Workshop on Research Methodology in History

Local: Knowledge Dimensions P.S.Manojkumar

Head of the Department of History KKTM Govt. College Pullut, Kodungalloor, Trissur Local in writing History is a structured term which fills the gap which the dominant Historical discourses leave off. So the search for local is, in a way, fill in the blanks or a way to attain the holistic history of a society. The methodology to find the local is a very distinctive one, which differs from the general mood of dominant historical researches. Universalisation/ generalization tendencies which is seen in the dominant historical researches is lacking in local studies. The glitters of the local is seen and known through the knowledge dimensions. It questions the dominant model of the historical researches which statistically stick on the ideals of Nation State. The sub terrains which construct the Nation State, which is discarded in the dominant historical writings and researches is searched and invented. These sub terrains some how question the dominant form of history and revitalize the nullified or marginalized arenas of historical consciousness. It also tries to signify the unsignified and see the unseen. Signs acquire fresh meanings in the context of the local which are trashed or hushed up in the discourses of dominant historical discourse. Religion, law, social norms, domination and its forms, sexuality and sexual orientation and sexual codes, property rights etc. receive fresh meanings and demand fresh interpretations. In this paper I try to delineate the following points: 1. Contextualising the Local a. Dominant and the local b. What local demands and fulfills c. Towards a holistic vision of society by filling up the gaps and seeing the unseen. d. Generalisation v/s Specificities e. Fresh forms of generalizations 2. Knowledge: variant forms a. tool of enquiry b. dissemination of knowledge c. Questioning the knowledge forms which construct the Nation State d. Knowledge: At Therapeutic level 3. Signs: Fresh forms and Formations (at example levels) a. Gods and religion b. Hegamony c. Sexuality and subjugation

Postgraduate Department of History, Maharajas College, Ernakulam 15 December 2011

Workshop on Research Methodology in History

A Methodological Appraisal on writing Regional History: Experiences from North Malabar

K.P. Rajesh Publication Assistant Kerala Council for Historical Research Vyloppilly Samskriti Bhavan, Nalanda, Thiruvananthapuram-3

No region exists without historical past. Each region gets formed into a settlement unit through a long historical process. The evidences of this process will be scattered in the region and most of them are yet to receive attention. As each region has cultural resemblances and differences, a common pattern cannot be ascribed to the origin, formation and the transition. As region is the product of human actions in a long time span, the disentanglement of the history of a region is a complex process. Ultimately, the region is a geographical unit and it transformed into a settlement area with the human involvement on its resources. Human interaction with the environment differs according to the nature of landscape. The undulated topography, which includes mountains, hillocks, slopes, valleys, plains, coastal zones etc, the availability of resources comprising of fresh water and other essential subsistence resources, productivity of the land, seasonal climatic change etc are the decisive factors behind the formation of a region into geo-cultural entity. In historical studies, regions have been referred to as fragment of whole or as part of macro history. The regional level micro studies are yet to get significant space in the academic studies. Until now, very few attempts have been conducted to reproduce the history of Region. Romila Thapar through her studies on the regional formation of Punjab and Kankan has emphasized on the significance of the micro-level studies in the historiography.1 According to Thapar, it encourages the search for and often the discovery of new sources ranging from archaeological to archival. The present study is an attempt to make a discussion on the potential of the regional history and how such micro histories make potency to the macro history. The study mainly focused on the North Kerala with special reference to the North Malabar. The study will have three parts; the beginning session depicts the nature of regional studies in South India in brief, the second part tries to realize the problems crop up all through the course of the study of the history of regions. The last segment is an exercise which tries to disentangle the historical geography of Payyormala, a Desam unit of pre-colonial and colonial North Malabar, which now is the part of present Calicut district of Kerala State.
1

Romila Thapar, Regional History, the Punjab, Regional history with reference to the Konkan, Cultural Pasts, OUP (paperback), New Delhi, 2000, Pp 95-108, 109-122

Postgraduate Department of History, Maharajas College, Ernakulam 15 December 2011

Workshop on Research Methodology in History

Application of Oral sources in Gender History

Dr.Sreevidhya.V cltvid029@gmail.com Faculty in History Farook College Calicut Some categories of peoples like suppressed class, illiterate people etc had neglected from historical writings. This neglect or bias in the existing knowledge regarding some categories called for new approaches in writing history. Gender history also belongs to this category. The emergence of gender history shows an evolution from feminism to women to gender. It was seen as a means by which women could produce knowledge about themselves, of their own history and condition and disseminate that knowledge by means of a pedagogical practice. Gender history is based on a series of assumption and it assumes that men and women have different experiences; that the world is not the same for men and women. Thus in the case of gender historian, experience forms the main source and it was only through the method of recollection that the history of those class who never found their way into history can be obtained. So the present paper tries to examine how to apply oral sources in gender history writing on the basis of the experiences from North Malabar peasant struggles.

Postgraduate Department of History, Maharajas College, Ernakulam 15 December 2011

Workshop on Research Methodology in History

Oral Text as Source of Writing History A Study of Itantan Pttu K.S Madhavan
Assistant Professor of History University of Calicut

A truthful and objective account of historical past reconstructed with an empirical tradition of factography has been challenged by the new methodology of social science practice in which history writing has become an inter disciplinary endeavor. This methodological approach has made serious challenges to the practice of writing history as well as locating and interpretatively understanding the sources for re/ constructing the historical past. Linguistic turn occurred in social science methodology in general and new historicist approach in history writing in particular has brought non conventional sources like literary texts and oral tradition as the sources for re/constructing the historical past. Historical consciences are embedded and processual changes in the life worlds of various periods of the past have been sedimented in these sources. The oral tradition of Kerala has been a field of study of the folklorists who studied many of the oral texts, ritual acts, etc with ahistorical and structuralist approach, failed to historicise the oral tradition and its textual forms. The professional historians in Kerala have made use of the literary tradition and oral texts of hegemonic class of Brahmans and ntuvzhis like krallpatti narratives; do not make any attention to the tradition of the non hegemonic class. The oral tradition, especially belong to the marginalized social groups, which contains immense possibilities for unravel the various aspects of material culture, labour process, power structure and social formation process wait the serious attention of the historians. What we need not only a methodology for interpretatively understanding and historicing the various texts in oral tradition but also, for that purpose, a self reflexive academic habitus. Agriculture songs, krishi pttukal , have been a genre in folklore contains historical consciousness in embedded form. If variety of texts in this folk genre can properly be historicised and corroborated with the conventional sources of social science practice, various aspects of the production process can be revealed. As these materials have been orally transmitted from generation to generation, preserved by the labouring population as part of their involvement in the labor process and the dynamics of their life activities, this genre can also be used to the locate the involvement of the direct producers in the labour process. Theses genre represent the distinct life world of the laboring groups who directly engaged in the various stages of labour process in the agrarian production. The historical process of labour activity and the involvement of laboring population in the labour process can be culled out of these materials. This can be used as non-conventional source for the study of the primary producing groups who did substantial part of their labour in the production of agrarian surplus. The present paper entitled oral texts as source of writing history is an attempt to study one of the impotent oral texts, itantanpttu, preserved by the laboring groups in the present day Kuttanatu region, depicts various aspects of agrarian history of the Kuttanat. When we historicise the Itantan Pttu we come to know the intricacies embedded in the text that is the dispute regarding the cultivating right of on a vast land space which was reclamated from a marshy area. There is a vivid narration regarding the practice of different aspects of reclamation and cultivation activities on a marshy and water logging area by employing the labouring population called Pulayas under the settler cultivators who are represented as kuththappilli Menovan in the text. The dispute over this reclamated cultivated space by the extended families of settler cultivators who emerged from the thara settlements that develop the narration. This is important from the point view of agrarian labour process as the text represents the way in which the marshy water laden area has been reclamated by the collective labour of the Pulayar/Adiyr and the creation of wetland cultivable space in the estuarine areas. The labour process embedded in the text can be corroborated to the process of creation of wetland spaces from the marshy areas represented in land terms and labour terms in the epigraphical evidences and palm leaf materials. Inscriptions from the estuarine areas in the kuttandu region also make convergence of our understanding in this process.

Postgraduate Department of History, Maharajas College, Ernakulam 15 December 2011