Truths Yet Unborn? Oral Traditions as a Casualty of Culture Contact

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Periodical article

Title:	Truths Yet Unborn? Oral Traditions as a Casualty of Culture Contact
Author:	Henige, David P.
Year:	1982
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	23
Issue:	3
Pages:	395-412
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	world Africa
Subjects:	acculturation oral traditions Religion and Witchcraft Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Education and Oral Traditions History and Exploration
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/182103
Abstract:	This essay treats the effects of acculturation on oral historical materials. Rather than addressing it as a matter of 'contamination' - 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. 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. This phenomenon seems widespread enough to justify advancing a model that can be tested against specific cases. Ref.