[Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

Wed Jul 27 20:51:21 UTC 2011

Dear Achal,

I don't have a form fetishism :-) although I highly prefer written to
oral sources for many practical reasons. You know that in oral history
projects the transcription is an essential part of the work, by the
way.

What I am pointing to is the difference between primary sources and
secondary sources. It is the utmost important distinction in history
science. I am sure that any introduction to historiography will agree
with me on that.

Kind regards
Ziko

2011/7/27 Achal Prabhala <aprabhala at gmail.com>:
> Dear Ziko,
>
> On Wednesday 27 July 2011 09:38 PM, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Today I found the time to read the messages about the "Oral Citations"
>> project and watch the film "People are Knowledge". I hope that we can
>> go on in this discussion without accusations about racism etc. In
>> science, it is the quality of the findings that should matter, not the
>> colour of the researcher's skin (may it be black, white, or green).
>>
>> == Concerned ==
>> I must say that I am deeply concerned about the "Oral Citations". If
>> someone wants to set up a new Wikimedia project for oral traditions or
>> "oral history", I could live with that although I don't think that it
>> fits into the scope of Wikimedia. It certainly does not fit into the
>> scope of Wikipedia.
> May I say, firstly, that this is an experiment - an experiment which
> those of us working on it, and others around us, thought might lead to
> interesting results. Secondly, may I also say that the project is not on
> "oral history" - it's on using oral sources as citations.
>> The film says that recorded "oral history" should be considered to be
>> a reliable souce "when there are some accessible printed sources on a
>> subjet, but the sources are incomplete or misleading by way of being
>> outdated or biased". So, when someone believes that those "accessible
>> printed sources" are "biased", he comes up with the video of his grand
>> uncle telling the truth?
>> == Problems of orality (of the human brain) ==
>> The film presents some carefully selected scholars supporting the film
>> makers' opinion, but if you ask the huge majority of historians they
>> will explain to you why they are so reluctant about "oral history".
> Obviously, the scholars and intellectuals we talked to were selected. We
> don't pretend otherwise. I am personally not privy to what the "majority
> of historians" think. But on that note - this project was about using
> oral citations as sources, not about re-writing history. If you will
> please take a look at the subjects we covered through the course of this
> experiment, you will see that they are: recipes, religious ceremonies,
> traditional liquor and folk games. All of these things relate to
> everyday events that are practised by a large number of people and can
> be observed by anyone....
>> Take an example described by Johannes Fried, Memorik, p. 215: The
>> Gonja in Northern Ghana told to British colonial officials that there
>> once was the founder of their empire, Ndewura Japka. He had seven
>> sons, each of them mentioned by name, and each of them administered
>> one of the seven provinces of the Gonja empire.
>>
>> Then the British reformed the administration, and only five provinces
>> remained. Decennias later, when the British rule ended, scholars asked
>> the people again about the history of Ndewura Japka. Now, the founder
>> had only five sons. Those two sons, whose provinces were abolished by
>> the British, were totally erased from memory, if British colonial
>> records had not preseved their names.
> ....and none of the articles thus created are about rewriting the
> history of the last few centuries or undoing the work of the academy. We
> are simply interested in these subjects because they are part of the
> everyday life of millions of people like us, and because they haven't
> been recorded in print in a form that is useful to Wikipedia.
>> I myself have interviewed people who claimed that they did not write a
>> peticular letter (which I found in the archives), that they met a
>> person at a peticular convention (although the person did not
>> participate at all) and so on. These people may not be liars, but
>> memory is flexible and unstable. By nature, man is not created to be a
>> historian, to preserve carefully information in his brain, but to deal
>> with the actual world he lives in.
>>
>> == The way of historiography ==
>> * Historians collect primary sources and try to create a sound and
>> coherent narrative based on them. Those primary sources are written
>> records in archives, or already in printed or online editions, or
>> interviews recorded.
>> * Then the historians publish their findings in secondary sources.
>> * Later, text-book and handbook authors read those secondary sources
>> and create their tertiary sources. Wikipedia is such a tertiary
>> source.
>>
>> It is not the task of Wikipedians or even readers to be confronted
>> with the mass of primary sources and figure out a good synthesis. That
>> is a work that must be let to scholars (in the largest sence) who have
>> a good overview on the subject.
> I don't think that anything in this project suggests otherwise. The
> system on Wikipedia (including a respect of traditionally published
> history) works. It doesn't work, however, for large parts of the world,
> and that is something you seem to agree with. Given the everyday aspects
> of life that we've run oral citation experiments with here, you might
> agree that the experts on recipes would be people who cook; that the
> experts on traditional liquor might be the women who make and drink it.
> So it isn't clear why "scholars" are necessarily the last word on all
> subjects of knowledge - currently, on Wikipedia, even we acknowledge
> various levels of expertise outside the academia, for instance, journalists.
>> Printed books may not be the answer in poor countries, but maybe
>> e-publishing is, and there are certainly at least some places on the
>> internet that are suitable for new primary and also secondary sources.
>> Wikipedia cannot solve all problems in the world, and even Wikimedia
>> cannot.
> I'm simplifying your question here, but I think we must consider what is
> - to some extent - a fetish with form. If I turned all the audio
> interviews we recorded into "e-books" (in itself, simply a matter of
> transcribing them, putting them in a pdf file and uploading them
> somewhere on the www) - how would that alter the basis of the source?
>> Kind regards
>> Ziko
> Thank you - my response here is in the spirit of discussion, as we
> believe there is something useful to take away from this project.
>
>
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-- 
Ziko van Dijk
The Netherlands
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/