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ISSN 2084–1418
The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2015, No. (8), Anthropology and History

Tomasz Rakowski
Oral history and ethnographical sources as ‘certain knowledge’: the case of post-transformation history of the Torghut in western Mongolia and the history of the village of Broniów in central Poland

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Keywords: oral history, ethnographical sources, interpretation, historical fact, history of countryside, the Torghut, Mongolia

Abstract:
In this article I focus on some methodological issues concerning knowledge production based on oral and informal sources while working in the field of the newest or immediate history. I show that still the oral sources are often treated as not fully valid while building historic knowledge and the reference to the written documents is conceived as much more stable and reliable. I refer to my field study among Torghuts from Western Mongolia in which I analyze local forms land-use and the practice of temporary possession and then I try to show that informal affairs and informal, oral data are much more important for understanding the latest history of a local town, Bulgan, and its spatial development. I also write about the case of Broniów village in central Poland, in which the informal practices of building houses, production of self-made bricks and so on, gives a very different sense of the history of Polish villages in recent decades. In this two case studies I try to find a kind of ‘ethnographic drive’ of historic knowledge achieved in the field and thus I argue that this kind of insight may be the crucial part of understanding and reconstructing the newest history in such places and its local conditions.

About Author:
RAKOWSKI TOMASZ - ethnologist, cultural anthropologist, cultural scientist, Assistant Professor in the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Warsaw. Email: tomaszrak[at]tlen.pl.

References
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