The Pros and Cons of Participatory Projects

What is a participatory project?  It is a project that that relies on the participation of the public in order to achieve its goal.  So, why I am I talking about a subject such as this on a history blog?  The answer is simple... its the future of our profession.  I know that sounds profoundly promising, but it really is the truth.  Sure, right now participatory projects such as the Boston Bombings project or the 9/11 project are more beneficial for the Sociology world, but just imagine if we would have had something similar following the Great Chicago Fire, Trail of Tears, or Sherman's March.  There are many historians that seem to have a problem with acknowledging the importance of social reaction, they claim bias and the need to feel important will somehow curve what people will write, thus creating an imperfect view of history.  However, I could argue that there really hasn't been too many historians that have written pieces that weren't based on some sort of bias.  As humans, we are imperfect, and our brains are designed to somehow alter information that we receive through our senses in order for us to make sense of it.  The importance of these accounts go somewhat further though.  As I have said time and time again, there is a revolution happening in the field of history.  The lives of the rich and famous have become less and less important and the lives of the average citizens have come to the forefront.  Why is this?  A great example of this is slavery in the South.  Because of the importance placed on the ultra wealthy, there are many Americans that are ignorant when it comes to slave ownership in the Antebellum South.  High Schools bypass the complications that are involved with the subject and make it a black and white case.  Southerners were slave owners and Northerners were not, when in all reality, a vast majority of whites in the South never owned slaves, while there were quite a few in the Northern states that did own them.  Because of the focus that was put on the elites in our history, our field has become romanticized to an awful extent.  Just as readers of tabloids today see there obsession with the rich and famous as simply pop culture, could you perceive members of America 150 years from now thinking that the average daily life of our people consisted of living in Hollywood and doing whatever it is that the rich and famous do?  Participatory projects are a key in ensuring that this does not happen, it gives a voice to the average citizen so that down the road historians can look back and see trends in our daily lives but also in our way of thinking and reasoning.  With this digital age, nearly anything in the public is recorded, we will always have that.  But coupling this digital archive with a voice at the scene is just as important.  It lends a soul to the images recorded, and also lends cultural tendencies to it as well.  There are four different types of participatory projects, for me to go into detail on these would result in a very long blog, however you can find them at this website:

http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/09/frameworks-and-lessons-from-public.html

Our voices are important to our story and to our lives, sure our stories can be stretched and changed through time, however, videos can be deleted or lost.  Oral history is still history, and it is the way that we perceive ourselves and our surroundings, and one could argue that is more important than what our favorite movie star ate for lunch today.

- Jason

The Importance of Recording Commemorations

In the earlier years of our profession, historians clung to the stories of the wealthy and famous, however, the new generations of historians have begun to document the lives of the "everyday people" in society.  Keeping a record of these commemorations gives us the chance to analyze how societies react to certain events.  The 9/11 Memorial website is a perfect example of this, while some individuals feel that these submissions should be carefully combed through for legitimacy, I feel otherwise.  These are the personal accounts from individuals and how the events that unfolded on 9/11 affected them.  I do find it somewhat amusing that the same individuals that discredit these submissions are also the individuals clinging to historic journals and take the words in them as fact.  The submissions on the memorial page are no less important than the words found in journals.

I think there are many individuals that discredit current documents and journals, but fail to realize that one day these accounts will become history.  It is crucial that we as a society document our lives so that historians in the future have the opportunity to research the events that unfold in our lives.  Imagine the vast amounts of information we would have if Facebook and Twitter were around during the Civil War.  Tragedies that occur often have varying degrees of impact on different areas of the world, but also within different cultures that exist in those different areas.  Many individuals would argue that people rarely put a full truth on their virtual profiles, however, the subjects and posts can be useful although it may not be the truth.  It often expresses what is popular at the time, and also can show trends within those popular subjects.  The more information that we are able to record, the more of an impact that information can make in the future.