Whose history? social remembering

[notes to myself: stuff on historiographies ... social construction of (what counts as) history as a discipline => social construction of the past ... African (and other) historiographies ... more to come ... see biblio below]

What is 'history'? what are the uses of history? The questions may seem odd--surely history is simply a record, a retelling, of the past? @@@ [i] selective use of significant dates [ii] interpretations of events [iii] nation-building, patriotism [t.b.c.]

Culture, knowledge and power: the politics of memory

[note to myself: representations of the past in museums, news archives, oral histories, books]

Stuart Hall, in his keynote address to the1999 Whose Heritage? conference, reprinted in Littler & Nadoo (2005):

From its earliest history in western societies--in the heterogeneous assemblages of the 'cabinets of curiosity and wonder'--collections have adored the positions of people of power and influence--kings, princes, popes, landowners and merchants--whose wealth and status they amplified. They have always been related to the exercise of 'power' in another sense--the symbolic power or order knowledge, to rank, classify and arrange, and thus to give meanings to objects and things through the imposition of interpretive schemas, scholarship and the authority of connoisseurship.

1984 and all that: "If they say it's so, it must be true"

Warning of the danger of digital archives, Joseph Weizenbaum perceptively wrote of the New York Times database:

"As the number of subscribers to this system grows, and as they learn more and more to rely on “all the news that [was once] fit to print”, as the Times proudly identifies its editorial policy, how long will it be before what counts as fact is determined by the system, before all other knowledge, all memory, is simply declared illegitimate? Soon a supersystem will be built, based on the New York Times‘ data bank (or one very like it), from which “historians” will make inferences about what 'really' happened, about who is connected to whom, and about the 'real' logic of events." (Weizenbaum, 1976, p.238)

Guy Passach writes:

"Privatized memory institutions ... avoid institutional separation between the social function of cultural production and the social function of cultural preservation. The resulting outcome is that groups and sectors with dominant positions in contemporary media are able to reproduce, leverage, and manipulate their social dominance from one generation to another. The power to remember, as well as the power to forget, are thus gradually being concentrated in clusters of commercial enterprises with very particular interests, beliefs, ideologies, and preferences."
Guy Passach, 2008, p.74

[t.b.c.]

"The British Library has taken steps towards digitisation in the past - go to www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html, for example, and you can flick through the pages of the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Mozart's Musical Diary. However, this is the first time the Library has ever undertaken a process of mass digitisation, and the logistics of scanning shelves upon shelves of books is infinitely more complicated than hand-picking a selection of rare texts.

As a result, it needed a helping hand with the technology. Microsoft and Google have both been digitising books from US libraries and adding them to their rival online services for some time, and the British Library opted to partner with the former. Choosing Microsoft as a partner for any archiving project brings not only a wealth of experience and financial clout, but also a degree of controversy, partially due to Microsoft's long-held affection for closed standards. Is there not a danger that Britain's literary heritage will end up wrapped in Microsoft's closed formats?"
'Digitising the British Library', PCPro, 17th January 2008.

Case study: the Digitization of Africa

Web

Africa Research Central
Africa Research Central is your gateway to the archives, libraries, and museums with important collections of African primary sources. ...
Africa Research Central has as its goal to centralize and constantly update information about institutions with African primary source collections so as to facilitate international research in African Studies. Research in African primary sources--be they records, manuscripts, personal papers, photographs, film, or artifacts-- has posed challenges to the research community since the dawn of African Studies as a discipline. Scholars outside Africa struggle to learn about the holdings, services, and clearance procedures of African repositories, while scholars within Africa must cope with the fact that much of the African primary source heritage is housed beyond the borders of Africa. The core of the site is the Repositories section with its searchable database of African archives, libraries and museums with primary source collections. Although far from comprehensive, links to the web sites of North American and European repositories are also provided.
In addition to helping researchers, Africa Research Central also assists African repositories in the urgent task of preserving African primary sources. A growing number of African institutions have made their preservation needs known to Africa Research Central and may be searched easily in the Repository Wish List located in the Preservation section. In the same section, African institutions may search the International Funding Agencies database to locate possible international funders.
» http://www.africa-research.org

Aluka
Aluka is an international, collaborative initiative building an online digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa. ‘Aluka’, is derived from a Zulu word meaning ‘to weave’, reflecting our commitment to connect resources and scholars from around the world. In 2008, we announced that Aluka became part of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization building trusted digital archives for the global scholarly community.
We seek to build digital collections by attracting high-quality scholarly content about Africa from institutions and individuals across the globe. By contributing their collections to the Aluka platform, content owners will have a means of offering access to their collections to an international audience—without having to develop and support their own technology platforms. Our web-based platform provides powerful tools for research, teaching, collaboration, and knowledge exchange.
The Aluka website includes a wide variety of high-quality scholarly materials contributed by our partners, ranging from archival documents, periodicals, books, reports, manuscripts, and reference works, to three-dimensional models, maps, oral histories, plant specimens, photographs, and slides. By aggregating these materials online, the Aluka collections link materials that are widely dispersed and difficult to access, opening up new opportunities for research, teaching, and broader public discussion. One of our primary objectives is to provide African scholars and students with access to scholarly materials originally from Africa, but now out of their reach.
We also works closely with partner organisations in Africa to build capacity in digitisation and the use of online materials for teaching and research. In some cases this includes setting up digital labs and providing technical training in scanning and creating metadata records; in others, we convene training workshops for librarians, archivists, faculty, and heritage professionals on topics related to digital imaging, preservation, and the use of online tools in the classroom.
To demonstrate the potential of Aluka as a scholarly resource, three collections are currently under development: African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes, African Plants, and Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa. New materials are added to the collections on an ongoing basis.
» http://www.aluka.org

Iyare!
"For centuries, Nigeria’s Benin Kingdom was one of West Africa’s most-renowned and powerful political states, its unsurpassed artists recording personalities, ceremonies, and deities. Benin’s Edo people still profess loyalty to their monarch the Oba, even as they fully participate in modern life. Inside the Benin palace, noblemen and women meet, as they always have, to play out rivalries, reenact historic conflicts, impress, inspire, plan, and gossip with one another.
Nearly 100 objects from the Penn Museum's extraordinary Benin collection of cast bronzes, carved ivories and wooden artifacts are in the exhibition. They date from the 16th to the 21st centuries and help to illuminate the activities—cultural, religious, political, and intensely social—that make up the experience of palace life. "Actors" and "audiences" alike--the Oba, chiefs, courtiers, commoners, and visitors--participate."
» http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/exhibits/iyare/index.shtml
» http://www.conceptvessel.net/iyare/home.html

Afro-IP - African intellectual property law, practice and policies
"This weblog has been set up in order to provide free, reliable, informative and entertaining news and comments about intellectual property law and practice throughout Africa."
» http://afro-ip.blogspot.com

African SIMs in Second Life
Virtual Africa
"On 30 March 2007, Alanagh Recreant (Dorette Steenkamp of South Africa) wandered into Second Life and started exploring the virtual world after hearing about virtual worlds on CNN …
It was life-changing. It was a new turning point for our registered NGO (non-governmental organisation) called UTHANGO Social Investments based here in Cape Town, South Africa, and for our clients. This blog is our record of the experiences we have as we pursue our dream to create a gateway for Africans into virtual worlds, and specifically into Second Life, as a starting point. We are indeed the very first registered African-based company - as far as we know and have been told - in virtual worlds. We strategically position ourselves in virtual worlds such as Second Life (R) to create awareness for our real world innovative programmes in sustainable development and established linkages."
» http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Africa/126/93/23
» http://slafrica.wordpress.com

Robben Island
» http://slurl.com/secondlife/Robben%20Island/229/125/25

Real Africa Live
» http://slurl.com/secondlife/Estings/192/56/26

Saminaka
Virtual Nigeria. "Ekaabo to Tarkwa Beach and to Saminaka Island, a vibrant little slice of virtual Nigeria! Please come back any time, and explore all of the sim. There are different free gifts by the peacock.
The sim will always stay lovely, with Nigerian-style traditional architecture from different parts of the country. Other interesting & fun features include Guarara Falls and Wikki Warm Springs (look for romantic pose balls and the rope swing), a free palm wine bar, a free book store, shops with African and diaspora clothes, jewelry, furniture, art, pottery and shapes, and an art gallery. Play African music videos by picking "Party One" on the giant screen menu and dance by the beach!
We have informal lectures on African art and culture, occasional dances, and other events. Make us your African hangout and feel free to use us for your events.
To keep abreast of activities, join the Ngas Travelers group, or (for sales and special offers) join Afro-Atlantic World!"
» http://slurl.com/secondlife/Saminaka/63/209/22

Africa
» http://slurl.com/secondlife/Africa/193/137/27

[t.b.c.]

Readings

1. History, heritage, and power

Hall, S. "Whose heritage?", in Littler, J. & Naidoo, R. (eds.) (2005) The Politics of Heritage: The Legacies of ‘Race’. London: Routledge. ISBN: 0415322111.

2. Social remembering, national narratives, the social construction of history

Burke, P. (1991). New Perspectives on Historical Writing. Oxford: Polity Press in association with Blackwell. ISBN: 0745624286 [Amazon]

Callinicos, A. (1995). Theories and Narratives: Reflections on the Philosophy of History. Oxford: Polity Press. ISBN: 0745612016. [Amazon]

Connerton, P. (1989). How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 0521270936. [Amazon]

Gillis, J.R. (1996). Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity. Princeton University Press. ISBN: 0691029253. [Amazon]

Halbwachs, M. (1992). On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 0226115968. [Amazon]

Hodgkin, K. & Radstone, S. (2005). Memory, History, Nation: Contested Pasts. Transaction Publishers. ISBN: 1412804884. [Amazon]

Misztal, B. (2003). Theories of Social Remembering. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. ISBN: 0335208312. [Amazon]

Ross, M.H. (2005). 'Museums, Monuments, Memorials, and the Politics of Memory in Post-Apartheid South Africa'. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, Hawaii, Mar 05, 2005. [Web / PDF]

Wertsch, J.V. (1994). ‘Struggling with the Past: some Dynamics of Historical Representation’, in Carretero, M. and Voss, J. F. (eds), Cognitive and Instructional Processes in History and the Social Sciences. Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pp. 323-338. ISBN: 0805815651. [Amazon]

Zerubavel, E. (2004). Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past. Chicago: Chicago University Press. ISBN: 0226981533. [Amazon]

[JOURNAL] History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past. Indiana University Press. ISSN: 0935-560X.

3. The Digitization of Africa

Britz, J. & Lor, P. (2003). 'A moral reflection on the digitization of Africa’s documentary heritage', World Library and Information Congress: 69th IFLA General Conference and Council, Berlin, 1-9 August 2003.

Britz, J. & Lor, P. (2003). 'A Moral Reflection on the Information Flow from South to North: An African Perspective', Libri 53, 3, pp.160-173.

Lalu, P. (2007). 'The virtual stampede for Africa: Digitisation, post-coloniality and archives of the liberation struggles in Southern Africa', Innovation, Vol.34, pp. 28-44. [PDF]

Limb, P. (2005). 'The Digitization of Africa', Africa Today, Winter 2005, Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 2-19.

Limb, P. (2008). 'The Politics of Digital ‘Reform and Revolution’: Towards Mainstreaming and African Control of African Digitization'. Eighth North Eastern Workshop on Southern Africa (NEWSA), Bishop Booth Center, Burlington, Vermont, USA, 17-19 October 2008. [PDF]

Masango, C. (2007). Digital content licenses, a barrier to digital content?: A South African survey', Innovation, Vol.34, pp. 51-66

Pickover, M. & Peters, D. (2002). 'DISA: an African perspective on digital technology'. Innovation, Vol. 24, pp. 14-20.