Truths yet Unborn? Oral Tradition as a Casualty of Culture Contact

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8978034
AutoresDavid Henige (autor correspondente)
Ano1982
Volume23
Fascículo3
Páginas395-412
Data de publicação1982-07-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Journal of African History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0021853700020995
OpenAlexW2172071542
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas56

This essay treats the effects of acculturation on oral historical materials. Rather than addressing it as a matter of ‘contamination’, that is, as a question of extraneous data entering and distorting ‘pristine’ traditions, it is considered here to be a facet of the larger question of cultural assimilation – a case of the old and familiar constantly confronting and responding to the new and strange. Seen in this way, oral data continuously adopt and adapt whatever new, relevant and interesting materials come their way in not very different – though decidedly less visible – ways from those that written data have always done. This argument is illustrated by examples from various times and places, largely situations where missionaries, newly literate members, or colonial officials, perceptibly influenced the historical views of societies on their way to becoming literate. In fact this phenomenon seems widespread enough to justify advancing a model that can be tested against specific cases. For our purposes, this model begins with the first meeting of oral and literate cultures, although we can fairly assume that an infinity of similar but unrecorded meetings of oral cultures also resulted in change. After this initial impetus, the constraints of colonial rule, the exigencies of independence, and the aims of modern academic oral historiography each contributed in some measure to this process of ongoing change. As a result, historians, whether primarily interested in the reliability of oral data, or in the process and effects of changes in them, must look to a wider range of sources than has been customary

Acculturation · Aesthetics · Archaeology · Argument (complex analysis · Art · Colonialism · Epistemology · Ethnic group · Historiography · Oral history · Oral tradition · Phenomenon · Sociology · American Literature and Humor Studies · Anthropology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Media, Communication, and Education · Medicine · Philosophy