NOTES BSB 3

Mia + Sarah
Welcome
Ahead of starting, to orientation: Languages (We will start with a short presentation in English, followed by etc.) Toilets, child-care and food. 

Loraine: 5 min

• we are JFTR, working on gender representations in the re·writing of history — for 2 years on Wikipedia (new way of writing history, collaborative, free…)
• Wikipedia = anyone can edit … but not everyone seems welcome
• surveys about gender of contributors: women underrepresented
• average editor: 30 years old white male…
• not only represented in the contributors but also in the topics addressed and in how they are written about
• wider problem than just Wikipedia: women dismissed from writing [IMG How to supress women’s writing]
• Wikipedia: new and old way of working — rules/pillars
• problematics of representation on Wikipedia:
  • secondary sources (talk about) rather than primary (speaking oneself) > post-colonial studies, subaltern studies – 1 min [IMG secondary/primary sources]
  • based on a biased system (academic, legitimate publishing) => mostly written sources that exclude oral sources for instance – 1 min [IMG How to supress women’s writing]
  • basically: distinction between stories and history / oral and written

Myriam 10 mins 
-- slide: oral history essay
- When we talk about oral history on wikipedia, the fact that it is actually very hard to find information about the official position of wikipedia on the subject already tells a lot
- Appart from the encyclopedic article on the topic ''oral history'', all we found was conversations scattered in different talk pages, a few projects trying to adress the subject and 
- an ''essay page'' on Oral history, which is a page written by members exposing opinions or advice on the platform though it doesn't have a status as strong as official guidelines

• - On this page it says ''On Wikipedia, oral history is simply not permissible, as are citations of oral history... Wikipedia should contain no efforts, projects, policies, assistance, or essays which attempt to address the issue of recording oral history, and any issues arising between oral history and Wikipedia relying only on published sources.'' 
• - The article is so drastic that it is hard to say if it's not being ironic, but it also reveals that it's a touchy subject!
• 
  

-- slide: ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
- Anyways, it seems as though the Wikipedia community suffers a bit from an inferiority complex and is scared to death of not being percieved as a serious and reliable encyclopedia. It even has it's own wikipedia page to prove it is

-- slide welcome to wikipedia
- That's why it fears anything that could question the three core content policies : ''Neutral point of view'',  ''verifiability'' and ''no original research''. 
and oral history challenges all three of them!

• - ''All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.'' The term Neutral is of course problematic, and while the attempt to representent multiple viewpoint is interesting, we can see how some viewpoints can't get represented because there is no ''reliable source'' published on it

- Acording to these policies, Interviewing people about specific subjects and using this material directly as source is considered unreliable, because it's considered original research since it hasn't been published in other reliable media first. 

- So is wikipedia really the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, well not without written sources!

- The Oral Citations Project is a interesting research project funded by a Wikimedia Foundation grant to help overcome a lack of published material in emerging languages on Wikipedia and explores ways by which alternative methods of citation can be employed when formal printed/textual sources for a commonplace object of lived knowledge do not exist.

- ''The problem with the sum of human knowledge, however, is that it is far greater than the sum of printed knowledge.'' - User:Aprabhala

-- slide statistics
- Publishing is not equally accessible in all countries for financial or cultural reasons
these stats show this clearly: 

• - The total production of books in all languages from the UK, South Africa and India in 2005:
  • UK: 161 000 books / 60 million people
  • South Africa: 6 100 books / 48 million people
  • India: 97 000 books / 1 100 million people
• If we were to measure books produced in 2005 per person per country, the comparison is more stark:
  • UK: 1 book per 372 people
  • South Africa: 1 book per 7 869 people
  • India: 1 book per 11 371 people

- Even though the project got funding by the wikimedia foundation, it still is meeting a lot of resistance from many people in the Wikipedia community
- (By the way we also got funding from wikimedia specifically to adress the gender gap, and it doesn't shelter us from having our edits removed and being told it's not the place to talk about gender equality)

- In the discussion page of the project a wikipedian said ''Just because something is true[1], doesn't mean it belongs in Wikipedia.'' and would rather give up on the original aspiration of gathering all the world's knowledge in one place, than creating what they see as a doorway for anyone to be able to record themselves and write unverifiable articles

--slide NY TIMES
- To illustrate, heres an quote from an article written about the instigator of the oral history project, Achal Prabhala:
'' In the case of dabba kali, a children’s game played in the Kerala state of India, there was a Wikipedia article in the local language, Malayalam, that included photos, a drawing and a detailed description of the rules, but no sources to back up what was written. Other than, of course, the 40 million people who played it as children.
There is no doubt, he said, that the article would have been deleted from English Wikipedia if it didn’t have any sources to cite. Those are the rules of the game, and those are the rules he would like to change, or at least bend, or, if all else fails, work around - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowledge-at-wikipedia.html

- So it seems like there might be some differences in how the content policies are applied according to the different languages platform where we might find some wiggle room
- The project suggests conducting interviews, which could then be used as source material to cite
- Some users are proposing to post these interviews first in a sister platform called wikinews, because while  No original research is a policy in Wikipedia, Original reporting is a policy in Wikinews. By having these oral sources first published online and checked with the Accreditation policy we can assume the reliability of the interview, they could then become reliable sources to cite on wikipedia

-As of now oral citations are still considered to be illustrations in articles, but the dialogue is opened to find solutions

• (Mia)  5 min
• (slide) So as you can see, if oral sources are merely considered illustrations of written sources, 
• this is a problem if we are going to write history in a way that does not leave out marginalized groups.
• So, as we in JFTR are looking into how gender is represented in the recording of history, I thought it would be relevant to look into what Women's oral history actually is
• And why it is special.
• And what is the history of women's oral history.

• Here on the table we have books, Resources from RoSa - documentation centre on women's liberation movement, gender and sexuality in Belgium.
  • Specifically on Women's oral history-history - book - which you can look closer at afterwards if you want :)
    • Women's Oral History : The Frontiers Reader, collection of 19 essays, edited by Susan H Armitage with Patricia Hart and Karen Weathermon.

• So where does this come from, talking about women's oral history as something seperate?
• It basically started with women outside of academia challenging the traditional concepts of writing history. 
  • The reason was that historians writing about women needed barely to scratch the surface, before they could see that there simply is not enough sources, written sources, on women's history - that goes for women's history and also other marginalized groups - so they simply had to turn elsewhere for their information.
  • Therefore oral history and oral sources were used to reconstruct our own past and reality - and to create identity - 
  • It is after all, from a historical perspective, relatively recent that women are leading public lives - 
  • So this book contains a quote:
  • (Slide) Woman's eyes - what does it mean to learn our common symbols, preen them, and share them with the world. 
  • ' (Ntozake Shange - American playwright and poet, afro-feminist)
  • Perhaps it means identifying what is historically important, and questioning how it is defined as such.

• This brings us to a matter of two definitions that one will encounter as soon as one engages in the topic of oral history. 
• It is Oral History vs Oral tradition - a western definition and perspective
  • (slide) I quote wikipedia "The term Oral History is sometimes used in a more general sense to refer to any information about past events that people who experienced them tell anybody else, but professional historians usually consider this to be oral tradition."
  • "Primitive societies have long relied on oral tradition to preserve a record of the past in the absence of written histories."
    • Let's replace primitive with "certain societies" and it seems that groups of people that do not have written sources either by choice or need or a combination, seem to rely on oral tradition. 
    • But this is not what is considered Oral History.

• The modern, western concept of oral history was developed in the 1940s by Allan Nevins and his associates at Columbia University.
• One could say that Allan Nevins development of the method of oral sources brought oral history to academia. 
• is the collection and study of historical information about individuals,  families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes,  videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. 
• It could somehow be seen as the organizing and contextualisation of recorded material.
• But it can also "academi'fy" the rules of what is considered oral tradition and what is considered a source of history.

• (slide)Which is why women's oral history over the last almost 100 years has developed in a special direction, significantly that it has over time developed into a field of its own, and primarly through the work of women outside of the major universities or oral history centers, working for raising the status of the stories that women pass on to each other that seem to have been left out of the written publications.

• Women's oral history has developed in the structure of a grassroot movement, not in a centralised manner.
• If we want to explore how to work with women's oral history we will have to make tools and platforms that can work with grassroots / un-centralised movements.
• Which is why an online platform could have a lot of potential in this field. 
• For years women have been socialised to be bearers of culture and tradition, symbolically in our society, a woman makes a home, carries on tradition, while at the same time in the records of said tradition we seem to be missing, or only represented by a few. 
• In this book, Unsung Heroes, silent giants, they give some tips on how to start working with women's oral history, and they say to first position yourself in your own oral tradition.
• Ask yourselves: Can you think of any oral herstory which has been handed down to you and in which context? Stories of women in your family? Expressions and sayings about women? Think about it for now, and we will come back to it later this evening. 
• (Slide)Easy to write off these things as unimportant. As chitchat, as everyday minutea, as: 
• Gossip

• (Mia and Loraine) - 2 min
  • oral stories have always been underestimated, pejorated: with the use of terms like “gossips”, “jasette” [IMG revue Sorcières], “faire des histoires” [IMG Les Faiseuses d’histoires]
  • but they have also been re-appropriated [IMG gossip, quote, consciousness-raising], as specific tool/strategies for communication, transmission and activism [IMG chants at Greenham Commons - > We have some on the table]
  • Ramaya Tegegne, Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz, Marbriers 4, 2014. Tegegne uses the concept of ‘gossip’ – not simply as a means of communication but as a speculative mode of thought and a productive  force – to create new ways of collectively thinking through the dynamics  of trust, intimacy and sharing.
  • In her essay ‘Witch-Hunt,’ for Tank magazine, artist Hannah Black frames gossip both as a language of  female resistance and as an indispensable form of emotional labor. She  writes: “Gossip has always been a secret language of friendship and resistance between women” + “Hatred of gossip is hatred of women talking to each other—it is  generally women who do this work of love…. Communities of gossips nurse  each other through the degradations that partners, bosses and families inflict on us.” For marginalized people, gossip has a dual function: it  works to both affirm communal bonds and unsettle the positions of those  in power.
• These projects show a wide range of how to think about oral history and oral tradition, but how to _________ it? Over to you, Sarah!

Sarah - 7-10min

• However there is few written history while many oral histories in relation to the diversity of the world.
• written history says only one side story, while oral history is shapes by gender, race and class. and shows then a diversity of view on "reality". Men remember history differently than women, managers tha workers and they re-tell all their stories differently

• Alternative ways to treat oral sources and how they deal with oral sources: (Wiki Africa?)
  • Wikiafrica
    • (as Myriam said) Lack of diversity of sources and taking written source as reference makes an unbalanced sum of the human knwoledge and put aside some cultures, countries and even continent where history is mostly based on oral sources. Africa for exemple. 
    • Some initiatives like http://www.wikiafrica.org/  try to enhence the siatuation but without adressing the problematic of oral source inclusion into wikipedia. 
    • Project is mainly based on creating a wiki communaty and aditing articles on "Africa".
    • It is international movement that encourages individuals and organisations to create, expand and enhance online content on Wikipedia about Africa.
    • no specific reflexion on diversity of sources and oral history
  • Internet archive https://archive.org/
    • it is a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form
    • anyone can upload
    • sound, video and text are accessible at the same level, you can filter your search but everyths is at the same level
    • way back machine
  • British Library Sounds http://sounds.bl.uk/
    • is part of the british library collection
    • oral source and sound are treated as a specific project, on another page of the website, I guess to emphasise those sources
  • Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations http://cbbg.brooklynhistory.org/listen
    • is project of the urban history center called Brooklyn historical society, its goal is to create space for public dialogues about race, ethnicity, and intersecting identities
    • it is a sharing knowledge place, there's a section gathering ressources and tools to learn and discuss about brooklyn diversity of culture.
    • specific section with oral sources, way of describing the diversity and complexity of this place
  • http://shtooka.net/  database of audio recordings of words and sentences.
  • Media Fandom Oral History Project https://fanlore.org/wiki/Media_Fandom_Oral_History_Project
    • Is an audio record of media fans telling their fandom history in their own words.
    • It is using wiki sftware so llok like wikipedia
    • it also stuctured the same way and got a set of rules as wikipedia, or as a comparaison
    • fanlore with Plural Point of View in opposition the Neutral Point of View in Wikipedia policie
      • Fanlore is not a traditional encyclopedia that strives to establish a single account of events (as in "Neutral Point of View"). In addition to bare facts, we acknowledge that the history of fandom is a collection of personal experiences and interpretations, many of them only passed along as part of an oral tradition. Because of this, those multiple experiences and opinions are important, and we want to collect and document them as part of our fact set.