From: “The Witness Seminar as Applied to the History of Industrial Communities”
By Christopher Sellers, Stony Brook University (written July, 2013)
“The “Witness seminar” is an established technique in the field of social history. The current application of the “witness seminar” method constitutes a vital step in long-standing research project being conducted by Christopher Sellers, Professor of History at Stony Brook University in New York http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/history/people/faculty/sellers.html , with funding from the National Science Foundation http://search.engrant.com/project/3SBHlF/the_uneven_development_of_industrial_hazards_lead_and_oil_in_the_u_s_versus_mexico_1930-1990 . Since 2009, this historical and social scientific study has probed the history of four industrial communities, two of them in the US and two of them in Mexico, with a view to comparing their historical dealings especially with industry-related hazards. In the month of August, 2013, we are planning witness seminars for three of the four communities under study: El Paso, Texas, and Chihuahua City, Chihuahua (communities long centered around lead smelters), and Minatitlan-Coatzacoalcos (a network of communities long centered around petrochemical industry). We are not as yet planning a seminar in the fourth site, Beaumont –Port Arthur, Texas (also a petrochemical region), for limitations of time and financing.” [Note: a further Witness Seminar is now being planned there for January 14, 2017, whose video will also appear on this site.]
“In the case of this study, a “witness seminar” means: bringing together 10-12 people with extended but very different perspectives on the history of an industrial site and its relations. In the course of the seminar, they discuss their recollections of this history, each from the standpoint of their own experience. One goal is for key members and representatives of different parts of a community to share their memories, recognize and discuss any conflicting recollections, and arrive at a better understanding if not a reconciliation of differences in what they remember. In this way, the witness seminars we are now planning will bring back some results of our study to the communities themselves. Other goals are more social scientific and historical. For instance, comparing the discussion of similar questions in such different communities and contexts promises to shed light on: the varieties of narrative available to different people, groups, towns and cultures to frame and understand their pasts; the different ways in which conflicts have unfolded and been contested; the varieties of relations between experts and lay people at the local level, and the ways in which supposedly “universal” knowledge about lead poisoning or benzene’s effects has been taken up—or not—and by which groups, experts and lay people alike….”
For more: https://disaster.studies.stonybrook.edu/wordpress/disasters/the-witness-seminar-as-applied-to-the-history-of-industrial-communities/