Making History, Creating Gender: Some Methodological and Interpretive Questions in the Writing of Oyo Oral Traditions

1998 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 263-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oyeronke Oyewumi
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Cash Crops ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Good Proportion ◽  
Different Parts

Of all the things that were produced in Africa during the colonial period—cash crops, states, and tribes, to name a few—history and tradition are the least acknowledged as products of the colonial situation. This does not mean that Africans did not have history before the white man came. Rather, I am making distinctions among the following: firstly, history as lived experience; secondly, history as a record of lived experience which is coded in the oral traditions; and finally, the recently constituted written history. This last category is very much tied up with European engagements with Africa and the introduction of “history writing” as a discipline and as profession. But even then, it is important to acknowledge the fact that African history, including oral traditions, were recorded as a result of the European assault.This underscores the fact that ideological interests were at work in the making of African history, as is true of all history. As such, tradition is constantly being reinvented to reflect these interests. A. I. Asiwaju, for example, in a paper examining the political motivations and manipulations of oral tradition in the constitution of Obaship in different parts of Yorubaland during the colonial period writes: “in the era of European rule, particularly British rule, when government often based most of its decisions over local claims upon the evidence of traditional history, a good proportion of the data tended to be manipulated deliberately.” This process of manipulation produced examples of what he wittily refers to as “nouveaux rois of Yorubaland.”

Some Reflections on the Oral Traditions of the Galinhas Country, Sierra Leone

1985 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Adam Jones
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Tape Recorder ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Main Interest ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Parts

Whenever historians of Africa write: “According to tradition…”, they evade the crucial question of what kind of oral tradition they are referring to. The assumption that oral tradition is something more or less of the same nature throughout Africa, or indeed the world, still permeates many studies on African history; and even those who have themselves collected oral material seldom pause to consider how significant this material is or how it compares with that available in other areas.The majority of studies of oral tradition have been written by people who worked with fairly formal traditions; and those who, after reading such studies, go and work in societies where such traditions do not exist are often distressed and disappointed. There is therefore still a need for localized studies of oral tradition in different parts of Africa. As far as Sierra Leone is concerned, no work specifically devoted to the nature of oral tradition has been published, despite several valuable publications on the oral literature of the Limba and Mende. The notes that follow are intended to give a rough picture of the kind of oral material I obtained in a predominantly Mende-speaking area of Sierra Leone in 1977-78 (supplemented by a smaller number of interviews conducted in 1973-75, 1980, and 1984). My main interest was in the eighteenth and nineteenth century history of what I have called the Galinhas country, the southernmost corner of Sierra Leone.I conducted nearly all of my interviews through interpreters and did not use a tape recorder more than a very few times. This was partly because the amount of baggage I could carry on foot was limited, but also because I soon found that some informants were disturbed by the tape recorder, and because it was difficult to catch on tape the contributions of all the bystanders.

Oral Traditions as Sources

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Belcher
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
The Face ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
African Intellectuals ◽  
Oral Information ◽  
Creative Endeavor

The use of oral tradition is a distinctive and essential element in many fields of African studies. History must acknowledge it; literature sees it as the medium for much of the indigenous creative endeavor across African cultures; anthropology and its cousin disciplines rely upon oral information for their understanding of traditional societies. An appreciation of the value of the oral tradition as a source across disciplines involves two efforts: first, a survey of the reported oral tradition as available and documented in past periods, and second, a review of the principles and practices involved in the collection, analysis, and presentation of the oral tradition. The paucity of written records has been grounds for dismissal of the notion of African history—most notoriously in the case of Hegel, who in ignorance wrote off the home of the human species—and more recently a cause of pride among African intellectuals who have asserted the value of the oral tradition in the face of skepticism rooted in prejudice and too often in overt racism. An appreciation of the value of the oral tradition threads its path between extremes and occasional controversy. The era of the smartphone has made the documentation (and creation) of oral tradition almost too easy. Past generations made do in different ways. Their reports should not be dismissed, but studied; they are the available background to information collected in the modern era. Accurate collection and critical analysis are the essential tools for the understanding of oral tradition.

scholarly journals For Oral Tradition (But Not Against Braudel)

1978 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 351-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Vansina
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
World War ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Waves ◽  
Fernand Braudel

One wonders what Fernand Braudel and the school of the Annales have done to become a kind of Trojan Horse for the wholesale condemnation of the historical value of oral tradition. Yet they are the banner raised by W.G. Clarence-Smith in a recent article in his journal to preach jihad against its historical value. Clarence-Smith claims that the historiographical revolution effected by Annales has resulted in the definitive exclusion of oral traditions from the halls of Clio. Oral traditions are at best ambiguous “signs” about the past and are very much of the present. They lack absolute chronology and they are selective, so away with them. If they be worthy of attention at all, let anthropologists and sociologists be concerned, save in a few rare instances where a historian wants to check on some European printed source. And even then, caveat emptor. Significantly, the article is not just the expression of the views of one person; rather it is symptomatic of much of the criticism which has been leveled at oral tradition, mostly by fasionable anthropologists. And it brings this criticism to its logical conclusion.But first a word about Braudel, the Annales, and oral tradition in general. The Annales School was founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch before World War II. Fernand Braudel is its most distinguished exponent. His major theoretical pronouncements can be found in his Ecrits sur l'histoire, a collection of articles reprinted and published in 1969. This and his two major historical works should be read by those who want to know more about his views and ways of dealing with history. The basic tenets that members of the Annales School hold is that the history of events is but the spray of past developments; other time depths tell us more about the waves of the past. There is the time of the conjoncture, the trend, and the even longer time periods -- sometimes many centuries long -- the longue durée or long term. Successful history writing does not liminate the study of events, but analyzes them against the movement of these longer and deeper-running trends.

Sudanese Historiography and Oral Tradition

1985 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 117-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
Southern Sudan ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
The One ◽  
The University

One of the most curious aspects of Sudanese historiography is that it has almost completely ignored the ongoing attempts to apply the methods of historical criticism to oral tradition in reconstructing the African past. Though an awareness of these attempts on the part of Sudanese historians is not lacking, it has not gone beyond vague indications, casual remarks, and limited use of oral data. This paper investigates the apathy of Sudanese historiography with respect to oral traditions, drawing on articles on the writing of history in the Sudan, as well as on historical writings that have actually made use of oral traditions.Sudanese historiography here means writings by Sudanese on history-writing in the Sudan; general histories of the Sudan; and local histories of the Northern Sudan. The history of the Southern Sudan is excluded because the contribution of oral tradition in reconstructing the history of this region has been markedly different. I also distinguish between traditional (biographers, genealogists, etc.) and amateur historians on the one hand and modern historians on the other. The modern historians, with whom this article will deal exclusively, are graduates of the Department of History in the University of Khartoum (or a similar university by extension), which was established in the late 1940s,and who have been exposed to the Western critical spirit and modern techniques of historical research and writing.2 Unlike the modern historians, traditional and amateur historians have always made use of both oral traditions and written sources.

Masking Sunjata: A Hermeneutical Critique

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 131-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Primary Schools ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Times

Among the rich legacy of African oral traditions, the Sunjata epic is still one of the most complex phenonema, because it undoubtedly goes back to the times of Ibn Battuta, because of the limited variety between the available text editions, and because of its present-day popularity in sub-Saharan West Africa among people of all kinds of social background. In scholarly discussion, the epic has challenged many academics since Delafosse used the Sunjata epic as evidence for his reconstruction of the Mali empire as a thirteenth-century vast centralized polity. Although his views have been criticized since then, they have become part of history lessons at primary schools in Mali, the Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea. All these countries belong to the so-called “Mande,” an area inhabited by various ethnic groups that have close similarities in language, oral tradition, and social organization.In the last decade History in Africa has given room to discuss the Sunjata epic, in particular in order to explore how data from the epic can be used as historical sources, and as what history for whom. Articles by David Conrad, Tim Geysbeek, Stephan Bühnen, Stephen Bulman, Kathryn Green, George Brooks, Ralph Austen, and myself come my mind. All these authors have treated the Sunjata epic as a text. This seems to be a logical and inevitable choice for the historian.However, this approach implies a choice that limits the range of interpretations which can be made about the Sunjata traditions as a source for African history.

What the Stranger Brings: The Social Dynamics of Fieldwork

1990 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 335-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Lance
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
African History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Oral Evidence

A major feature of research in African history is the reliance of African historians on oral statements for much of their evidence. Vansina's pathbreaking explorations of African oral traditions and testimonies established criteria for the collection of oral evidence and ushered in the contemporary era of scholarship in African history. Although the publication ofOral Traditionsanctioned the use of oral data, it also prompted considerable reflection about the nature, strengths, and weaknesses of oral evidence. For the most part this scholarly examination of African oral traditions and testimonies has focused on their value as sources. What has not been fully addressed are the social and cultural dynamics of the research process itself: how the interaction between a foreign fieldworker and an indigenous informant involves not only the production of knowledge but the management of asymmetrical power relationships as well. Rarely do researcher and informant interact as equal partners. During the process of fieldwork, sometimes the researcher is favored, sometimes the informant. This brief paper is a reflection on the ways the attitudes of an African people about knowledge, power, and outsiders influence the kind of oral evidence the researcher collects.For much of the past two years I resided in a village in northern Ghana where I was conducting fieldwork among the Mamprusi people. I was seeking information which would embellish and provide an indigenous texture to the archival sources I had collected earlier as part of my efforts to reconstruct the social history of Mampurugu during the colonial period. It soon became apparent, however, that my quest for an indigenous expression of, and perspective on, historical process was mired in a complex host of conflicts and assumptions. As a white stranger in the Mamprusis' midst asking as many questions as I could about the Mamprusi past, I received answers which reflected not only the degree to which I had successfully or unsuccessfully established cordial and trusting relationships with my Mamprusi informants, but also Mamprusi attitudes about historical knowledge and their anxieties in regard to possible consequences if such knowledge were revealed to non-Mamprusi.

“Catching them Young”: African Youth, Folktale and the Communication of Universal Moral Values

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ghazala Begum Essop
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Main Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
Written Form ◽  
African Youth ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Geographical Locations ◽  
Different Parts

Many African youths can learn moral values through the oral tradition of folktales as these narratives are used as vehicles to communicate such values. In the past, the oral tradition was the main method of passing on beliefs from generation to generation by word of mouth. Technological and other developments, especially the invention of the book and the increase of literacy, have had an important effect on African oral traditions as previously unwritten folktales could be accorded permanent existence in the form of books. This has afforded African youths in different geographical locations the opportunity to access in their own time the oral folktale and the universal values that it communicates in the written form. Oral forms, such as folktales, are created and developed in specific contexts by individuals, and these can now be experienced by readers in different locations. The aim of this article is to highlight what African youths in different parts of Africa can gain from being exposed to folktales in their written form. For this purpose, four folktale stories by Greaves (1988) contained in the anthology, When Hippo Was Hairy: And Other Tales from Africa, were analysed. The selected stories are representative of certain thematic threads intended to impart certain moral values.

Anecdotes as Historical Evidence for the Principate

1980 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Saller
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Narratives

Historians' judgements about the evidential value of anecdotes have oscillated over the past decades. In the early part of this century authors of German textbooks on historical method warned students against using anecdotes on the grounds that their form was not fixed and their contents fluctuated since the narrators exercised their imaginations to improve stories with each telling. J. Vansina, an anthropologist studying the value of oral traditions for reconstructing African history, concluded in his more recent work that the anecdote is among the least reliable types of oral tradition. Nevertheless, recent scholarly works on Roman imperial history have utilized anecdotes for the sorts of social, economic, and administrative details which the available political narratives ignore. No systematic analysis has been undertaken to justify this use. I shall attempt to fill the gap by asking three basic questions: in what social contexts were anecdotes generated and transmitted; what changes in content were likely to occur during transmission; and what are the implications for the use of anecdotes as historical evidence?

NILAI-NILAI KEARIFAN LOKAL DALAM TRADISI LISAN WARAG-WARAH DAN RINGGOK-RINGGOK SUKU KOMERING, SUMATERA SELATAN (VALUES OF LOCAL WISDOM IN ORAL TRADITION OF WARAH WARAH AND RINGGOK-RINGGOK OF KOMERING TRIBE, SOUTH SUMATRA)

ALAYASASTRA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Ery Agus Kurnianto
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Real Effort ◽  
Descriptive Method

The focus of the problem in this study is the values of local wisdom within two oral traditions of Warag-Warah and Ringgok-Ringgok of Komering Tribe, South Sumatra. This study aimed to identify and to describe elements of local wisdom within those oral traditions. In addition, this study was established as a real effort to explore, to inventorize, and to document the oral traditions of Komering society. A descriptive method was applied in this study. The data were analyzed by applying qualitative approach on ethnographic elements to demonstrate and explain the value of local wisdom within those oral traditions. The theory applied in this study were oral literature and local wisdom. The conclusion from the analysis proved that there was a concept of social relations among individuals, among individuals and society, among social groups, and among individuals and their God. The value of local wisdom that had been identified were: 1) belief in God, 2) deliberation, 3) responsibility and 4) helping each other. The actualization of the value of local wisdom within the oral traditions of Warag-Warah and Ringgok-Ringgok was in form of behaving in ways that help each other, solving problems by means of deliberation and responsibility. Keywords: Oral tradition, warah-warah, ringgok-ringgok, local wisdom values.

Ayurveda and Communicable Diseases

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (05) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashok G. Naikar ◽  
Ganapathi Rao ◽  
Panchal Vinayak J.
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
World View ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Practical Aspect ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Local Health ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Pertinent Question ◽  
Cultural Domination

Indian medical heritage flows in two distinctive but mutually complimenting streams. The oral tradition being followed by millions of housewives and thousands of local health practitioners is the practical aspect of codified streams such as Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani. These oral traditions are head based and take care of the basic health needs of the people using immediately available local resources. Majority of these are plant based remedies, supplemented by animal and mineral products. Many of the practices followed by these local streams can be understood and evaluated by the codified stream such as Ayurveda. These streams are not static, historical scrutiny of their evolution shows the enriching phenomena at all times. Thus we have more than 7000 species of higher and lower plants and hundreds of minerals and animal product used in local health tradition to manage hundreds of disease conditions. A pertinent question that arises here is that in which basis these systems got enriched. Is it just trial error method over a point of time which gave rise to this rich tradition, is it an intuitive knowledge born out of close association with nature. One of the reasons for this attitude can be, that one is always made to believe that the science means that which can be explained by western models of logic and epistemology. The world view being developed and adopted by the dominant western scientific paradigm never fits in to the world view being followed and practiced by the indigenous traditions. This is well accepted by us due to the last 200 yrs of political and cultural domination by western and other alien forces.

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