As connections between consumption and identity of Caribbeans in post-War Britain, particularly those living in non-metropolitan areas, have
overwhelmingly not been analysed or addressed from academic perspectives, illuminating important aspects of their consumer manifestations is an important addition to the documented history of Caribbeans in Britain. The documented history of local Caribbean consumption is extremely limited because most acquisition and display of consumer items and non-material consumption was done by word-of-mouth, or otherwise unrecorded at the time. When such
documentation and recordings were preserved, these were overwhelmingly kept in individuals’ attics, closets or other spaces largely hidden away from people other than family or close friends.1 Because of this, there is a significant gap between the experienced and documented consumer behaviour of
Northamptonshire Caribbeans which should be historically narrowed. Reducing this gap requires both informational and expository data that oral history can primarily provide. It is not being claimed that oral history can eliminate this gap solely. However, data acquisition via oral history offers the opportunity for historical contributions to be made by variously positioned individuals in the community being researched.
NBHA’s production of Sharing the Past in 2008 helped to bridge some of the gaps between the experienced and documented history of Black people. An important part of bridging this gap is the use of oral history when NBHA was Northamptonshire Black History Project (NBHP) in 2002-2005. Interviews were recorded and transcribed by NBHP, helping to shed light on a history
1 Karen Davies interviewed by George Watley, 12 October 2009; Ulric Gravesande interviewed by George Watley (Northampton: NBHA), 14 July 2009; Frank Whitehead interviewed by George Watley (Northampton:
NBHA), 7 April 2011
78
overwhelmingly undocumented before. Furthermore, NBHA were a joint
collaborative partner in this author-conducted research, with an important stake in both its findings and dissemination. Important amongst all significant
stakeholders is the ethos that oral history would be used as a tool to share previously undocumented history to local and wider audiences. Oral history is important in the context of this research because physical documents and other recordings of local Caribbeans’ history were overwhelmingly unrecorded, at least for historical purposes. Furthermore, the author and others have had opportunities to analyse motivations underpinning consumer behaviour. This would be virtually impossible without using oral history.
Within the overarching concept of using oral history methodologically, the three sections of this chapter will illuminate and analyse the dimensions of how oral history has been employed, as well as rationale underpinning the methodology and methods used. The Methodology section will address theories underpinning this research ranging from the use of extant interviews to the use of feminist research methods, appropriate for reasons to be delineated despite this research not being about any aspect of feminism. The second section, Positionality, elaborates on the various aspects of positionality influencing the author, including interactions with participants and the local Caribbean community generally. The third section, Methods, addresses the means and mechanisms used in acquiring and interpreting data, including but not exclusive of
interviews. Initially important are the interviews collected by NBHP from 2002-2005, which were used by the author both before conducting interviews and throughout the researching process. The Methodology section will address this, as well as other methodologically related issues which should be delineated and analysed to comprehend their relevance for this thesis.
79
Methodology
Broadly, contemporary identity and consumption connections have been made, overwhelmingly of non-Caribbean ethnic minority groups in Britain,
particularly south Asians. Sekhon asserts that south Asians in Britain, ‘construct and negotiate their identity and image through aspects of their consumption;
consumption is both a personal and social process.’2 Connecting Sekhon’s argument with an interpretation that could be more generally applied across ethnicities is Belk’s concept that consumption can serve to promote a desired identity through images, styles and acts and conveyed through possessions.3 These concepts of identity and consumption connections are not monolithic in terms of being totally referential towards the given ethnic minority culture and consumption norms despite Sekhon’s recognition that all participants in her research considered themselves Asian first and British second.4 Sekhon asserts that consumption of Asians in Britain is influenced by using items to display their status in Britain, as well as being employed in making statements that they are equal to White British people.5
In contrast to Sekhon, some minority ethnic groups outside of Britain produce identity constructions that alternate between the dominant and minority ethnic group, manifesting such identity through consumption. For example, Ger and Ostergaard argue that Turko-Danish people negotiate identity through clothing,’
with cultural and sub-cultural forces being felt and reflected in their dress.’6
2 Yasmin Sekhon, ‘’From saris to sarongs’ ethnicity and intergenerational influences on consumption among Asian Indians in the UK’, p.163
3 Russell Belk, ‘Possessions and the extended self’, Journal of Consumer Research, 15 (1988), p.139
4 Yasmin Sekhon, ‘’From saris to sarongs’ ethnicity and intergenerational influences on consumption among Asian Indians in the UK’, p.163
5 Ibid, p.164
6 Guliz Ger and Per Ostergaard, ‘Constructing immigrant identities in consumption: appearance among the Turko-Danes’ in Advances in Consumer Research, ed. by Joseph Alba and J. Wesley Hutchinson (Provo, Utah, USA: Association for Consumer Research, 1998), vol.25, p.48
80
Askegaard and Arnould argue somewhat similarly in noting that Greenlandic people living in Denmark produce identity constructions that alternate between Danish and Greenlandic social contexts.7 When Greenlandic identity is
constructed, it revolves around holding on to particular aspects of culture perceived to be connected to their culture of origin.8 In other identity-consumption contexts, according to Xu et al, co-ethnic friendship amongst minority group members influences ethnic identity and collective culture-specific consumption behaviour.9 In terms of local Caribbean people, data collected and analysed will address the dimensions of various forms of identity they had and perceived themselves to have, as well as how these forms of identity connected with their consumption. Within this concept, the links
between consumption and identification with Britain, the Caribbean, and being Black will be better understood.
More specifically related to data collection, it is not merely the information within interviews that is useful; the skills of interviewers, as well as the historical basis for conducting these interviews are also important in
determining the importance of data collected. Shopes refers to interview and interview transcripts like these as extant interviews in terms of their ability to be used for future research. According to Shopes:
The most useful extant interviews for historians researching a community are likely to be those conducted under the auspices of ongoing history research programs as archival projects for the use of future researchers or by professionally run historical
7 Soren Askegaard and Eric Arnould, ‘Consumer acculturation of Greenlandic people in Denmark’, in European Advances in Consumer Research, ed. by Bernard Dubois, Tina M. Lowrey, and L. J. Shrum, Marc Vanhuele (Provo, Utah, USA: Association for Consumer Research, 1999), p.48
8 Ibid, p.48
9 Jing Xu, Soyeon Shim, Sherry Lutz and David Almeida, ‘Ethnic Identity, Socialization Factors, and Culture-Specific Consumption Behaviour’, p.93
81
organizations as documentation projects. While it is important to assess such interviews in light of their provenance, their
strengths are often considerable: typically they are framed around questions drawn from contemporary historiography and include multiple narrators, variously positioned within the
community; they tend to range widely over individual narrators’
life experiences so as to be of value to users with varying
interests (and) they are generally the work of skilled interviewers who are knowledgeable about the subject at hand.10
Clearly and explicitly mentioned by NBHA and the author are that interviews conducted for this research will be made publicly available, with the author’s early suggestion to the Association that interview transcripts, as well as selected audio clips, should be easily accessible via NBHA’s Web site. This suggestion was approved with the proviso that interviewees would be informally asked for their permission to do so despite NBHA owning the copyright to the audio interview and related transcripts. This proviso was made in the spirit of having clear community support for Association activities, past, present and future.
More generally, all participants signed a consent form (Appendix A) stating that their interviews could be used and available publicly as a permanent public reference resource, as well as for research, exhibitions and other educational purposes. Furthermore, the Oral History Roadshow (OHR) to be discussed in more detail in the Methods section of this chapter celebrated most participants’
narratives alongside their pictures, all of which were viewed unanimously
complementary by them. Unlike strictly educational research that often operates under a paradigm of participant anonymity due to frequently working with
10 Linda Shopes, ‘Oral History and the Study of Communities’ in The Oral History Reader, ed. by Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 2010), p.264
82
children or other people perceived as vulnerable11, this research is public history that the researcher and participants desire to share with the general public as a way of celebrating the history of Caribbeans in Northamptonshire, and by extension, Britain.
It was the author’s intention from the initial months of this research that these interviews would not only be publicly accessible, but lead to future research opportunities, whether for the author and/or others. Furthermore,
Northamptonshire Black History Project (NBHP) interviews and other research preceding Sharing The Past was developed simultaneously by academic
historians and community minded activists, with the former believing that Sharing The Past’s groundbreaking exposition of 800 years of
Northamptonshire Black British history would lead to future research. This initial research actually led to the present research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Without AHRC support this research would not have been possible. This reflects NBHA’s prior work as the NBHP, but also reflects how others can recognise researching opportunities related to Sharing The Past.
This research is viewed as the second fundamental step in Northamptonshire Black British historical research, as well as potentially providing the basis for future academic and community based research. The extant NBHP interviews leading to the production of Sharing The Past were conducted mostly by academics and funded sessional workers who were active in the community.
This synergy was intentional and viewed as necessary not only to shed light on local Black British history ignored by traditional sources of historical
11 British Educational Research Association, ‘Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research’, 2011, pp.5-7
<http://www.bera.ac.uk/system/files/BERA%20Ethical%20Guidelines%202011.pdf> (accessed 27 April 2012)
83
information (such as schools)12, but also to be used by future researchers, academic or otherwise. This intentional combination of academics and non-academics has proved fruitful in providing resources in terms of the interviews, the resulting book, and the organisation of such for future researchers. As such, NBHA’s work, including this research, has simultaneously researched local Black British history whilst developing long-term symbiotic documentation projects akin to those Shopes identifies as being most useful to future
researchers wishing to research a specific community.
The combined efforts of academics and community members also provided synergy in terms of developing their skills as interviewers. Both groups were knowledgeable in their respective areas of expertise and together added to historical information about the local dimension of Black British history whilst also becoming more knowledgeable about this history generally. These factors have helped to give interviewers greater knowledge of this history, as well as investigative skill used to acquire further local historical information. Skilled, knowledgeable interviewers are important in developing useful extant
interviews for future researchers as asserted by Shopes.
NBHA was created in large part to protest institutional and socio-cultural ignoring of historical contributions of local Black people. Sharing The Past reflects this ethos by stating:
Our book introduces you to previously hidden aspects of the past, and to people whose stories may surprise you. This book is
12 John Siblon, Black is also British: an investigation into the needs and opportunities for developing Black British history within the schools curriculum in Northamptonshire (Northampton: University College
Northampton, 2005), p.53 Note: Although Siblon’s work mainly refers to teachers teaching, or more correctly lack of teaching, Black British history, noting that 74 percent of Northamptonshire teachers never or rarely teach this history is indicative of contemporary failure of schools to incorporate Black British history in students’ learning. Further evidence of teacher ignorance related to Black British history includes Siblon’s findings that, ‘80% of teachers surveyed suggest that they have ‘no knowledge’ or ‘limited knowledge’ of Black British history and 78% say there are no resources on Black British history in schools.’
84
dedicated to the pioneering community leaders who have enriched the lives of Northamptonshire settlers from the Caribbean, Africa and the Indian subcontinent and helped to make Northamptonshire a better place.13
If posed as an implied question, this prior quotation would be indirectly
answering the question: Why is Black history being ignored locally and is still continuing to be hidden? Furthermore, this question would also apply to larger British perspectives on Black British history which either view Black and British as mutually exclusive or choose to ignore this history for ethnocentric reasons. Answering this implied question is an exercise in producing counter-hegemonic history that Grosvenor asserts can be realised if the effects and exercise of power in producing historical texts is acknowledged and acted upon.14 Whatever the question or questions that are being implicitly answered by the prior mentioned quotation, such explicit reasons for producing Sharing The Past were based on at least some contemporary historiography and
historical understanding that Black British historical research and understanding is very limited locally and nationally. Recognition of this historical ignorance was important in facilitating the production of this book.
Also important is that NBHA’s work is shaped around the social and
educational failure to teach all British people about the historical contributions of Black people to British history.
Another important element of the Sharing The Past was that more than a hundred people were interviewed for the book. Of these, approximately half were of Caribbean origin. These people ranged in age from their 20s to 80s, varied greatly in terms of length of time in Northamptonshire and in Britain
13 NBHA, Sharing the Past, p. i-ii
14 Ian Grosvenor, Assimilating Identities , p.196
85
generally, their social positions, as well as coming from both areas with
significant amounts of Black and Caribbean people in the county, Northampton and Wellingborough. These interviewees held various positions in the
community and offered numerous narrations about being Caribbean in Northamptonshire. This proved crucial in terms of offering frameworks recognising diverse perspectives on being Caribbean in Northamptonshire.
These perspectives were also augmented by the rationale that the contributors to Sharing The Past could reflect on their entire lives in Britain generally and Northamptonshire specifically. Such interviews ranged widely based on
participants’ era of birth and upbringing, but also over the decades of their lives which, particularly for older people, helps analysis of the changes in viewpoints during the course of their individual lives, as well as the community of local Caribbean people as a whole. The combination of multiple, variously positioned narrators with interviews based on participants’ wide-ranging life experiences make for very useful extant interviews, akin to what Shopes has suggested.
The oral history obtained from the NBHP/NBHA interviews was
overwhelmingly the only way most of this data could have been collected.
Information about consumer behaviour and leisure would have been extremely limited using documentary sources should this have been the primary method of data acquisition. Even the interviewees themselves clearly mentioned that word-of-mouth was the only way they were informed about local, regional and
national events held or attended by large numbers of Caribbean people.15 Furthermore, failing to use oral history in this research would render it impossible to discover and analyse a great range of connections between identity and consumption from the perspectives of individuals and groups of
15 Alphanso Bryan interviewed by George Watley (Northampton: NBHA), 27 September 2009; Joseph Dixon interviewed by George Watley (Northampton: NBHA), 31 July 2009; Weekes Baptiste interviewed by George Watley (Northampton: NBHA), 29 October 2009
86
local Caribbeans. Also, using oral history facilitates unearthing the motivations underpinning individual and collective decision making. Using oral history in these contexts adds to the historical documentation of local Caribbean post-War consumption, as well as providing a plethora of opportunities to analyse identity and consumption links in the triplicate of single, collective and passage of time perspectives, or any of the three individually. With recording and transcribing of interviews, the author and others can analyse single interviews, groups of interviews, as well as examining any differences or similarities between interviews conducted across years and conducted by different interviewers. In addition, future researchers, whether academic or otherwise, could potentially re-interview prior interviewees, adding another layer to historical analysis of passage of time perspectives.
Somewhat augmenting assertions noted in the preceding paragraph, Frisch argues that oral history is based on providing ‘more history’ and ‘anti-history’;
the former revealing aspects of history unavailable using traditional
documentary sources whilst the latter challenges socio-cultural hegemony in desiring to bypass the academic in order for people to be able to access the
‘real’ history ignored by hegemony as represented by academia.16 Augmenting this concept is Bornat’s suggestion that ‘anti-history’ as Frisch theorised, was at the heart of oral history origins from the 1960s onwards, at least in the UK.17 Frisch also asserts that ‘more history’ and ‘anti-history’ are on opposite poles.18 However, this is inconsistent with the history unearthed by NBHP/NBHA leading to Sharing The Past because the author and NBHA Members and supporters intentionally desired to simultaneously document and share ‘more history’ and ‘anti-history’. This was accomplished through providing original
16 Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany, New York, USA: State University of New York Press, 1990), p.187; Joanna Bornat, ‘Reminiscence and Oral History:
Parallel Universes or Shared Endeavour?’ in The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 2010), pp.457-458
17 Joanna Bornat, ‘Reminiscence and Oral History: Parallel Universes or Shared Endeavour?’, p.458
18 Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History, p.187
87
historical information whilst challenging traditional British views that Black history is not British history. Also included in this challenging of traditional dissemination of British history is the omission of Black people from British historical narratives other than labelling them as historical problems when mentioned. Oral history can provide ‘more history’ whilst bequeathing ‘anti-history’ to historiography. Also, ‘more ‘anti-history’ and ‘anti-‘anti-history’ can be used to counter historical narratives supporting and/or maintaining social and cultural hegemony. Bornat supports this contention by noting that oral historians
seeking to employ ‘anti-history’ challenge historical orthodoxy by giving voices
seeking to employ ‘anti-history’ challenge historical orthodoxy by giving voices