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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Contradictions at the heart of the canon: Jan Vansina and the debate over oral historiography in Africa, 1960-1985
Author:Newbury, DavidISNI
Year:2007
Periodical:History in Africa
Volume:34
Pages:213-254
Language:English
Geographic term:Africa
Subjects:historiography
oral history
About person:Jan Vansina (1929-2017)ISNI
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/history_in_africa/v034/34.1newbury.pdf
Abstract:While oral communication and historical sensitivities have been present in all human societies for all time, the Western historical profession was slow to mesh the two, and to accept oral accounts as historical sources. In Africa initiatives to bring them together systematically emerged only in tandem with the growth of nationalism and, in particular, with decolonization. Both advocates and adversaries alike saw a turning point when Jan Vansina forced the issue on the historical discipline in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Vansina wanted the discipline of history to move from the exclusive palaeographic study of texts to a broader search for clues of the human experience. This article reviews Vansina's early work to situate it - both as individual publications and as a collective corpus - fully in the intellectual context of its day. Focusing on the 45 years after 1960 - a time of energetic engagement with oral history by historians working in Africa - the author analyses this corpus in its context and inquires into the intense critique it engendered. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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