Session Information
17 SES 02, Parallel Paper Session
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
Within our research on the last period of the history of the three orphan houses in Ghent, running from WWII until 1984, oral history was one of our main research methods. It was an important tool to grasp the meanings and experiences of former orphans. It made it also possible to get a deeper insight in the goals and findings of some of the main representatives of these initiatives. While in former papers the focus was on an analysis of the orphan houses it selves, in this paper we will reflect on the use of oral history as a research method. However, this is not only just a methodological reflection, as this reflection will strongly be embedded within an actual discourse on the history of child and youth care. Writing the history of orphan houses and other youth care institutions seems to have changed fundamentally. Truth commissions and a politic of apology are today’s buzzwords. This tendency seems to play an important role on how oral history actually is used.
A central question throughout our reflections is how past government interventions/ educational interventions are evaluated in the present day. In this paper we focus on one chief reflection. Due to the fact that every topic in these testimonies show us indisputably how perceptions, practices, habits and customs evolve over time it becomes clear that the criteria to appraise past events, in this case a government intervention (also) change. Consequently we try to unravel and determine the implications of a contemporary dominant discourse on telling histories. The current heightened sensitivity to all forms of violence against children in residential facilities and foster care plus the attention for alleged sexual abuse forms the frame for this paper. In the case of Belgium we refer to the widespread (judicial) investigation concerning alleged sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.
First we notice how this present ongoing debate creates a space for conversation. The current developments in the Church open the dialogue on the topic of ' sexual harassment '. References such as "like what’s happening in the Church?" or "things such as in the Church" form the starting points of the discussion. In addition, we also note how current events can shed a different light on one’s personal history. Some of the respondents evaluate, in light of recent insights their past within another framework. “Nowadays you hear all those things about the Church but I have to say that was not the case for us! Not that I know anyway. That has been our luck or it would have been even worse." Thirdly, when ‘the things that happen in the Church' get a meaning within a discourse, some past events all of a sudden become significant.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
The age of apology. Facing up to the past. Mark Gibney. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2008. P 333. Saying Sorry: the Politics of Apology. Michael Cunningham. The political quarterly publishing. Vol. 70. Nr. 3. 1999. P 285 – 293. Reducing governmental interventions in families by licensing parents. Jack C. Westman. Child psychiatry and human development, Vol. 27(3), spring 1997. P 193-205. Child rearing in the “risk” society: on the discourse of rights and the “best interests of a child”. Paul Smeyers. Educational Theory. Volume 60, Issue 3, pages 271–284, June 2010 The social construction of what? Ian Hacking. Cambridge (Mass.) : Harvard university press, 1999. 261 p. Truth and reconciliation? The experience of truth commissions. Beth Rushton. Australian journal of international affairs Vol. 60, No 1, pp. 125-141, March 2006. Geographies of risk: an exploration of city childhoods in early twentieth century Britain’. Ian Grosvenor. Paedagogica Historica, Volume 45, Issue 1 & 2 February 2009 , pages 215 – 233. When sorry isn't enough: the controversy over apologies and reparations for human injustice. Roy Lavon Brooks. New York University Press. 1999. P 304. Criminalising the past and reconstructing collective memory: the Romanian truth commission. Monica Ciobanu. Europe-Asia studies. Vol. 61, No. 2, March 2009, 313-336. Reflections on Oral History. Saul Benison. Amercian Archivist. Volume 28, Number 1/January 1965. 71-77
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