CRASSH

Archiving Orality and Connecting with Communities: World Oral Literature Project 2010 Workshop

(a) Summary Abstract

This was the second annual workshop run by the World Oral Literature Project at the University of Cambridge. More than 60 participants explored key issues around the dissemination of oral literature through traditional and digital media. The project reflected on the impact of greater digital connectivity in extending the dissemination of fieldworkers' research and collections to a diverse constituency of global users.

Presenters discussed issues including the political repercussions of studying marginalised languages; the role of online tools in ensuring responsible access to sensitive cultural materials;   and methods of avoiding fossilisation in the creation of digital documents.

Ethnographers, field linguists, community activists, curators, archivists, librarians, and the project's own grantees were invited to exchange ideas.

The convenors were delighted by the level of enthusiasm and participation shown by all present. The high calibre of panel presentations and discussions reflected the range and extent of participants' experiences and expertise.   

(b) Conference Review

Aims: This year's workshop explored key issues around the dissemination of oral literature through traditional and digital media. Funding agencies, including our own Supplemental Grants Programme, now encourage fieldworkers to return copies of their work to source communities, in addition to requiring researchers to deposit their collections in institutional repositories. But thanks to ever greater digital connectivity, wider internet access and affordable multimedia recording technologies, the locus of dissemination and engagement has grown beyond that of researcher and research subject to include a diverse constituency of global users, such as migrant workers, indigenous scholars, policymakers and journalists, to name but a few.

Outline of intellectual content: The workshop was structured as seven panels, with eighteen presenters and one keynote speaker. Topics raised in the call for papers, all of which were addressed by presenters and discussants, were focussed around a central theme: When new publics consume, manipulate and connect with field recordings and digital archives holding linguistic and cultural content, their involvement raises interesting practical and ethical questions.

Key points raised:

What kinds of political repercussions may result from studying marginalised languages or from working with the custodians of endangered oral traditions?

How can online tools help ensure responsible access to sensitive cultural materials?

Who should control decisions over how digitised heritage material is to be accessed, curated and understood?

How can researchers remain true to the fluidity of performance over time and avoid fossilisation in the creation of their digital documents?

When archives become primary sites for interaction and discussion rather than static repositories of heritage data, how do relationships between collections and their users change?

Building on discussions around orality and textuality, participants reflected on the politics of ownership of cultural recordings that are increasingly born digital or even birthed directly into an archive. The workshop brought together ethnographers, field linguists, community activists, curators, archivists, librarians and our project's own grantees.

Plans for follow-up events and publications:

We hope to make these workshops a yearly occurrence, expanding on the themes and issues identified in this year’s workshop but with a change in focus or region each year. We will make available the audio and visual recordings of the workshop as podcasts hosted by CRASSH and on the Streaming Media Service, and also in online trainings for our project grantees. Last year’s workshop proceedings were published as a special issue of the SOAS-based journal Language Documentation and Description, while this year we are exploring publishing with the open access journal Oral Tradition. The workshop convenors were particularly grateful to CRASSH, the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) and the Department of Social Anthropology for providing logistical and financial support, and for the cooperation of the new NWO Multimedia Research and Documentation of African Oral Genres network.

 Return to top

 Print Page