An Essay on Evidence and Authority

2019 ◽  
pp. 213-224
Author(s):  
Wesley C. Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Entire Nation

Movements themselves are important sites of knowledge production. They have the potential to illuminate how young people, often under 25 years old, shape the entire nation for the better. Their history is our public patrimony, one that should not be held hostage by bureaucratic restrictions that universities and archives often follow. Public access to creativity and memory, not reserved or made secret, has the potential to open up gatekeeping so that scholars and archivists are not the center of reference for knowledge production. This essay examines topics of extractive versus collaborative scholarship, oral history methodologies, and documentary epistemologies to address two questions: Who gets to tell the story? What counts as historical evidence? These are deceptively simple questions and so vital to knowledge production that this essay at the end of the book addresses them more thoroughly. Such inquiries lead to thornier issues underneath: who gets to establish what does and does not “count” as documentary evidence on freedom movements, and thus what is left in the archive for future generations of civic actors to build on?

scholarly journals THE TROUBLES WITH A LOWER CASE t: UNDERGRADUATES AND BELFAST'S DIFFICULT HISTORY

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 219-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean O'Connell
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Lower Case ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Post War

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the risks and rewards involved in directing undergraduate students engaged on an oral history project in Belfast. It advocates the role of oral history as a tool through which to encourage students’ engagement with research-led teaching to produce reflective assignments on the nature of historical evidence, particularly autobiographical memory. The particular challenges of conducting oral history in a city beset by ethno-sectarian divisions are discussed. This factor has ensured that the historiography of Belfast has focused extensively on conflict and violence. The city's social history is poorly understood, but employing oral history enables the exploration of issues that take undergraduate historians beyond the Troubles as a starting point. This project probed what is called the troubles with a lower case t, via an analysis of deindustrialisation and urban redevelopment in Sailortown (Belfast's dockland district). It provided evidence with which to offer a new assessment on existing historiographical discussions about working-class nostalgic memory and urban social change, one that supports those scholars that problematize attempts to categorise such memory. The testimony also differed in significant ways from previous oral history research on post-war Northern Ireland.

scholarly journals MAINTAINING CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH IN THE RISKS OF THE 21st CENTURY

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-86
Author(s):  
Sergii Boltivets
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social World ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Children And Young People ◽  
Living Things ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mental Abilities

Among the threats and dangers of the future, our duty to the younger and future generations is to develop the instincts, feelings and self-preservation of children and young people, who by their very birth suffer from inventions, conflicts and crises inherited by all previous older generations. The dominants of future self-preservation are in the mental development of children and youth, the main of which we consider mental abilities, development of feelings and especially - a sense of empathy for all living things, as well as - the imagination of every child and young person. her own life and the lives of others. Our common methodology should be to understand that the social world is not simplified, but complicated, and we have a duty to prepare our children and young people to solve these complications.

Panfish

2019 ◽  
pp. 104-118
Author(s):  
Bernard L. Herman
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Chesapeake Bay ◽  
Small Fish ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Eastern Shore ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Place

Panfish on the Eastern Shore of Virginia simply refers to a host of small fish that include spot, croaker, sand mullet, jumping mullet, hogfish, swelling toads, and more. The idea of the panfish relies on four characteristics: size (they fit whole into a skillet), status (they tend to be associated with less desirable fish—often linked to qualities of oiliness or boniness), procurement (although netted, seined, or trapped commercially, panfish are commonly associated with amateur angling), and preparation (largely fried). In essence, panfish, spot in particular, are notable for their everydayness, remarkable only in the moments of their absence. The spot's culinary associations are tightly knit into the history of place. This chapter explores that connection through documentary evidence, oral history, local foodways, and the Chesapeake Bay fishery.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum: From Commemoration to Education

2000 ◽  
pp. 290-300
Author(s):  
Teresa Świebocka
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Educational Activities ◽  
Former Prisoners ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
State Museum ◽  
The Future

This chapter highlights the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The great majority of those who began to create the museum in 1947 were former prisoners of Auschwitz and other camps. They recognized intuitively that it was their duty and responsibility to protect all remaining traces of these crimes so as to preserve not only the buildings but also the memory of Auschwitz and to pass this on to future generations. But preservation is only a part of the problem; it is also important to decide what the place is supposed to be. Is it a memorial, a museum, a cemetery, or a place of education? Or is it all of these? From the very beginning of the museum's existence, there have been educational activities addressed to the future, to guide young people so that the tragic past of Auschwitz should not be repeated. The museum also tries to be diverse in its activities. It conserves and safeguards the relics and the former camp buildings; it collects, describes, and presents documents and other historical items; and it collects works of art that relate to Auschwitz.

The Challenge of Oral History to Environmental History

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Williams ◽  
Mark Riley
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Environmental Knowledge ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Environmental Practices ◽  
Knowledge Practices ◽  
Colonial Archives ◽  
Environmental Histories ◽  
Key Interventions

Oral history has much to offer environmental history, yet the possibilities and promises of oral history remain underutilised in environmental history and environmental studies more broadly. Through a reflection on work in environmental history and associated disciplines, this paper presents a case for the strength and versatility of oral history as a key source for environmental history, while reflecting on questions of its reliability and scope. We identify three major insights provided by environmental oral history: into environmental knowledge, practices and power. We argue that, rather than being a weakness, the (inter)subjective and experiential dimensions of oral accounts provide a rich source for situating and interrogating environmental practices, meanings, and power relations. Oral history, moreover, provides a counterweight to a reliance on colonial archives and top-down environmental accounts, and can facilitate a renewal - and deepening - of the radical roots of environmental history. Furthermore, as a research practice, oral history is a promising means of expanding the participatory and grassroots engagement of environmental history. By decentring environmental expertise and eroding the boundaries (both fictive and real) of environmental knowledge production, oral environmental histories can provide key interventions in pursuit of a more just, sustainable world.

scholarly journals Social Entrepreneurship Education in Primary School: Empowering Each Child with the YouthStart Entrepreneurial Challenges Programme

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
Andrea Bisanz ◽  
Susanne Hueber ◽  
Johannes Lindner ◽  
Eva Jambor
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Social Entrepreneurship ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Entrepreneurship Education ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
School Career

Abstract This article provides an overview of challenge-based social entrepreneurship education in primary schools in Austria. The “YouthStart”-Programme “Empowering Each Child” is introduced as well as its impact on children. Research accompanying the programme shows that small challenges strengthen particularly the following skills and abilities of pupils: self-confidence and self-initiative, innovation, creativity, mindfulness, empathy, self-motivation and participation in society. Many of the challenges are based on the SDGs, so children are encouraged to learn to think and act in a sustainable way already at the beginning of their school career. The aim is to make young people aware of the fact that a change of people’s mindsets is needed worldwide, educating responsibly acting individuals, who do not only have their personal benefits in mind but also the needs of future generations.

Reconstructing a hydraulic model for historic flood levels in the city of Bath, United Kingdom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioanna Stamataki ◽  
Thomas Kjeldsen
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Cross Sections ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Hydraulic Model ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Roughness Coefficient ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Flood Events ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The City

<p>Assessing the risk of future flood events and the implications for flood risk in cities is an economically and socially costly problem. In this research, we assess the utility of documentary evidence of past flood events for contemporary flood risk assessments to reduce the uncertainty in flood frequency estimation due to the interpolation from short annual maximum series (AMS) records.</p><p>The historical city of Bath, United Kingdom, developed in close relation to the River Avon, and evidence of flooding in the city of Bath can be traced back to Roman occupation. For this research a particularly rich record of historical evidence was chosen occurring from the 19<sup>th</sup> century onwards with flood marks on buildings through-out the city as well as documentary evidence in contemporary newspapers and technical reports. The earliest flood mark found in the city of Bath dates to 1823 with 15 more extreme floods after that marked as well. The extensive flooding in 1947 initiated work on what eventually became the present-day Bath flood protection scheme (BFS) which was implemented after the 1960 catalyst flood event.</p><p>Using an existing one-dimensional hydraulic model representing the current hydraulic system of the River Avon in Bath, a historical survey of how the river and its management has changed over time was conducted. The model was developed using historical evidence (e.g. maps, flood marks, photographs, newspaper articles etc), surveyed river cross sections, recorded and design hydrographs from National datasets.</p><p>The 1960 flood is reconstructed numerically using all available data, from flood marks to old surveyed river cross sections.  The resulting hydraulic model is used to investigate the effect of the Bath Flood Defence Scheme. Sensitivity studies with different values for the roughness coefficient are also presented in order to assess the uncertainty on water levels during extreme events. Finally, the numerically reconstructed historical peak flood discharge is compared with the results obtained using a simple Manning equation approach to assess the two methods. This paper demonstrates how hydraulic modelling can be applied to historical data and offers considerable potential to further investigations in the improvement of design flood flows.</p>

Oral Histories in the Making of Our Memories and Heritage

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 612-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwa Chong Guan
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Current Practice ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Life Narratives ◽  
Moral Choice ◽  
Blank Slate ◽  
Alternative Understanding

AbstractThe paper argues that our understanding and use of oral history interviewing for reconstruction of our past or life narratives will need to be reviewed as our concept of how our memories work changes. Our current practice of oral history interviewing assumes that the oral history interviewees are providing us an accurate recollection of their memories and which the interviewer attempts to verify with the interviewees through cross-checking with other historical evidence. This practice of oral history interviewing assumes that our mind is a blank slate upon which our memories are inscribed to be recalled. However, an alternative understanding of our memory assumes that our memories are not static, but filter from our past to our present, mix with other more recent memories, and are reconfigured according to current preoccupations. Thus what our oral history interviewees reveal are their memories configured to their present preoccupations and what they decide to reveal is often a moral choice of what they perceive to be the relevance of that memory to the interview.

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