Marginalised Voices and Histories
Time: 2025-09-18 12:00 - 14:00
Location: Seminar room at Auditorium Maximum
Chairman: Nompilo Ndlovu
Events within this Session
The Testing of Silenced and Marginalised Voices with the Discourse of the State and the Public Space in Turkey
Type: session | Language: English
Time: 12:00 - 14:00
Abstract
With the significant influence of oral history studies on the national historical narrative that began in the 1990s, Turkish society began to discuss recent history, especially the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic and the project of establishing the Republic. This interest in recent history has revealed the ways in which forgotten and silenced truths are attempted to be erased through official/national historical narratives. The fact that the collective violence (genocide, massacre, deportation, exchange) perpetrated against Armenians, Alevis, Kurds, Greeks and Assyrians in various ways throughout the history of the founding state in Turkey has been put on the agenda and discussed again has also shown how the national historical narrative and state discourse manifest themselves in the public sphere. Contemporary Turkish society is made up of very different segments with very different political and cultural attitudes and therefore very different narratives about the events of the past. Many events included in the national historical narrative are interpreted in different ways by different social groups. There are differences and contradictions between what individuals learn at home and locally and what they learn in the public sphere. Various fears and reservations can lead to silencing and non-transmission of identity and experience within the family. What is the relationship between the silencing of this social history and stories and public discourses? While seeking to answer this question, the research will also attempt to raise the following questions for discussion through case and discourse analysis: Have the policies of silencing and forgetting been successful in disrupting the relationship of social groups in Turkey to the past? How are marginalised voices and silenced narratives brought into public discourse in Turkey?
Speakers
Colonial Korean Railroad and Japanese Youth Employees: Memories of the Seonkokai
Type: session | Language: English
Time: 12:00 - 14:00
Abstract
This paper analyzes the oral testimonies of the survivors of the Senkokai (Korean Transportation Association), a foundation formed by former employees of the Transportation Bureau of the Japanese General Government who were employed to operate the national railway in Korea, a colony of the Japanese Empire, and who were forced to return to Japan after the war, to shed light on the everyday historical memories of the colonial railway during the war and the struggle to return home. In particular, during World War II, despite the large volume of wartime transportation, the outflow of Japanese laborers due to military enlistment and conscription brought about significant changes in the age and ethnic composition of the Korean National Railway’s workforce. As a countermeasure, the Korean National Railway intensified the internal training of its workforce, which was mainly Japanese. To this end, young Japanese in their late teens traveled from Japan to Korea, where they began life on the unfamiliar Korean peninsula and managed the increasing number of Koreans in each workplace. However, food shortages and overwork led to growing discontent within the company. In preparation for the landing of the U.S. military, each plant underwent a reorganization similar to that of the military, but they were defeated and occupied by the allied powers of the United States and the Soviet Union. Many Japanese employees were laid off and struggled every day to make ends meet and board ships to return home despite difficult living conditions
Speakers
Bachelor Gangs and Political Divisions – Rethinking Finnish Oral Histories in a Canadian Multiethnic Mining Community
Type: session | Language: English
Time: 12:00 - 14:00
Abstract
Researchers of oral histories in multiethnic communities face many challenges. I will discuss these challenges by returning to the interviews I made 1993 with Finnish migrants in the mining community of Timmins and South Porcupine in Northern Ontario, Canada. The “Porcupine Camp” was established in this isolated area 1909 after several gold findings had been made. Finnish, Croatian, Ukrainian, Italian and Chinese miners were recruited to the mines. The history of the “Porcupine Camp” is filled with strict political and religious controversies and social problems caused by dangerous working conditions and unbalanced demographic conditions. The early migrant-settlers were mostly men, many of whom lived in ethnic “bachelor gangs” for the rest of their lives. Anthropologist Peter Vasiliadis made interviews in the community at the beginning of the 1980s. He outlines the oral histories with the term “dangerous truth” – each of his informants wanted to tell his or her own version of the local history (Vasiliadis 1989). I will focus on my interviews with three Finnish retired miners, who were born at the beginning of the 20th century and settled in Timmins and South Porcupine in the 1920s. They had different political opinions and life stories. The interviewees told me about the political controversies and the phenomena of “gatekeeping” and “highgrading” in the mines. I have compared the interviews with archival sources and written memoirs (Salmi-Niklander 1998, 2002). In the re-exploration of the interviews I will take into account the new research on the mining communities and migration as “settler colonialism”.
Speakers
Reclaiming Voices, Reframing History: Oral Narratives and the Human Dimension of Partition of India
Type: session | Language: English
Time: 12:00 - 14:00
Abstract
Partition is a cataclysmic event of India’s recent past. The event, its prelude still stirs our senses. Millions of citizens overnight became refugees because of the cartographic redrawing of borderline on the western and eastern side of Punjab and Bengal respectively. This paper argues for the significance of oral history in understanding Partition’s multifaceted impact, particularly the human experiences often neglected in traditional historical accounts. While traditional historiography primarily examines political causes and relies on official archival documents, my work delves into the rich tapestry of oral narratives from Punjab and Bengal, revealing the profound and lasting effects of partition on individuals and communities on both sides of the border. By meticulously examining these personal narratives, collected through both existing ethnographic studies and my own fieldwork, the paper aims to break the silence surrounding the intergenerational trauma of Partition. These stories unearth the raw emotions of loss, and displacement experienced by those uprooted from their homes and ancestral lands. They provide invaluable insights into the struggles faced by them as refugees as they navigated unfamiliar territories, faced hostility and violence, and fought for basic necessities. Furthermore, my paper explores oral history to study the complex relationship between these displaced individuals and the newly formed state authorities with special focus on caste and gender. It examines their struggles to reclaim their identities, secure citizenship rights, and rebuild their lives amidst chaos and uncertainty. Through these narratives of resilience, resourcefulness, and community building, my paper attempts to offer a deeper understanding of the human cost of Partition and the enduring legacy it has left on subsequent generations, shaping the social, cultural, and political landscape of the Indian subcontinent and South Asian history as a whole.
Speakers
Empowering Communities Through Oral History – the Coastal Uplands: Heritage and Tourism Project
Type: session | Language: English
Time: 12:00 - 14:00
Abstract
Coastal Uplands: Heritage and Tourism (CUPHAT) was a collaboration between University College Dublin and Aberystwyth University focused on developing regenerative heritage-led tourism in four coastal upland regions bordering the Irish Sea – the Cambrian Mountains and Preseli Mountains in Wales and the Wicklow Mountains and Blackstairs Mountains in Ireland. Regenerative tourism seeks to work with communities to develop forms of tourism that are locally appropriate and grounded in local visions for community futures. Oral history was employed as a key project methodology given its dual role in both facilitating a deep engagement with local people’s values, needs and sense of place as well as offering an engaging interactive media that could be used to effectively communicate those values and needs to the wider community and to visitors. Drawing on our practical experiences during the CUPHAT project and using examples from the oral histories collected, this paper will discuss the various ways that we operationalised oral history to allow community voices to shape the project’s development. It will also showcase the range of dissemination methods we have developed to ensure that the voices of the community are heard throughout our project and not simply siloed into the project archive. In doing so it highlights the potential of oral history to be used as a tool for advocacy and engagement beyond the academy in partnership with local communities and as a way to leave a lasting tangible legacy for local communities and their future generations.