Teleprompter slides from my presentation at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, Concordia University, Montréal. I presentation the evolution of my field research methodology and my approach to doing research in small, hitherto neglected communities.
3. Introduction
• Not going to present on oral itory
methods
• Not going to present on anthropology
methods either
4. Introduction
• Presentation of my personal experience in
the field
• Show how I have developped my field
research method
• At the confluence of history, oral history
and ethnography
5. Introduction
• I have done very little oral history proper
• Several reasons
• Previous oral history collections
• Fear of strangers and academics
7. Se créer des ancêtres
• A study of the evolution of family histories
and genealogical myths over 150 years.
• Oral history counter productive
• Example of study on Forest book
8. Se créer des ancêtres
• No point in doing oral history proper
• Need to access genealogical research of
genealogists
9. Se créer des ancêtres
• Using networking to convince access
• Meet genealogists as informants
10. Se créer des ancêtres
• Let the word spread
• Results
13. Jérôme
• Ground work to gather all possible
historical evidence on the person named
Jérôme
14. Jérôme
• Finding all documentary evidence left about
Jérôme
• Tracking him in the past, prior to his
discovery in Sandy Cove
15. Jérôme
• All eye witnesses to Jérôme are dead
• Rely on interviews from 1970s
• No need for new interviews
• Only need for new analysis of interviews
17. Jérôme
• Methods for folklore research proved
quickly the best
• Using local cultural brokers
• Using informal local social networks
• Give and take
23. Acadian
Commemoration
• Near half of sources not in research
centers
• In attics, basements, garages, personal
genealogical libraries, scrapbooks
• In people’s hands
• In people’s heads
24. Acadian
Commemoration
• Approaching avery community as an oral
historian would
• To access personal archives
• Takes a lot of time
25. Acadian
Commemoration
• 2002 to 2009, 1 or 2 communities per
summer, 10 days minimum each
• Return trips
• In between correspondance
26. Acadian
Commemoration
• Start from local genealogical group, cultural
association, historical association
• Meet them, make them a part of the
project, make the project theirs
27. Acadian
Commemoration
• Using local cultural brokers
• Using informal local social networks
• Give and take
28. Acadian
Commemoration
• Community insertion
• Anthropological research methods
• Hotels, restaurants, shops
• Speach, dialect
29. Acadian
Commemoration
• Becoming friends, becoming theirs
• Anthrolopogical research methods
• Helping out
30. Acadian
Commemorations
• Becoming a fixture
• Oral research methods and conversation
• Informal interviews and verbatim notes
31. Acadian
Commemorations
• Example 1: Pubnico (success)
• Example 2: Chéticamp (out of time)
• Example 3: Arichat (community split)
32. Acadian
Commemoration
• Sharing the final research results
• Giving service to the community by the
research
• Forwarding local memory
33. Responsability
• May mean not revealing some results
• May mean allowing full access to research
without compensation
34. Responsability
• May mean allowing contrary opinions in the
final work, regardless of strength of those
opinions
• May mean treating myth as equivalent to
proved history
35. Responsability
• Always means keeping the local voices
present, even in the final text, even without
oral interviews
• Always means treating amateur historians
as proper historians (respect)