The following core concepts relevant to the study are briefly defined in this section to ensure that they are understood in the context of this study. These, and other key terms, will be examined in more detail in the chapters that review the literature relating to these concepts:
Archives: According to Pearce-Moses (2005), and for the purposes of this study, the following definition is used: “Archives are those records that were created and received by a person, a family, or organisation, public or private, in the conduct of their affairs and preserved because of the enduring value contained in the information they hold, or as evidence of the functions and responsibilities of their creator.”
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Archives may include records of an individual or of an organisation. The archives examined for this study are those held by South Africa’s Portuguese community-based organisations in Gauteng, and include letters, photographs, emails, financial records, memorandums, administrative files or any other records created and received by these organisations regardless of media or format.
Community: WordNet (2005) provides the following simplistic definition of the term ‘communities’: “a group of people having ethnic or cultural or religious characteristics in common”. However, the concept of community is not that simple and is rather ambiguous and difficult to define. Although the idea of what a community is, is generally ‘understood’, it is not easily articulated.
Furthermore, different disciplines, including the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, and religious studies, have different views on what a community is. These views could be along the lines of a cultural dimension of community or a social dimension. For example, political theorists see community primarily as a political entity, while urban planners see it as a locality and, more recently in the online environment, community may be seen as a virtual space. Mulwa (2003:202) goes as far as suggesting that to define the concept of community is futile and unrealistic, because it is an elusive concept that defies definition, “... as it can have different meanings in different places and circumstances”.
Flinn (2007:153) also points this out by stating that definitions of what a
‘community’ might be, are not necessarily clear. Definitions of ‘a community’
are, of course, particularly complex and fluid and capable of many interpretations. Some definitions focus on locality, others on notions of shared beliefs or shared values producing a common purpose. Flinn (2007:154) therefore suggests that for practical reasons he prefers a broader and more explicit definition by referring to a community as a group who define themselves on the basis of locality, culture, faith, background, or other shared identity or interest. Many communities tend to have a local focus, but others have another shared focus altogether such as sexuality, occupation, ethnicity, faith, or an interest, or a combination of one or more of the above. The
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existence of shared norms and values is a critical criterion of community formation. A community would usually share a common bond, be it geographical (or residential), or social (such as religious, cultural or linguistic affiliation), amongst others.
It is also important to try to define community – and to understand its significance – as it relates to archival needs and concerns. This is best expressed by Ketelaar (cited in McKemmish et al, 2005:147):
“Collective identity is based on the elective processes of memory, so that a given group recognises itself through its memory of a common past. A community is a ‘community of memory’. The common past is not merely genealogical or traditional, something which one can take or leave. It is more: a moral imperative for one’s belonging to a community. The common past, sustained through time into the present, is what gives continuity, cohesion and coherence to the community. To be a community, family, a religious community, a profession involves an embeddedness in its past and, consequently, in the memory texts through which that past is mediated”.
Another important issue surrounding the definition of community is that of identity. Discussions on community often highlight its close connection to identity. However, both community and community identity are widely accepted as not static and, as such, community identity does not perpetuate itself throughout history, past and present, in a fixed, concrete or static way.
Rather, individual and group identities are fluid and people often have multiple identities, for example, belonging to or having a specific national and ethnic identity, a religious affiliation and a professional identity simultaneously.
Community archives: Similarly, definitions of what a ‘community archives’
are, are not always fixed or clear. Flinn (2007:155) therefore argues that one should not get too distracted by a ‘definitional exactitude’ of this concept.
Rather, he recommends that a community archive be seen as any collection or initiative that documents and preserves the traces of any group or locality, regardless of where those records are kept or preserved. These may be kept within community structures, at mainstream institutions, or in partnership.
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Community archives often go under a number of different names, and are not new developments, such as community heritage projects, an ethnic archive collection, local history endeavours, and oral history projects.
Community-based archives and other archival collecting initiatives of a community: It is important to make a distinction between the different types of community archives and the various approaches to archival collecting initiatives that are most often established for a community. These may include those that are borne within the community, situated within its own community structures and managed by it independently. These are often referred to as independent community-based archives. On the other hand, there are those collecting initiatives that are established by mainstream institutions, which acquire and transfer records created by a community to the mainstream collecting institutions, where they are managed, preserved and made accessible. These initiatives tend to be affiliated to institutions such as a national archive or a special university collection.
Finally, there are also archival collecting initiatives of communities that adopt a collaborative approach to the management and preservation of these records. These endeavours normally include partnerships between the community and a mainstream institution, where the skills and knowledge of each are garnered in order to sustain and enhance the collecting initiative.
Flinn (2011:7-8) also acknowledges these different approaches by explaining that, although the focus of archival collecting initiatives of communities has often been that of keeping physical custody of records within community structures, the focus also includes endeavours where intellectual ownership of the collections is retained by the community, but physical custody of the records may be transferred to a mainstream institution. Other approaches also include complete intellectual and physical donation of these records to a mainstream institution, a distributed approach to preserving these records, or partnerships between the community and the formal heritage institutions for mutual support, advice and professional expertise.
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For the purposes of this study, when seeking strategies for collecting, managing and preserving the records generated by the Portuguese community-based organisations in South Africa, all these approaches are considered so as to determine the best possible framework for a collection plan of the community.
Community-based organisations: According to Mulwa (2003:204), community-based organisations fall under the grouping often referred to as civil society organisations, which also include non-governmental organisations (NGOs), trade unions, associations, lobby movements, clan groups, women’s and youth groups, religiously based groups, welfare societies, and the like.
The author goes on to explain that “community based organisations are voluntary associations where people organise together in order to mobilise the potential of their collective power”. These community organisations may be seen as popular organisations where people act jointly, as members of groups or communities, to decide and act on issues which can best be solved through their collective action. The common characteristic of these organisations is that members voluntarily come together to work for a common goal.
For this study, the Portuguese community-based organisations in South Africa, specifically those in Gauteng, are examined.
Cultural diversity: Cultural diversity refers to the complex composition of a society. According to Diller (2007:4-5), it acknowledges that society is made up of interest groups which are often distinct, while holding a general commonality. These distinct groups may include ethnic or cultural communities, immigrant communities, religious groups, and linguistic groups, amongst others.
In South Africa, because of its past racial and ethnic segregation supported by apartheid legislation, cultural diversity is a contentious issue. This is noted by the heritage research report by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) by Deacon, Mngqolo and Prosalendis (2003:4), which recommends that cultural diversity as a concept should be used to challenge the idea that cultural identities are primordial and are related to older racial or ethnic
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designations. The report further argues that this is especially important in South Africa where we have a history of ‘ethnicised’ cultural identities. The report therefore suggests that, if the concept is understood as a means to learning more and respecting one another’s cultures, and not as means of dividing cultures, cultural diversity can become a resource of great social value, and may even enhance both social cohesion and development.
Furthermore, Lubisi (2001:2) notes that, because of the geographic location (Great Britain, Australia and North America) of leading authors on subjects such as cultural diversity and documenting under-documented groups, the dominant culture often corresponds to the culture of the majority of citizens, while the marginal cultures – which demand representation – are often the cultures of minorities. For this reason, these issues abroad usually refer to the promotion of the rights of minority groups. In South Africa, on the other hand, while certain minority groups have been protected and promoted in the past, the majority cultures have often been marginalised. This is pointed out by Beukman (2000:138) who notes that the protection of minorities in an international context refers to environments where the majority discriminates against minorities. As a result, international perspectives need to be carefully analysed before being translocated to a South African environment.
Kaplan (2000:148-150) also cautions against having an ‘essentialist outlook’
on cultural diversity and community identities, such as ethnic and immigrant identity. She argues that identity is not cast in stone. Individuals have multiple, fluid identities. The danger lies in the ‘reification’ of cultural identities which may lead to the belief that one’s cultural identity is nearly a biological, unchangeable state of being. This could produce an ‘us’ versus ‘other/them’
perception of cultural groups in a society, instead of producing a more integrated or cohesive society.
Ethnicity and ethnic communities: The website of the Centre for Evidence in Ethnicity (2011) maintains that the concept of ethnicity is subjective and complex. It recognises that people identify themselves with a social grouping on cultural grounds, including language, lifestyle, religion, food and origins.
The basis of ethnicity is therefore often a tradition of common descent or
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intermarriage and shared culture or history. According to the centre, it is important to recognise that, in a world of migration and mixing, ethnicity is dynamic rather than fixed.
In countries such as Australia, Canada and the USA, when referring to ethnic communities, often immigrant or minority communities are implied.
Ethnic archives: Several difficulties stand in the way of defining the term
‘ethnic archives’, especially because of the subjective nature of defining ethnicity. However, Neutel (1978:105) argues that the term has gained popularity in certain countries in spite of its ambiguity because “few other terms have the merit of being so descriptive and brief”. Neutel provides a workable definition of the concept by saying that an ethnic archive “is one that acquires materials that have a bearing on the experience of the ethnic group”.
He continues by explaining that ethnic archives are the records that are created by organisations or persons identifying or identified with the ethnic group, and whose activities in whole or in part reflect actions of an ethnic character, regardless of where those records are kept or preserved.
Although the term ‘ethnic’ is widely used internationally when discussing archives of specific groups in a multicultural or diverse setting, the term
‘communities’, and ‘community archives’, is preferred in South Africa (Beukman, 2000:32).
Records: The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO 15489, 2001) defines a record as information in any medium created, received, and maintained as evidence by an organisation or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business.
Records are created and received by organisations for the purpose of their work as products of immediate interest and they support the activities of their creators. Records are therefore products, and serve as evidence, of the activities carried out by an organisation.
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For this study the records generated by organisations - or to be more exact - those created and kept by the Portuguese community-based organisations in South Africa which serve as evidence of their activities, are examined.
Records management: Records management is the “... field of management responsible for the systematic control of the creation, maintenance, use, reproduction and disposal of records” (Bellardo, 1992). Controlling records throughout their life cycle – from their creation up until their destruction or permanent preservation – is the basis for records management. Therefore, records management is a term used to refer to the way records are cared for, so that they can be used continuously by users such as employees of an organisation, legal authorities, researchers, communities and the public in general.
For this study the records management practices of the Portuguese community-based organisation in South Africa are investigated in the empirical part of this research, as these practices have a direct impact on the records that may be available for any proposed archival collecting plan of the community.
Social or collective memory: Social or collective memory have been given multiple meanings over the years. The two terms are often seen as one, but at times blurry distinctions are made between the two. To complicate matters, terms such as public memory, popular memory, historical memory and collective remembrance, amongst others are also used interchangeably with these (Josias, 2011:96).
Most studies of social or collective memory are influenced by Maurice Halbachs, who argues that “personal memories are invoked within social frameworks such as language, the family, religious group, and social class. A dynamic relationship between individual and collective memory is therefore being propagated” (cited in Josias, 2011:99). Zerubavel (1996:293) adds that social memory “involves the integration of various different personal pasts in to a single common past that all members of a particular community come to remember collectively”. Zerubavel also notes that social memory is not static,
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but rather always being constructed and re-constructed. It is this and other aspects of the concept which have made some sceptical of it. Historians are sometimes dismissive of social memory, because of its ‘fluid’ nature and its emphasis on ‘continuity’ as opposed to history’s more ‘fixed’ nature. Others have been more open to a more complex relationship between the two, acknowledging that history - social memory relationship can be complementary (Zelizer, 1995:216).
Similarly, there have also been tensions regarding the role of social memory in archives. Archives have traditionally been perceived as institutions that collect the authoritative records of the state and records of national significance. However, with the postmodern discourse that has entered the archival world, the opportunities that social memory offer as a complement or as an alternative – especially in representing the experiences of less prominent groups in societies – has become increasingly acknowledged (Josias, 2011:102).
Social memory is also intricately linked to social history, and in the literature reviewed these concepts are often used interchangeably. However, definitions of social history and its significance to archives and the under-documented are examined in detail in chapter three.
South African Portuguese community: If we are to apply the above definition by Flinn (2007) for ‘communities’, the Portuguese community in South Africa may be seen as a group which defines itself on the basis of some or a combination of the following: locality, culture, faith, background, and other shared identity and interests. Individuals who see themselves, or are identified as being South African Portuguese, may do so because of one or more of the following reasons: a common language, lifestyle, religion, food, a common descent or origin, or shared experiences, culture or history. Often shared negative experiences such as those associated with being an immigrant and the object of discrimination, and ‘not fitting in’ are also factors that contribute towards a ‘community identity’. As noted in the definition of
‘community’ above, community identity is not cast in stone. It is fluid and
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multifaceted. This also applies to the South African Portuguese community that has changed over the years and continues to be re-defined.
For practical purposes of this study, the South African Portuguese community will be referred to as peoples who originate directly from the Republic of Portugal and their descendants, and who identify themselves as such. The Portuguese community-based organisations that are the object of this study are therefore defined as those that represent or have been established by these peoples in South Africa.
This study does not include peoples or organisations from other Portuguese-speaking independent nations, such as Mozambican nationals or any other nationals from Portuguese-speaking countries such as Brazil, that have emigrated to South Africa. Other than for practical reasons, the motivation for this exclusion was also based on the unique identities of each of these national communities, and on the fact that in some cases these communities have their own organisations that create records which are relevant to their particular activities and experiences in South Africa. For example, the Mozambican community organisation, Associacao dos Residentes de Mocambique.
It is important to note, however, that this study does include Portuguese nationals that immigrated to South Africa from the former Portuguese colonies (such as Mozambique and Angola) while these were still part of Portugal, as these individuals were considered Portuguese citizens at the time.
Under-documented communities: McDonald (2008:3) explains that, when speaking of under-documented communities, one is referring to groups, populations or communities who have been marginalised or underrepresented within the context of the archival or documentary national heritage of a society. Documenting these communities refers to ways of establishing and collecting alternative historical narratives that may challenge or complement the one constructed by the mainstream or dominant cultures, communities, organisations or individuals.
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Some of the above key terms and several additional concepts, such as postmodernism and social history, are discussed in further detail in chapter three of this study.