My Journal
Archive

December 2007

Archive

Oral Genealogy is Ephemeral

"Narrators narrate what audiences call for or will tolerate. When the market for a printed book declines, the presses stop rolling but thousands of copies may remain. When the market for an oral genealogy disappears, so does the genealogy itself, utterly." (66). This is certainly logical in consi...

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Conservative and/or Traditionalist

"Oral societies must invest great energy in saying over and over again what has been learned arduously over the ages. This need establishes highly traditionalist or conservative set of mind that with good reason inhibits intellectual experimentation. ... By storing knowledge outside the mind, writin...

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