PRODUCCIÓN LOCAL

The questions that motivated me to set out for this research have been discussed in chapter 0. How these first thoughts of mine as well as my immersion with Karia- koo’s history shaped the way I eventually went about the research shall be critically reflected in this chapter.

There is a conflict between engaging with collective memory of people who lived through a certain period of time and posing questions about events and meaning changes in history that are clearly framed by an implicit socio-political context. I thereby assume that official history plays a central role within collective memories. More often than not linear progressions bounded by ruptures in socio-political cir- cumstances are assumed. These clear ascriptions and boundaries that are some- times taken from literature and lend a hand to more easily find a way for opera- tionalization can be criticized on various sides.

Often they include ascriptions to ethnic groups. While they do have relevance in society, sometimes in very real terms, as e.g. colonial policy explicitly was based along this differentiation, they can never be fully applied as a single entity and cate- gorize every person. Rifts within one group as well as connections between differ- ent ones are easily overlooked. And changes of group definitions over time and space occur frequently. Yet, on what basis a researcher then defines them is most of the time very unclear. One approach to elude this in my research was to go by group self-definitions, such as associations that were formed on the basis of a spe- cific descent.

Another fundamental critique of taking official history writing as starting point is that it counters the collective memory approach, which I have described above as not being what is written in history books but what is remembered by people. I nevertheless start within this corset of socio-political periods and use them to ex- tract a meaning and get an understanding of the statements that people made in interviews. For interpretation I do need these kinds of references in order to reveal the real meaning as the background that is rarely voiced explicitly. But by always keeping those glasses on one runs the risk of not seeing the continuities of diverse epochs and that the official history and political events probably are not the major factors producing shifts in society. Instead the negotiations of people might have created them. To discover those is exactly why I use the concept of collective mem- ory, to be more open. To get a picture of what could be the memories about Karia- koo. I therefore use historic references as a starting point since I am not socialized within the surroundings that I researched in and this were the anchor points I could get a hold on while preparing for the fieldwork. It shows a central limitation of a foreigner going to do research in a society that s/he knows too little in its daily real- ity and discourses. Especially for a topic as collective memory that includes those discourses, and therefore cannot be fully prepared by reading scientific books. As Kvale states, the interviewee’s statements are not collected – they are co- authored by the interviewer (Kvale 1996:183; also cf. Meuser and Nagel 1991:451). In qualitative research communication is understood as the central constitutive act of knowledge. Interviewer and interviewee reciprocatively negotiate the under- standing of the discussed subject (cf. Lamnek 2010:22). This is why I put so much emphasis on the possible influence of my assumptions going into the research. Which questions I ask and how they are perceived influence the interviewees’ re- sponses. This continues in the analysis of interview transcripts, where the respon- dent actually has no possibility anymore to clarify meanings that I may misinterpret. (Kvale 1996:183f)

8 Findings from empirical research in Kariakoo

As stated in the beginning collective memory is seen as a process that has two lines of interaction: How remembered past influences views and actions in the present and how present conditions influence the remembrance of the past. This is also how results of the interviews are framed; it is not only describing people’s view of the past and their actions upon but also trying to reconstruct how the frames of present conditions influence the perspectives on the past.

The findings from interview research are presented in the following four chapters. I start with the different views held by various groups about Kariakoo now and then. Two major narratives reveal themselves: that of a close-knit former community that is broken apart by gentrification processes and a young generation which comes for work not residence takes over Kariakoo. Thereafter how relations between groups are perceived and constructed is described; identity constructions form the core in these first two chapters. It is a vital part of this thesis because I assume that social groups are the carriers of collective memory as laid out in chapters 2.1 and 6.2. This is followed by views on and how colonial memory is dealt with. The materialization of memory is at the centre of this analysis. Lastly the often encountered point of view of Kariakoo ‘developing’ in the sense of modernizing is presented as a possible hegemonic perspective.

8.1 Narratives of Kariakoo: from living neighbourhood to commer-