Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Comissões Unitárias de Mulheres do Porto: Recreating the Memory of a Social MovementCátia Lopes, Joana Correia, João Caramelo & Teresa Medinaeven different languages” 1 allowing this project a plural reading of social history, as well asmultiple and creative results.On the other hand, the space that responsible researchers have given to students sothey could take initiative in different project’s activities made this research’s path a formativemoment in all project’s dimensions. Formative sessions about the different project stageswere prepared and there was continuous monitoring by responsible researchers along withfreedom of action and initiative, which allowed real learning.In this sense, both the creation of a multidisciplinary team and the project’s organizationas a whole enabled a working environment for freedom of expression and for combination ofdifferent areas and scientific knowledge under a common goal - preservation and recreationof Unitary Commissions of Women From Porto’s memory.Document AnalysisThe project started with a collection of documents on the social movement UnitaryCommissions of Women from Porto containing newspaper articles, reports made by insidersin several actions, propaganda promoting actions, among others. We started by organizingthe document’s collection chronologically, then scanned the documents and created bothonline and offline databases. The website (http://memorias.dcc.fc.up.pt/cum) allows theviewing of these documents and their dissemination. This seemed to us as an importantmoment, since part of the memory preserving process involves its organization and publicationso that anyone can easily access its vestiges.In addition to this, based on the documents already possessed, we also produced achronology of the movement. This was another important moment that allowed to realizehow these actions of social struggle were organized by those women, and also to acknowledgehow much they were aware of the major governmental and budgetary changes withimplications in the living conditions of the population. For this chronology were considereddates, locations, actions and people involved in the initiatives, as well as, sometimes, itsimpact (extracted from the newspapers and the found public communications from theprotagonists, informing about their achievements).Recognizing names appearing in the documents and duly recovering contacts initiatedin previous research projects on social struggles in the city of Porto (mainly from theproject “Memórias do Trabalho: Processos de construção de uma identidade operária no Porto”(POCTI/CED/60786/2004, lasting from 2006 to 2010), allowed us to identify directly some ofthose women and establish contact with other protagonists of this social movement.Meeting these women was crucial to the project development and to reach our goalof preserving and recreating the memory of this social movement. Despite being preciouslyuseful, the documents to which we had access limited our research range to their simplerpreservation, analysis and dissemination. Thus, having direct contact with these womenchanged completely this project’s path.Not disregarding the importance of the written historical materials that providedtestimony of this movement, it was being given the possibility to get in touch and interview1The authors of this article are responsible for the translation of quotes and cited interview excerpts.Narratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches316
Comissões Unitárias de Mulheres do Porto: Recreating the Memory of a Social MovementCátia Lopes, Joana Correia, João Caramelo & Teresa Medinathe protagonists that brought those documents to life and allowed to recreate its memory.However, during the performed group interviews, the documents and chronology previouslyproduced served as support to help unleash women’s memory on events. In this sense, theinitial process of document analysis was crucial not only for researchers to draft an overviewof the history and memory available but also for the interviewed women to identifywith that past, actions and motivations that mobilized them.Oral History Methodology and the Recreation of a Memory about the UnitaryCommissions of Women from Porto Social MovementThe present research was developed and justified in the context of theoretical andmethodological choices that are underpinned in the methodology of oral history and lifestories. One of the main objectives of our work is the preservation of the memory of theUnitary Commissions of Women From Porto by sharing materials and life stories of theprotagonists. We also tried to construct, using the oral history methodology, a glimpse intoa historical, cultural and social past tinted by the memories of these women who not onlylived, but who also performed it. Moreover, since these memories are part of their life stories,we sought to understand how they integrate it into a continuum, not necessarily straight,between past and future. This would build a broader and more engaged collective memoryof the past, allowing more points of view to be presented in a social reality that should notbe built from a single voice. In the words of Ferrarotti (1983, pp. 50-51), our life story containsthe history of the social system present in our actions, aspirations and behaviors, i.e.we imply the social through a synthetic introjection which deconstructs andrestructures giving at the same time psychological forms. [However] (...) therelationship that binds an act to a social structure is not linear, the strict relationshipbetween social history and life is certainly not a mechanical determinism.(...) The individual is not a social epiphenomenon. Compared to structures andto the history of a society, it arises as an active pole, stands out as syntheticpraxis. Far from reflecting the social, the individual appropriates, mediates, filtersand retranslates it by projecting in another dimension, that, ultimately, is itssubjectivity.Oral history as a methodology can be defined by its purpose: a cooperative, interdisciplinarywork aiming at building history by assigning a central place to the voices of those whomade history by living it (Thompson, 1988). Thus, the search for historical, social and culturalknowledge from oral testimonies allows knowledge to be built not only from the study ofofficial documents. Due to their status, official documents tend to be considered more importantin the preservation of the memory than oral testimonies. Being considered personal, oraltestimonies are not recognized as national or social matters. However, the history of placesand societies rises from people’s stories. In other words, we make history. Thus, oral historyallows restoring heterogeneous and subjective condition to the narrated events.We should take example of this from the ardina’s statue, placed in the center of Portoand well known of city visitors. To tourists this object is simply presented as a newsvendorleaning over a mail post. However, this statue holds another symbology shared with usduring this research by one of the interviewees: the ardina is the symbol of a professionNarratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches317
Page 2 and 3:
© CECS 2013 All rights reservedThi
Page 4 and 5:
Cinematic Landscape and Social Memo
Page 6 and 7:
comprises both remembering and forg
Page 8 and 9:
include important questions related
Page 10 and 11:
Part ICognitive and Emotional Proce
Page 12 and 13:
Narratives and Social Memory from t
Page 14 and 15:
Page 16 and 17:
Page 18 and 19:
Page 20 and 21:
Page 22 and 23:
Page 24 and 25:
Page 26 and 27:
The Lay Historian: How Ordinary Peo
Page 28 and 29:
Page 30 and 31:
Page 32 and 33:
Page 34 and 35:
Page 36 and 37:
Page 38 and 39:
Page 40 and 41:
Page 42 and 43:
Page 44 and 45:
Page 46 and 47:
Cabecinhas, R. & Abadia, L. (eds.)
Page 48 and 49:
Emotional Processes in Elaborating
Page 50 and 51:
Page 52 and 53:
Page 54 and 55:
Page 56 and 57:
Page 58 and 59:
Page 60 and 61:
Page 62 and 63:
Transitional Justice Processes, Sha
Page 64 and 65:
Page 66 and 67:
Page 68 and 69:
Page 70 and 71:
Page 72 and 73:
Page 74 and 75:
Page 76 and 77:
Page 78 and 79:
The Past and the Present (re)Visite
Page 80 and 81:
Page 82 and 83:
Page 84 and 85:
Page 86 and 87:
Page 88 and 89:
Page 90 and 91:
Page 92 and 93:
Part IIMedia(ted) Narrativesand Pub
Page 94 and 95:
Hard News Cognitive Shift: from Fac
Page 96 and 97:
Page 98 and 99:
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
Page 104 and 105:
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
Narratives of Death: Journalism and
Page 110 and 111:
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115:
Page 116 and 117:
Page 118 and 119:
Page 120 and 121:
Researching Identity Narratives in
Page 122 and 123:
Page 124 and 125:
Page 126 and 127:
Page 128 and 129:
Page 130 and 131:
Page 132 and 133:
Page 134 and 135:
Page 136 and 137:
Journalistic Narrative: a Story of
Page 138 and 139:
Page 140 and 141:
Page 142 and 143:
Page 144 and 145:
Page 146 and 147:
Page 148 and 149:
The Works of Sísifo: Memories and
Page 150 and 151:
Page 152 and 153:
Page 154 and 155:
Page 156 and 157:
Page 158 and 159:
Page 160 and 161:
Audiovisual Post-colonial Narrative
Page 162 and 163:
Page 164 and 165:
Page 166 and 167:
Page 168 and 169:
Page 170 and 171:
Page 172 and 173:
Page 174 and 175:
Page 176 and 177:
Page 178 and 179:
Page 180 and 181:
Page 182 and 183:
Page 184 and 185:
Page 186 and 187:
Page 188 and 189:
Page 190 and 191:
Page 192 and 193:
The Subject-Matter of Audiovisual H
Page 194 and 195:
Page 196 and 197:
Page 198 and 199:
Page 200 and 201:
Page 202 and 203:
Page 204 and 205:
Criminal violence in Brazilian movi
Page 206 and 207:
Page 208 and 209:
Page 210 and 211:
Page 212 and 213:
Page 214 and 215:
Page 216 and 217:
Page 218 and 219:
Page 220 and 221:
Part IVEthnic, National and Suprana
Page 222 and 223:
Narratives of Redemption: Memory an
Page 224 and 225:
Page 226 and 227:
Page 228 and 229:
Page 230 and 231:
Page 232 and 233:
Page 234 and 235:
Memory and the Flows of Identity in
Page 236 and 237:
Page 238 and 239:
Page 240 and 241:
Page 242 and 243:
Page 244 and 245:
‘Diaspora Space’ as Heard and O
Page 246 and 247:
Page 248 and 249:
Page 250 and 251:
Page 252 and 253:
Page 254 and 255:
Colonial Missions in the North Amer
Page 256 and 257:
Page 258 and 259:
Page 260 and 261:
Page 262 and 263:
Page 264 and 265:
Page 266 and 267: Part VSocietal Issues, Collective A
Page 268 and 269: Collective Mobilization and the Soc
Page 284 and 285: Narratives as Prison ‘Escapes’:
Page 298 and 299: Cabecinhas, R. & Abadia, L. (eds.)
Page 300 and 301: Drawings and Narrative: the Inmates
Page 314 and 315: Cabecinhas, R. & Abadia, L. (eds.)
Page 318 and 319: Comissões Unitárias de Mulheres d
Page 328 and 329: Adozinda Goes to the Feminine Readi
show all

Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?