What Makes Oral History Different

Portelli, Alessandro

doi:10.1057/9780230101395_2

Cited by 169 publications

(127 citation statements)

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“…What has not been dealt with thus far however, is the explicit acknowledgement that these are stories about fear from approximately 40 years ago and some consideration must be given to the way in which these now middle-aged women, engaged with and reflected on these murders and the fear they provoked in the narrating present. As Keightley (2008) The fallibility and selectivity of memory are acknowledged but the quest for factual truth is not the point of this type of work (Riessman, 2001), rather it is the 'psychological truth' of such recollections (Portelli, 1998) and the links between 'past, present and future' (Riessman, 2001: 278) which are of import. A central concern of this study was to investigate women's memories of how they responded to the murders in terms of fear, safety and memories of victims -a factual chronology of this crimino-historical event would never be possible.…”

Section: Discussion: Reflecting On Past Fears From the Narrating Presentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring gender and fear retrospectively: stories of women’s fear during the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ murders

Wattis

2017

Gender, Place & Culture

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Section: Discussion: Reflecting On Past Fears From the Narrating Presentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring gender and fear retrospectively: stories of women’s fear during the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ murders

Wattis

2017

Gender, Place & Culture

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“…They do not record the entirety of the person's experience, and they are necessarily subjective and based on the ability to recall, or the need to forget. Memories are filtered by words and reconstructed in the telling in ways that may sometimes differ from what occurred years ago (Portelli, 2006). We do not therefore assume that these oral histories are definitive sources of information about nursing practice in the past; rather we see them as rich sources of personal perceptions and recollections appropriate for an explorative, descriptive study.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Stress wasn’t a word”: Australian nurses’ recollections of war-related trauma

Smith

Halcomb

Moxham

2015

Health Emergency and Disaster Nursing

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L. (2015). "Stress wasn't a word": Australian nurses' recollections of war-related trauma. Health Emergency and Disaster Nursing, 2(1),12-22. "Stress wasn't a word": Australian nurses' recollections of war-related trauma AbstractAim: This research explores the recollections of Australian nurses in regards to psychological injury among those who served in World War II (WWII) and the Vietnamese conflict.Methods: Existing oral histories from WWII and Vietnam held by the Australian War Memorial were explored for recollections of issues related to psychological injury. A constant comparative method was used to allow themes to emerge across both cohorts of interviews.Results: Findings indicate that nurses from both conflicts witnessed trauma among their patients in the field and experienced it among themselves upon their return from service. Three main themes emerged which related to nursing practices, nursing attitudes, and nurses' experiences of stress or trauma during wartime. Underlying these themes were recurring concepts related to gender, stoicism and talking, which reveal that the required professionalism of nursing practice can sometimes act as a barrier to nurses dealing with, and admitting to, their own stress or trauma. Conclusions:This study reveals a disturbing persistence of issues around gender and 'talking' in relation to the experience and treatment of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in returned service people, including medical personnel such as nurses. While nurses are quick to recognise the importance of talking as a form of therapeutic treatment for soldiers, they struggled to articulate their own trauma, revealing a complex negotiation of social expectations and gender roles. The ability of service personnel to talk about their own war experience has been linked to recovery from trauma, and nurses need to be included in this dialogue, for historical purposes and in relation to contemporary military service. Methods: Existing oral histories from WWII and Vietnam held by the Australian War Memorial were explored for recollections of issues related to psychological injury. A constant comparative method was used to allow themes to emerge across both cohorts of interviews.Results: Findings indicate that nurses from both conflicts witnessed trauma among their patients in the field and experienced it among themselves upon their return from service. Three main themes emerged which related to nursing practices, nursing attitudes, and nurses' experiences of stress or trauma during wartime. Underlying these themes were recurring concepts related to gender, stoicism and talking, which reveal that the required professionalism of nursing practice can sometimes act as a barrier to nurses dealing with, and admitting to, their own stress or trauma.Conclusions: This study reveals a disturbing persistence of issues around gender and 'talking' in relation to the experience and treatment of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in returned service people, including medical personnel such...

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“…The study drew upon methods of oral history, an approach to exploring the past through individuals' personal memories of activities and events (Portelli, 1998). Oral history collects and preserves individuals' narrated experiences as a full life history, or as topical history such as experiences of the Great Depression, or as thematic history such as this study's exploration of women garment workers' work and learning at a particular plant.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women Learning in Garment Work: Solidarity and Sociality

Fenwick

2008

Adult Education Quarterly

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This article explores processes and possibilities for critical learning in the workplace, with a focus on workers labouring in what are often exploitive and dehumanizing conditions. The argument is based on a study of work-life learning of women, mostly new immigrants, employed long-term at an Alberta garment manufacturing plant. It is argued that their negotiations of work conditions are nested in various areas of learning associated with everyday practices, small communities, labour organizing processes, and English learning classes. These areas are argued to have generated forms of solidarity emerging through learning about sociality, resistance, and personal worth. These solidarities appear to be configured by energies of both transformation and reproduction that are threaded together and generated simultaneously as women learned to survive within the system while supporting one another in a vital interdependent social network. The discussion explores how these dynamics unfolded, and their effects on how different women positioned themselves and their knowledge.

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What Makes Oral History Different

Cited by 169 publications

References 0 publications

Exploring gender and fear retrospectively: stories of women’s fear during the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ murders

Exploring gender and fear retrospectively: stories of women’s fear during the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ murders

“Stress wasn’t a word”: Australian nurses’ recollections of war-related trauma

Women Learning in Garment Work: Solidarity and Sociality

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