A powerful account of China's Great Famine as told through the voices of those who survived it In 1958, China's revered leader Mao Zedong instituted a program designed to transform his giant nation into a Communist utopia. Called the Great Leap Forward, Mao's grand scheme-like so many other utopian dreams of the 20th century-proved a monumental disaster, resulting in the mass destruction of China's agriculture, industry, and trade while leaving large portions of the countryside forever scarred by man-made environmental disasters. The resulting three-year famine claimed the lives of more than 45 million people in China. In this remarkable oral history of modern China's greatest tragedy, survivors of the cataclysm share their memories of the devastation and loss. The range of voices is wide: city dwellers and peasants, scholars and factory workers, parents who lost children and children who were orphaned in the catastrophe all speak out. Powerful and deeply moving, this unique remembrance of an unnecessary and unhindered catastrophe illuminates a dark recent history that remains officially unacknowledged to this day by the Chinese government and opens a window on a society still feeling the impact of the terrible Great Famine.

Who gets pockets, and why?

It’s a subject that stirs up plenty of passion: Why do men’s clothes have so many pockets and women’s so few? And why are the pockets on women’s clothes often too small to fit phones, if they even open at all? In her captivating book, Hannah Carlson, a lecturer in dress history at the Rhode Island School of Design, reveals the issues of gender politics, security, sexuality, power, and privilege tucked inside our pockets.

Throughout the medieval era in Europe, the purse was an almost universal dress feature. But when tailors stitched the first pockets into men’s trousers five hundred years ago, it ignited controversy and introduced a range of social issues that we continue to wrestle with today, from concealed pistols to gender inequality. See: #GiveMePocketsOrGiveMeDeath.

Filled with incredible images, this microhistory of the humble pocket uncovers what pockets tell us about ourselves: How is it that putting your hands in your pockets can be seen as a sign of laziness, arrogance, confidence, or perversion? Walt Whitman’s author photograph, hand in pocket, for Leaves of Grass seemed like an affront to middle-class respectability. When W.E.B. Du Bois posed for a portrait, his pocketed hands signaled defiant coolness.

And what else might be hiding in the history of our pockets? (There’s a reason that the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets are the most popular exhibit at the Library of Congress.) Thinking about the future, Carlson asks whether we will still want pockets when our clothes contain “smart” textiles that incorporate our IDs and credit cards.

Pockets is for the legions of people obsessed with pockets and their absence, and for anyone interested in how our clothes influence the way we navigate the world.

This collection explores the intersections of oral history and environmental history. Oral history offers environmental historians the opportunity to understand the ways people's perceptions, experiences and beliefs about environments change over time. In turn, the insights of environmental history challenge oral historians to think more critically about the ways an active, more-than-human world shapes experiences and people. The integration of these approaches enables us to more fully and critically understand the ways cultural and individual memory and experience shapes human interactions with the more-than-human world, just as it enables us to identify the ways human memory, identity and experience is moulded by the landscapes and environments in which people live and labour. It includes contributions from Australia, India, the UK, Canada and the USA.

Singing the Law is about the legal lives and afterlives of oral cultures in East Africa, particularly as they appear within the pages of written literatures during the colonial and postcolonial periods. In examining these cultures, this book begins with an analysis of the cultural narratives of time and modernity that formed the foundations of British colonial law. Recognizing the contradictory nature of these narratives (i.e., both promoting and retreating from the Euro-centric ideal of temporal progress) enables us to make sense of the many representations of and experiments with non-linear, open-ended, and otherwise experimental temporalities that we find in works of East African literature that take colonial law as a subject or point of critique. Many of these works, furthermore, consciously appropriate orature as an expressive form with legal authority. This affords them the capacity to challenge the narrative foundations of colonial law and its postcolonial residues and offer alternative models of temporality and modernity that give rise, in turn, to alternative forms of legality. East Africa's "oral jurisprudence" ultimately has implications not only for our understanding of law and literature in colonial and postcolonial contexts, but more broadly for our understanding of how the global south has shaped modern law as we know and experience it today.

Much has been written about the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, but one story remains untold: that of the grassroots activism that maintained local communities in the face of violence. This book speaks through the voices of the activists themselves, drawn from both sides of a divided society. It records their memories of community organising and work on social issues, as well as their insights into surviving the politics of the period and contributing to peacebuilding. Providing a vivid account of how politics touched people's lives, the book celebrates the energy, imagination and determination of community activism. It also examines the challenges faced by policymakers struggling to make sense of conflicting community narratives and official government positions. There are vital lessons here for organisers, activists and policymakers working in any contested society, particularly those operating at the interface between social need and peacebuilding. Informed by an oral history approach, this book argues that conflict transformation is possible and that community activism has a major contribution to make in creating alternatives to violence.

Record-Making and Record-Keeping in Early Societies provides a concise and up-to-date survey of early record-making and record-keeping practices across the world. It investigates the ways in which human activities have been recorded in different settings using different methods and technologies. Based on an in-depth analysis of literature from a wide range of disciplines, including prehistory, archaeology, Assyriology, Egyptology, and Chinese and Mesoamerican studies, the book reflects the latest and most relevant historical scholarship. Drawing upon the author's experience as a practitioner and scholar of records and archives and his extensive knowledge of archival theory and practice, the book embeds its account of the beginnings of recording practices in a conceptual framework largely derived from archival science. Unique both in its breadth of coverage and in its distinctive perspective on early record-making and record-keeping, the book provides the only updated and synoptic overview of early recording practices available worldwide. Record-Making and Record-Keeping in Early Societies will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students engaged in the study of archival science, archival history, and the early history of human culture. The book will also appeal to practitioners of archives and records management interested in learning more about the origins of their profession.

Guides the reader through the process of sourcing a relevant oral history archive for linguistic analysis, constructing a representative corpus out of this archive and analysing this using corpus tools Shows how corpus linguistics can illuminate themes worthy of investigation that may otherwise remain hidden Shows what readers can gain from blending linguistic tools and competencies with oral history data

This book studies the internal framework of the Indo-Pacific region and examines the strategic issues faced by the countries that belong to it. Over the years, the Indo-Pacific region has become a prime driver of global economic growth and has generated considerable interest from countries both within and without. The region is now witnessing an intensified great power competition for greater geostrategic space, thus shaping the 21st-century world order. The volume focuses on the emerging strategies of the main actors involved in this competition. It discusses various key issues such as the purpose of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and its post-pandemic agenda, the conceptualisation of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) amid an intensifying Sino-US great power competition, the strategies of ASEAN and South Korea, China's activities in the Indo-Pacific, economic architecture and supply chain disruption in the region, as well as the geopolitical strategy of the European Union for the Indo-Pacific. A crucial study of the Indo-Pacific region in the post-COVID-19 world, the book gives fresh insights into the areas of convergence and divergence in the strategic visions of the many regional actors. It will be of great interest to policymakers as well as students and academics in the fields of political science, international relations, foreign policy, geopolitics, security studies, strategic studies, as well as area studies, namely East and Southeast Asian studies, European Union studies, American studies and Australian studies.

History students read a lot. They read primary sources. They read specialized articles and monographs. They sometimes read popular histories. And they read textbooks. Yet students are beginners, and as beginners they need to learn the differences among various kinds of readings - their natures, their challenges, and the unique expectations one needs to bring to each of them. Reading History is a practical guide to help students read better. Uniquely designed with the author's engaging explanations in the margins, the book describes primary sources across various genres, including documents of practice, treatises, and literary works, as well as secondary sources such as textbooks, articles, and monographs. An appendix contains tips and questions for reading primary or secondary sources. Full of practical advice and hands-on training that allows students to be successful, Reading History will cultivate a wider appreciation for the discipline of history.

* Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory 2e, Standard Textbook, March 2016, PB: 1293 (GBP23,616) * Matthew Bailey, Managing the Marketplace: Reinventing Shopping Centres in Post-War Australia, Mono, June 2020, HB: 13, (GBP1,138)

Addressing questions about what it means to be 'British' or 'Irish' in the twenty-first century, this book focuses its attention on twentieth-century Northern Ireland and demonstrates how the fragmented and disparate nature of national identity shaped and continues to shape responses to social issues such as immigration. Immigrants moved to Northern Ireland in their thousands during the twentieth century, continuing to do so even during three decades of the Troubles, a violent and bloody conflict that cost over 3,600 lives. Foregrounding the everyday lived experiences of settlers in this region, this ground-breaking book comparatively examines the perspectives of Italian, Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese migrants in Northern Ireland, outlining the specific challenges of migrating to this small, intensely divided part of the UK. The book explores whether it was possible for migrants and minorities to remain 'neutral' within an intensely politicised society and how internal divisions affected the identity and belonging of later generations. An analysis of diversity and immigration within this divided society enhances our understanding of the forces that can shape conceptions of national insiders and outsiders - not just in the UK and Ireland - but across the world. It provokes and addresses a range of questions about how conceptions of nationality, race, culture and ethnicity have intersected to shape attitudes towards migrants. In doing so, the book invites scholars to embrace a more diverse, 'four-nation' approach to UK immigration studies, making it an essential read for all those interested in the history of migration in the UK.

There has been extensive research into the impact of the Holocaust on the children of survivors who immigrated to the US and Israel. But very little work in this space has looked at children whose parents fled Nazi persecution before the Holocaust. Even less attention has been paid to those who ended up in Britain from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. What was the impact on this second generation? How have the lives of these ordinary people been shaped by their parents' dislocation? Using a series of interviews with members of the second generation, Breaking the Silence is a qualitative, interdisciplinary exploration how their lives were shaped by their parents escape from persecution. It offers an insight into how the exile and fear of persecution of the parents and the deaths/murder of unknown relatives has left this generation both bereft of memories and haunted by the past.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book provides a profound insight into post-war Mostar, and the memories of three generations of this Bosnian-Herzegovinian city. Drawing on several years of ethnographic fieldwork, it offers a vivid account of how personal and collective memories are utterly intertwined, and how memories across the generations are reimagined and 'rewritten' following great socio-political change. Focusing on both Bosniak-dominated East Mostar and Croat-dominated West Mostar, it demonstrates that, even in this ethno-nationally divided city with its two divergent national historiographies, generation-specific experiences are crucial in how people ascribe meaning to past events. It argues that the dramatic and often brutal transformations that Bosnia and Herzegovina has witnessed have led to alterations in memory politics, not to mention disparities in the life situations faced by the different generations in present-day post-war Mostar. This in turn has created variations in memories along generational lines, which affect how individuals narrate and position themselves in relation to the country's history. This detailed and engaging work will appeal to students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, political science, history and oral history, particularly those with an interest in memory, post-socialist Europe and conflict studies.

When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis Trilogy, he was startled to find how the lives of the 19th century sailors and soldiers he wrote of were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean, but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: oh Pium. Most surprising at all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history was swept up in the story.

Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, memoir and a history, drawing on decades of archival research. In it, Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China and redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the Empire's financial survival. Yet tracing the profits further, Ghosh finds opium at the origins of some of the world's biggest corporations, of America's most powerful families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself.

Moving deftly between horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, in Smoke and Ashes Amitav Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant had in making our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

A panoramic narrative that places ancient Africa on the stage of world history.

This book brings together archaeological and linguistic evidence to provide a sweeping global history of ancient Africa, tracing how the continent played an important role in the technological, agricultural, and economic transitions of world civilization. Christopher Ehret takes readers from the close of the last Ice Age some ten thousand years ago, when a changing climate allowed for the transition from hunting and gathering to the cultivation of crops and raising of livestock, to the rise of kingdoms and empires in the first centuries of the common era.

Ehret takes up the problem of how we discuss Africa in the context of global history, combining results of multiple disciplines. He sheds light on the rich history of technological innovation by African societies—from advances in ceramics to cotton weaving and iron smelting—highlighting the important contributions of women as inventors and innovators. He shows how Africa helped to usher in an age of agricultural exchange, exporting essential crops as well as new agricultural methods into other regions, and how African traders and merchants led a commercial revolution spanning diverse regions and cultures. Ehret lays out the deeply African foundations of ancient Egyptian culture, beliefs, and institutions and discusses early Christianity in Africa.

A monumental achievement by one of today’s eminent scholars, Ancient Africa offers vital new perspectives on our shared past, explaining why we need to reshape our historical frameworks for understanding the ancient world as a whole.

WHY PUBLISH: - Author Lily Lee is well known in Gender studies and China Studies in the field. - Provides valuable primary sources in an under researched/difficult to research area. - Studies on ethnic minorities in China is a popular and growing area of interest.

Discover the stories passed down over time from the people of the Ozark region. Oral history is shared through the years to provide a perspective on the landscape and people who inhabit the beautiful, culturally rich area. These oral histories show essential connections among settlers in a challenging landscape. Written to inspire history buffs, outdoor enthusiasts, travelers, tycoons in training and students of all ages, this path-breaking collection will take readers deep into a region averse to change, tricky to know, yet brimming with American culture.

The volume takes a field which has become established over the past 40 years, and applies it to a marginalized sector of society, enabling students of oral history, and history more generally to engage with, question and develop new conversations around the field. Oral history is increasingly becoming an established part of the modern history canon and more and more developments within its parameters are being raised and studied - this book represents a key up-coming area. The only book to look specifically at LGBTQ positions and the specific issues it raises within oral history.

This work offers a novel and interdisciplinary approach to Translation Studies by connecting this discipline with the oral history on communism. Following the collapse of the communist regime in the Eastern bloc (1989-1991), oral history interviews became the research method par excellence, providing an alternative version to the distorted public discourse. This book addresses the challenges posed by the translation of transcribed historical interviews on communism. The author's translation from Romanian into English of an original corpus helps formulate a methodological framework nonexistent, up to this point, within Translation Studies. Additionally, drawing on research in conversation analysis and psychology, the so-called fictive orality of the data is defined according to an innovative tripartite paradigm: vividness, immediacy, and fragmentation. Inscribed in the current call for translators' activism and visibility, the work draws on oral history terminology to reflect on the translational experience as a 'dialogic exchange' whereby listening assumes central importance. The descriptive and prescriptive paradigms work in concert, facilitating the understanding of translation strategies and of the mechanisms animating historical interviews. However, beyond these theoretical insights, what gains prominence is the argument of the affectivity steeped in the interviews, which alerts translators to the emotive cadence of oral history. Translation is understood here not only as a linguistic and cognitive exercise but rather as a subjective and necessary undertaking in which translators become co-creators of history, illuminating the way knowledge about the past has been and continues to be formed and mediated.

Through case studies of pilot conservation projects launched by the Yunnan Provincial Archives in recent years, this book comprehensively and systematically discusses issues in the conservation of ethnic oral history material and the development of ethnic oral history resources. After an overview of ethnic oral history material in general, the book gives an introduction to the oral history material of the Bai, Hani, Lisu, Wa, Zhuang, and Qiang ethnic groups; discusses theoretical research and work practices related to ethnic oral history; elaborates upon the methods for managing and integrating ethnic oral history archives; reviews the history, current state, and existing issues of work related to ethnic oral materials; summarizes experiences gained from international collaboration in the conservation of ethnic oral materials; and reflects upon issues such as the development of ethnic oral history resources and the establishment of oral history resource systems in multi-ethnic border regions. As the result of research on the management of specialized archives and work related to oral archives, this book contributes towards the establishment of ethnic oral archival science as an academic discipline and enriching the knowledge structure of oral history and the science of managing oral archives.

This book follows the development of industrial agriculture in California and its influence on both regional and national eating habits. Early California politicians and entrepreneurs envisioned agriculture as a solution to the food needs of the expanding industrial nation. The state's climate, geography, vast expanses of land, water, and immigrant workforce when coupled with university research and governmental assistance provided a model for agribusiness. In a short time, the San Francisco Bay Area became a hub for guaranteeing Americans access to a consistent quantity of quality foods. To this end, California agribusiness played a major role in national food policies and subsequently produced a bifurcated California Cuisine that sustained both Slow and Fast Food proponents. Problems arose as mid-twentieth century social activists battled the unresponsiveness of government agencies to corporate greed, food safety, and environmental sustainability. By utilizing multidisciplinary literature and oral histories the book illuminates a more balanced look at how a California Cuisine embraced Slow Food Made Fast.

Showcases practical approaches to doing oral history work in qualitative educational research Considers how to best do both methodology and output of oral history research Written in the editors' typical accessible style with a range of contributing voices, making it particularly suitable for early career researchers

This book traces the life of Maria Mia Truskier, who fled the Nazis as a young Polish Jew in early 1940 and once safely resettled in the United States, became an activist for other refugees, earning renown in the Bay Area as "the oldest refugee" of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant. Mia worked for decades assisting those fleeing from war, violence and hardship, mainly from Central America and Haiti. Based on extensive interviews with Truskier before she passed away, as well as memorabilia from her own lifetime, including coded letters, newspaper clippings, and old photographs, this book results in a complex and multi-layered oral history. As Mia drew on memories of her life in Europe and World War II, she was situating and constructing those memories while re-reading and discovering these artifacts alongside the author of this book, and ultimately relating the ways that she and her family years later sought to make a difference for other refugees, drawing a connection between two major eras of human displacement: the end of World War II and today.

A Forest of Time is the first introduction for undergraduates and graduates, Western and Indian history buffs, and general readers to the notion that American Indian societies had vital interests in interpreting and transmitting their own ways for themselves. Through separate discussions of legends and oral histories, creation stories and folktales, it illustrates how various Indian peoples related and commented upon their changing times. Drawing upon his own varied research as well as sampling the latest in scholarship from ethnohistory, anthropology, folklore and Indian Studies, Dr. Nabokov offers dramatic examples of how native peoples put rituals and material culture, landscape, prophecies, and even the English language to the urgent task of keeping the past alive and relevant. Throughout these lively chapters, we also witness the American Indian historical imagination deployed as a coping skill and survival strategy. This book surveys the latest integrating ideas while offering a useful bibliography that opens up, and demands that we engage with, alternative chronicles for America's multi-cultural past. Peter Navokov is Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures and American Indian Studies Program at UCLA. He is the author of several books, including Native American Architecture, (Oxford, 1991, co-author Robert Easton) which won the American Institue of Architects honor award and the Bay Area Book Reviewer Association Award. His book Native American Testimony (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978) was named the American Library Association's Best Book for Young Adults and Library School Journal Best Book 1978 in addition to receiving the Carter G. Woodson Award. His work as a journalist in 1967 earned him prizes from the Albuquerque Press Association and the New Mexico Press Association.

Stretches the field of history and memory into family history, but takes both and international and political dimension, adding a new viewing point for readers and expanding the way students can look at the subject History and Memory is a big focus for research and teaching at the moment and growing, and family history in this is very en pointe (with lots of people increasingly interested in family history) - but it's not usually looked at with the perspective of international and political dimensions No other volumes depict family memory in this more comprehensive, broad and international way