Fwd: Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge - Gendergap

23 Jul 2011

Greetings,

A group of us have been working on a project to explore the possibility 
of oral citations on Wikipedia, and inadvertently (and happily), it 
turns out that there is a really interesting gender dimension that came 
up during the course of it.

The central problem we were trying to address was the lack of scholarly 
printed material outside the Anglo-European world, and how it affects 
knowledge production on Wikipedia.

In the course of our work (and this may just be a coincidence) many of 
the foremost experts on oral culture turn out to be women; for e.g. 
Isabel Hofmeyr in South Africa and Urvashi Butalia in India. They both 
have a host of interesting points to make in the film, and Urvashi has 
one in particular worth nothing (described below, at point 38:35). She 
talks - from experience as a feminist publisher over the years, and as 
an oral historian, primarily of the stories of women from the partition 
of India - about how she finds that, often, the women who know don't 
think that what they know is noteworthy.

I am aware of the research and debates that sparked off the creation of 
this list; I think there are several points in this project's trajectory 
(many of which are explained in the film) that have some bearing - 
tangential and direct - on the 'gender gap'.

We'd be delighted if you might check out the project page, watch the 
film and give us your feedback.

Cheers,
Achal

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
Date: 	Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:38:20 +0530
From: 	Achal Prabhala &lt;aprabhala(a)gmail.com&gt;
To: 	Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List &lt;foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;

Dear friends,

At the beginning of 2011, a group of us began working on a project to
explore alternative methods of citation on Wikipedia. We were motivated
by the lack of published resources in much of the non-Anglo-European
world, and the very real difficulty of citing everyday aspects of lived
reality in India and South Africa.

We are now at a stage where the project is almost complete, and we'd
like to share our work with the broader movement, especially within
India and South Africa.

There are three languages we worked within: Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi.

The project page documents the process and logistics employed, as well
as the findings and results:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations

A film made on the project is available here:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv?withJS=Medi…
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv
or
http://vimeo.com/26469276

There have been discussions on oral citations for some time now within
the language communities we worked with for the duration of the project.
At this stage, we are really interested in *your* feedback, either on
this list, or on the Discussion section of the project page.

There are still some things to come, namely:

- Updates on events, meetings and discussions held around the project
(as they happen)
- Updates on articles created in Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi as a result
of the project (as they happen)
- English transcripts of the interviews and a full English subtitle track
for further translation (we could use some help here).

We would be very grateful to hear your feedback, and begin a broader
discussion.

Best wishes,
Achal