Talking History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramin Jahanbegloo ◽  
Romila Thapar ◽  
Neeladri Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early History ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Religious Nationalism ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru

Talking History records a series of conversations that centre on the writing of history, and especially early Indian history, as evident in the works of Romila Thapar. She has focused on the study of early India but is also interested in the link between the past and the present. Whereas she recognizes the importance of analysing texts of ancient India for information on early history, which she does in her various studies of the past, she is also concerned with explaining what happened in the past and why. Assessing the data and its reliability is the first step followed by explaining its historical context and how it contributes to the construction of history. Her emphasis on reliable evidence and logical explanation has led her to oppose the fantasy reconstructions of the past by supporters of religious nationalism. In her more recent work she has challenged the widely held idea that Indian society lacked a sense of history. In this book Thapar shares her insights on history with Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian philosopher, and Neeladri Bhattacharya, a historian of modern India at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Given the link between aspects of the past and the present, the book begins with recalling Thapar’s early life before becoming a historian and continues with reflections on topics ranging from religion in history to theories of explanation as, for example, Marxism. She discusses objectivity in history, the rational retelling of events, oral history, historicity, and various concepts used in the study of history.

scholarly journals The Evacuation of Children inside Wartime France

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-173
Author(s):  
Lindsey Dodd
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Food Supply ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Negative Experience ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Past ◽  
Paris Region ◽  
History Narratives ◽  
Material Conditions

This article explores the evacuation of children from the Paris region to the rural Creuse département, prompted by problems with the capital's food supply and increasingly heavy Allied air raids from 1943. It combines archival material and oral narratives, using the case studies of two individuals (Françoise and Christian) to suggest first, a latent archival bias towards extremes of positive and negative experience, and second, the ways oral history narratives can provide nuance and texture to how we understand the past, replicating more faithfully the equivocal nature of everyday life. After an outline of the historical context of evacuation, three aspects of the evacuee-host experience are considered: the decision to accept an evacuee, the material conditions in which the child was accommodated, and the longer-term relationships forged through evacuation. It is both an analysis of some of the historical dimensions of children's evacuation and a methodological exploration of oral and written data.

Moving Figures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Kai Nelson Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sixth Generation ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
Structures Of Feeling ◽  
Raymond Williams

This book examines how the films of the Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke evoke the affective “felt” experience of China’s contemporary social and economic transformations, by examining the class figures of worker, peasant, soldier, intellectual, and entrepreneur that are found in the films. Each chapter analyzes a figure’s socio-historical context, its filmic representation, and its recurring cinematic tropes in order to understand how they create what Raymond Williams calls “structures of feeling” – feelings that concretize around particular times, places, generations, and classes that are captured and evoked in art – and charts how this felt experience has changed over the past forty years of China’s economic reforms. The book argues that that Jia’s cinema should be understood not just as narratives that represent Chinese social change, but also as an effort to engage the audience’s emotional responses during this period of China’s massive and fast-paced transformation.

Position Of Women In India: Historical Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-50
Author(s):  
Dr.S.Theresammal
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
High Position ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women In India

Woman establishes the strategicpart in the Indian society. Women in ancient India relished high position in society and their situation was worthy.The country is to study the position of its women. In certainty, the position of women represents the customary of values of any period. The social position of the women of a nation represents the social essence of the era. Though to appeal an assumption about the position of women is a problematic and difficult delinquent. It is consequently, essential to touch this situation in the historical perspective.The paper will help us to imagine the position of women in the historical perspective.

Line on Fire

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Happymon Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Jammu And Kashmir ◽  
The Past

The India–Pakistan border in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has witnessed repeated ceasefire violations (CFVs) over the past decade. Indeed, with relations between India and Pakistan degrading, CFVs have gone up exponentially. These CFVs have the potential to not only begin a crisis but also escalate an ongoing one. To make things worse, in the event of major violations, political leadership on either side often engage in high-pitched rhetoric some of which even have nuclear undertones. Using fresh empirical data and oral history evidence, this book explains the causes of CFVs on the J&K border and establishes a relationship between CFVs and crisis escalation between India and Pakistan. In doing so, the book further nuances the existing arguments about the escalatory dynamics between the two South Asian nuclear rivals. Furthermore, the book explains ceasefire violations using the concept of ‘autonomous military factors’.

scholarly journals “Why Not Nuevo Mexicano Studies?”: Interrogating Latinidades in the Intermountain West, 1528–2020

Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 68
Author(s):  
Ed A. Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
South Florida ◽  
Intermountain West ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Historical Essay ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Group Diversity ◽  
Shed Light

While there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in the historical and contemporary social, economic, and political status of U.S. Latinx individuals and communities, the majority focuses on traditional Southwestern U.S., Northeastern U.S., and South Florida rural/urban enclaves. Recent “New Destinations” research, however, documents the turn of the 21st century Latinx experiences in non-traditional white/black, and rural/urban Latinx regional enclaves. This socio-historical essay adds to and challenges emerging literature with a nearly five-century old delineation of Latinidad in the Intermountain West, a region often overlooked in the construction of Latina/o identity. Selected interviews from the Spanish-Speaking Peoples in Utah Oral History and Wyoming’s La Cultura Hispanic Heritage Oral History projects shed light on Latinidad and the adoption of Latinx labels in the region during the latter third of the 20th century centering historical context, material conditions, sociodemographic characteristics, and institutional processes in this decision. Findings point to important implications for the future of Latinidad in light of the region’s Latinx renaissance at the turn of the 21st century. The region’s increased Latino proportional presence, ethnic group diversity, and socioeconomic variability poses challenges to the region’s long-established Hispano/Nuevo Mexicano Latinidad.

The theater of memory: Direct speech in Palestinian oral history

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 633-648
Author(s):  
Kobi Peled
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Main Thing ◽  
Significant Figures ◽  
Arabic Speaking ◽  
Do So

A striking feature of Palestinian oral history projects is the extensive use that interviewees make of direct speech to communicate their memories—especially those born before the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. They do so irrespective of whether or not they participated in or actually heard the dialogues they wish to convey. This article seeks to characterize and explain this phenomenon. In the interviews conducted by the author—an Arabic-speaking Jew—as well as in other projects, this mode of speech is marked by ease of transition from character to character and between different points in time. It clearly gives pleasure to those engaged in the act of remembering, and it grades readily into a theatrical performance in which tone of speech and the quality of the acting become the main thing. This form of discourse sprang up from the soil of a rural oral culture and still flourishes as a prop for supporting memory, a vessel for collecting and disseminating stories, and a technique for expressing identification with significant figures from the past.

Netaji Subbash Chandra Bose’s Relation with Japan in Historical Context and Contemporary Perspectives

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-212
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Passionate Love ◽  
Indian History ◽  
National Movement ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Indian National Army ◽  
Freedom Fighter

Subhash Chandra Bose was one of India’s greatest freedom fighter. He revived the Indian National Army, popularly known as ‘Azad Hind Fauj’ in 1943 which was initially formed in 1942 by Rash Behari Bose. He provided an influential leadership and kept the spirit of nationalism burning during the slack period of national movement in India. Netaji was a patriot to the last drop of his blood. In his passionate love for the motherland, he was prepared to do anything for the sake of liberating his country. Subhash Chandra Bose is a legendary figure in Indian history. His contribution to the freedom struggle made him a brave hero of India. However, there has been controversial debates about Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s political views in his struggle for India’s freedom till date. This paper studies about 1. Controversy on Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s political views; 2. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s relation with Japan from contemporary perspectives; and 3. Subhash Chandra Bose’s relation with Japan in comparison with that of Phan Boi Chau in Vietnam. Received 9th December 2020; Revised 2nd March 2021; Accepted 20th March 2021

Socialist Modernisation in Mongolia as Narrated after Socialism

Inner Asia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuki Konagaya
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
View Point ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
History Narratives

AbstractIn this article I introduce our collection of oral histories composed of life histories recorded between 2001 and 2006. First, I discuss some devices implemented in the process of collecting life histories, which was to make oral histories 'polyphonic'. I then suggest that oral history always has a 'dual' tense, in that people talk about 'the past' from the view point of 'the present'. This is illustrated by six cases of statesmen narrating their views about socialist modernisation. Finally, using one of the cases, I demonstrate the co-existence of non-official or private opinions along with official opinions about the socialist period in life-history narratives in the post-socialist period. I call this 'ex-post value'.

scholarly journals The heterogeneity of mental representation: Ending the imagery debate

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (33) ◽  
pp. 10089-10092 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Pearson ◽  
Stephen M. Kosslyn
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Internal Representations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Imagery Debate ◽  
Propositional Language

The possible ways that information can be represented mentally have been discussed often over the past thousand years. However, this issue could not be addressed rigorously until late in the 20th century. Initial empirical findings spurred a debate about the heterogeneity of mental representation: Is all information stored in propositional, language-like, symbolic internal representations, or can humans use at least two different types of representations (and possibly many more)? Here, in historical context, we describe recent evidence that humans do not always rely on propositional internal representations but, instead, can also rely on at least one other format: depictive representation. We propose that the debate should now move on to characterizing all of the different forms of human mental representation.

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