Articles with the keyword oral history
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Narrative and Reality
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 2007 32(4): 24-33.
Abstract
The article explores the narrative construction of reality in life stories. First, the context of the research is introduced and second, the concept of reality is discussed. Third, narrative construction of one life story is analysed, turning to the relationship between performance and content. As researchers, we have no access to the reality of past events, but only to memories, stories and documents. In oral history, both factual information and the meanings attributed to the past by the people who have lived through it are of equal importance, and both are constructed through emotional, involved, figurative production by the authors of life stories.
Keywords life story, narrative, oral history, reality
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Oral History as an Articulated Meaning in Soviet Karelia ́s Literature
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 32(4) WINTER 2007, pp. 74-84.
Abstract
The paper studies prose literature which was published in the Finnish language in Soviet Karelia from the 1950s to the 1980s and the discussions of its documentary value. The term oral history is seen here as a cultural and political value, which is either given to, or denied from, a text in literary critiques. In Soviet Karelia, the role of fiction in representing locally significant history reflected negotiations in power dynamics, and must be understood in historical and ideological contexts. immediately after the second World War, or the great patriotic War 1939−1945 as it was also called in the Soviet Union, the locally significant articulations of history were repressed, as the construc tion of a unified soviet culture, society and history were of primary interest. From the late 1960s onwards, and especially since the 1980s, the literature’s meaning as a representation of locally significant history has gradually become more public and finally the dominating one during the post-Soviet period. at the same time the written artistic works are read as sources and preservers of (once) oral history.
Keywords articulation theory, Finnish prose, local history, oral history, Soviet Karelia
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Oral History as an Articulated Meaning in Soviet Karelia ́s Literature
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 32(4) WINTER 2007, pp. 74-84.
Abstract
The paper studies prose literature which was published in the Finnish language in Soviet Karelia from the 1950s to the 1980s and the discussions of its documentary value. The term oral history is seen here as a cultural and political value, which is either given to, or denied from, a text in literary critiques. In Soviet Karelia, the role of fiction in representing locally significant history reflected negotiations in power dynamics, and must be understood in historical and ideological contexts. immediately after the second World War, or the great patriotic War 1939−1945 as it was also called in the Soviet Union, the locally significant articulations of history were repressed, as the construc tion of a unified soviet culture, society and history were of primary interest. From the late 1960s onwards, and especially since the 1980s, the literature’s meaning as a representation of locally significant history has gradually become more public and finally the dominating one during the post-Soviet period. at the same time the written artistic works are read as sources and preservers of (once) oral history.
Keywords articulation theory, Finnish prose, local history, oral history, Soviet Karelia