Volume 28 No 2 (2000) Abstracts
COFFEE AND BUN, SERGEANT BONNINGTON AND THE TORNADO: MYTH AND PLACE IN FRANKTON JUNCTION
by Anna Green
Keywords: lost community; stigmatized place; symbols and archetypes; rhetorical stories; gender
Abstract: 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 signficance 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.
DISPOSSESSION AND MEMORY: THE BLACK RIVER COMMUNITY OF CAPE TOWN
by Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie
Keywords: Forced removals; Cape Town; memory
Abstract: 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.
TALKING ATOMS: ANTI-NUCLEAR PROTEST AT DIABLO CANYON, CALIFORNIA, 1977-1984
by John Wills
Keywords: Diablo Canyon, California; anti-nuclear protest; environmental thought
Abstract: 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 relationship 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.
PREPARING THE WASTE PLACES FOR FUTURE PROSPERITY? NEW ZEALAND'S PIONEERING MYTH AND GENDERED MEMORIES OF PLACE
by Jane Moodie
Keywords: Narrative; gender; rural; New Zealand
Abstract: 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.
'I WAS CONTENT AND NOT CONTENT': ORAL HISTORY AND THE COLLABORATIVE PROCESS
by Alicia J Rouverol
Photographs by Cedric N Chatterley
Keywords: Collaboration; shared authority; plant closure; women workers
Abstract: 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.
TOURISM AND THE LOSS OF MEMORY IN ZELVE, CAPPADOCIA
by Hazel Tucker
Keywords: Turkey; heritage presentation; contested memory; tourist experience
Abstract: 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.
HISTORY AND THE RADIO BALLADS*
by Alun Howkins
Keywords: Public history, radio, working class history
Abstract: The Radio Ballads, produced by 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.