scientific institutions and the public must unite their efforts to fulfill this task in the best possible way. One of such important existential events in the history of the Ukrainian people was the Holodomor of 1932–1933 perpetrated by the criminal communist authorities of the USSR, a national Сatastrophe for Ukrainians that claimed millions of lives of our compatriots and was hushed up in the Soviet Union for decades. It is clear that this tragedy of the Ukrainian nation deserved the fullest possible recording of oral testimonies, also considering the fact that very few written documents about it have survived. The local authorities and the patriotic public of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi district of Kyiv region were aware of this, and with joint efforts there was organized a continuous recording of the testimonies of eyewitnesses of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in all populated areas of the district and a bookcompilation of these testimonies was published. The peculiarity of this book is that it was the result of mass collective cooperation of several hundred residents of Pereyaslavshchyna - representatives of the authorities, informants, scientists, recorders, donors. Another feature of the book was its 3-part structure, which consisted of a corpus of testimonies about the Holodomor in populated areas of the district, a broad analytical introductory article and copies of written documents that were found in the archives of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi and Kyiv. Later, especially during the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932– 1933, several more books similar to “The Holodomors...” appeared, created on a regional basis in the areas of Central-Eastern and Southern Ukraine that experienced this artificial calamity organized by the criminal authorities USSR with the aim of genocide of Ukrainians as a nation. The same policy is continued by the current fascist government of Russia, having started a war against Ukraine. It is clear that due to the fear of punishment, these inhumans will sweep away the traces of their bloody crimes, destroy any documents that testify to their atrocities, as their predecessors did with documents about the Holodomor. The same policy is continued by the current fascist government of russia, having started a war against Ukraine. It is clear that due to the fear of punishment, these inhumans will sweep away the traces of their bloody crimes, destroy any documents that testify to their atrocities, as their predecessors did with documents about the Holodomor. Therefore, the issue of complete and continuous fixation of the oral history about the criminal actions of the Russian occupants in Ukraine arises again with particular urgency. And here you can use the experience of preparing for the publication of the book “Holodovka...”: close cooperation between the authorities and active representatives of civil society, the regional principle of collecting materials and publishing memorial books, the 3-part structure of such books. This organization of the oral history preservation process proved its efficiency and effectiveness on the example of the successful publication of the book “Holodovka…”. Similar approaches can be applied when recording testimonies about the actions of individual territorial military formations (battalions, brigades), testimonies of Ukrainian prisoners of war, civilians deported to Russia, forcibly deported Ukrainian children, etc. The methodology of collecting eyewitness testimonies (regional principle, close cooperation of local authorities with patriotic public, mass involvement of public representatives, 3-part structure of the collection) and their publication can also be applied to the recording of testimonies about the Holodomor of 1946–1947 from its still living eyewitnesses. Keywords: Holodomor, oral history, testimony, Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi region, National Historical and Ethnographic Reserve “Pereyaslav”.

Recovering psychological trauma in coal mining communities

ABSTRACT To date, there has been little research on the history of work-related mental health issues among coal workers. Much of the coal extraction industry peaked during the early twentieth century and then began its precipitous decline. Mining has high casualty rates, and the medical field did not understand the long-term effects of psychological trauma on mine workers until recently. Newspaper articles and other historical records provide accounts of accidents and tragedies. Heroism is often emphasized in recalling tragic episodes at the expense of recording the emotional stress suffered by survivors. A diverse set of historical sources provides a context for work-related mental health issues in the coal extraction industry. Probing a set of historic oral histories of coal workers and creating analogies to current studies provide additional clues about the under-told story of these historic actors’ general health and well-being. While incorporating oral histories from other regions, focusing on the anthracite coal industry in northeastern Pennsylvania allows us to identify historical actors and helps us think differently about other working-class communities impacted by industrial capitalism.

(In)definites, pronouns and bare nouns: How Turkish/Swedish bilingual 4-to-7-year-olds introduce characters in narratives in Swedish

Abstract This study investigates the referential forms children use to introduce characters in Swedish, in a cross-sectional sample of oral narratives by 100 Turkish/Swedish bilinguals aged 4 to 7 and in a longitudinal sample from age 4 to 6 (N = 10). We analysed development with age and how language proficiency (expressive vocabulary) and exposure affect children’s use of referring expressions, with a focus on referential appropriateness. In addition, a qualitative analysis of the characteristics of high- and low-performing children was carried out. The results show significant effects of age and language proficiency, but not of language exposure on appropriate use of referring expressions. At age 7, 69% of the characters were introduced with an indefinite NP. The Turkish/Swedish bilinguals were found to lag behind in their use of indefinite NPs in comparison to Swedish-speaking children investigated in previous studies, with little crosslinguistic influence from L1 Turkish.

Heritage Transmission From Past to Future: A Practice‐Based Exploration of Value Education Through Oral History

ABSTRACTStudies connecting oral history and value education as a method of learning and teaching are a few, and most are based on theoretical knowledge. There are limited studies that practically apply value education, using oral history as an example for researchers and readers. We designed this research to fill the gap between theory and practice. The current study aims to integrate oral history practices into value education and provide a practice‐based example. Our problem statement: “Can the oral history method contribute to students' learning of the values?” To answer this question, we conducted collaborative action research with 20 students studying in a public secondary school over nine weeks to teach them the values of attaching importance to family unity, solidarity, respect, and responsibility, which we determined to be within the scope of the social studies course. At all stages, we collaborated with the social studies teacher, students, and family members of the students. We used various data collection tools, including knowledge assessment forms (pre and post), implementation assessment forms, and semi‐structured interview forms with the students. After the data collection, we used the content analysis method. The study results showed that implementing value education through oral history effectively taught the objectives' values. In addition, thanks to the practice, students could perceive the change and continuity of values and develop their skills. Based on the research results, we can say that oral history should be used more as an innovative method in value education.

‘Some change of feeling and purpose’: The League of Nations Union, emotions, and world citizenship in Britain, 1919–1939

Many voluntary associations during the interwar years promoted international understanding in the hope of avoiding another global war. The League of Nations Unions in Britain lobbied the government to advocate for the newly founded League of Nations, whilst also seeking to convince and educate a wider public, promoting a ‘world citizenship’ that crossed national boundaries. Children and young people were a key constituency for the LNU’s promotional efforts as they would be the ones to take its agenda forward in the future. To create world citizenship among this younger generation, the LNU argued that ‘new knowledge’ alone was insufficient; a ‘change of feeling and purpose’ was also required. This article focuses on the ‘change of feeling and purpose’, the emotional terrain of the LNU’s vision of world citizenship, with an emphasis on international friendship, hope and fear. Drawing on selected exemplars from the LNU’s Education Committee publications, school magazines, and memoirs and oral histories, it explores ways in this emotional terrain was envisaged by adults in the LNU, and was experienced and articulated by young people themselves.

Urban agriculture and urban planning: a case of Bangalore between the 1950s and the 1970s

With urbanisation moving at a faster pace than ever before, discussions on Urban Agriculture (UA) and its role in sustainable development have taken centre stage. The implementation of UA has its challenges, one of them being how urban development frameworks view it. This paper examines the disappearance of a historic UA landscape in Bangalore, India between the 1950s and the 1970s, a period of post-independence urban planning. Using historical records including urban planning documents, government files, and oral histories that I recorded with a traditional community of UA practitioners—the Vahnikula Kshatriya—in Bangalore on their memories of the 1950s–1970s, I argue that colonial frameworks in post-independence urban development plans not only displaced UA but also continues to affect it. This paper highlights the urgent need to change how urban planning in formerly colonised places approaches UA.

Stained glass ceilings: Gender and race in accounting academia in Brazil

AbstractBrazil is divided into five large regions marked by profound economic and social inequalities. Such vast differences can make people feel like “foreigners”, even though they live in the same country. Here, meritocracy is seen as the criterion for assessing and promoting people, which is conflicting given the absurdly unequal contexts in the country. This choice widens inequalities of gender, race and, above all, social class. Between 2000 and 2018, Brazil experienced profound social transformations. Female participation in the labor market grew, although there were still barriers to access and professional advancement for women, which were exacerbated in the case of black women. When it came to leadership positions, they were almost always blocked by processes which depended on subjective decisions from evaluators. These circumstances occur through daily confrontations with processes of sexualisation and racialisation. These transformations were followed in the most recent period by clear setbacks, deepened by the COVID‐19 pandemic and intense political polarization. A milestone in terms of Esperançar, a verb proposed by Paulo Freire (1992), were the 2022 presidential elections, understood as a process of re‐democratisation. The social achievements that have been maintained, however, are ‘advances’ that work differently when the diversity of the population and regional differences are taken into account. With this particular context in mind, the aim of this study is to investigate how the “glass ceiling” phenomenon has been present in the daily interactions and academic trajectory of black women in the accounting field. The question that underpinned this study was: how can the academic accounting environment, considering practice and discourse, boost or hinder the “glass ceiling” phenomenon in the professional career of black female academics? This is a qualitative study with a post‐structuralist approach, based on the adoption of auto‐ethnographic and oral history techniques. The evidence was built up through semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews with female academics who had graduated from postgraduate programmes. This corpus was analyzed from an interpretivist perspective and the findings reveal that the “glass ceiling” phenomenon is present in accounting academia in Brazil and is expressed in barriers specific to the field. Barriers are erected in processes of closure, blocking the path of black women who aim to succeed in prestigious academic spaces, regardless of their level of qualification. In this way, they are conceptualized as “stained glass ceilings”, because the barriers become visible and concrete in a country where racism is a structuring element of social relations.

EXPLORING THE INTERSECTION OF WORK, RACE, AND AGING IN THE LIVES OF ELDERLY BLACK WOMEN

This study explores the intersectional challenges faced by elderly Black women living in peripheral communities in northeastern Brazil. These women severeal obstacles stemming from their race, gender, age and socioeconomic status. How do elderly Black women perceive the effects of racism, sexism, and ageism on their lived experiences, particularly in relation to health, social interactions, and labor market participation? Objective: To analyze their perceptions of the aging process, focusing on the invisible scars left on their bodies and lives by systemic inequalities. This qualitative study employs thematic analysis to explore the lived experiences of Brazilian Black elderly women living in a peripheral community. Twenty voluntaries, aged 60 to 84, participated in the study. Data collection included narrative interviews based on the Oral History method. The data revealed three main themes: "Stories of Struggle and Overcoming", "Symbols of Resistance" and “Work and Economic Contributions”. These narratives highlighted the impact of structural racism and ageism on the women’s self-perception, well-being, and identity. While the women often faced marginalization and discrimination, their stories also reflected immense strength and a commitment to passing on resilience to future generations. the study shows the importance of addressing the needs of elderly Black women through public policies aimed at education, health and social inclusion. Their experiences shows a critical idea into the broader struggles of marginalized communities in Brazil, emphasizing the need for systemic change to promote equality and justice.

“I Hope this Brings Comfort to Others; It's Brought Me Comfort Too”: Ceremony-Based Participatory and Practice Research as Indigenist Feminist Methodology

Rooted in Indigenist and critical feminist research principles and traditional Indigenous values and ethics in research, Ceremony-based Participatory and Practice Research (CerBPPR) is an essential approach for conducting research with, by, and for Indigenous communities. In this article, we define CerBPPR through presenting a project centering Indigenous health knowledge and storytelling, detailing the ceremonial protocols and practices interwoven throughout the research process—from design and development through data collection and dissemination. Through an examination of reflections from community members engaged in the project, core principles for research with, by, and for Indigenous peoples are illustrated as they are embodied and embedded within the CerBPPR approach. Findings from oral histories reflecting on the storytelling methods used in the research highlight the ways that community members felt healed, comforted, grateful, inspired, and connected to future generations throughout the project and demonstrate the promise of this approach as both research method and healing practice. In the spirit of feminist disruptions to mainstream research reporting, we use ceremonial prompts, moments of pause, invitations, and offerings to tap into the reader's humanity and embodied experience to approximate the sensory experience of participating in our storytelling/witnessing circle and as illustration of what is possible with CerBPPR.

‘The pinnacle of our era’: comedy in Stan Lai’s realism play ‘The Village’

In 2008, Chinese playwright, director Stan Lai, and producer Wang Weizhong created the play ‘The Village’ based on over a hundred oral history stories. This play is a work of realist theatre that incorporates many comedic elements and has been hailed by the Beijing News as the ‘pinnacle of our era’. However, current academic attention to this play is primarily limited to studies focusing on nostalgia and historical context, with insufficient emphasis on its comedic aspects. This study aims to analyze the comedy in ‘The Village’ using Kant’s comedic theory and Chekhov’s comedic techniques, examining the comedic aspects through the play’s comedy plots. It intends to confirm its comedic nature and fill a gap in the existing comedy research on this work. This study also explores Stan Lai’s unique comedic style in ‘The Village’, enhancing the understanding of its comedic elements. Furthermore, the findings will contribute to the existing body of knowledge on Stan Lai’s work and expand the application of Kant’s Theory of Comedy.

Voices from La Frontera

Established in 1972, the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Institute of Oral History (IOH) holds the largest collection of border-related oral histories in the United States. Containing interviews dating back to the 1960s, the collection is particularly strong with themes related to labor, immigration, the Bracero Program, and the Mexican Revolution. This article explores the history of the U.S. Border Patrol as gleaned from UTEP oral histories. El Paso and the Border Patrol have a very long and complicated history. The first officers were stationed in El Paso and the first training academy was there. Today, the presence of the Border Patrol is ubiquitous. Using the collection, we investigate what oral histories can tell us that official government documents cannot. How did Border Patrol officers feel about their work and about the people they encountered trying to enter the United States? How did the day-to-day work of Border Patrol officers change over time while the mission of the agency “to detect and prevent the illegal entry of individuals into the United States” remained the same? The article also sheds light on the response of migrants and immigration advocates to the work of the Border Patrol.