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Oral History and the Discursive Construction of Identity in Flint, Michigan[Note 1. This research project has been supported by a Research ...]
Author(s) -
Britt Erica
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of linguistic anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.463
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1548-1395
pISSN - 1055-1360
DOI - 10.1111/jola.12196
Subject(s) - contest , identity (music) , oral history , period (music) , voice , sociology , gender studies , history , media studies , anthropology , aesthetics , political science , art , law , linguistics , philosophy
This article explores the ways that Flint residents report on their encounters with various kinds of “outsiders” who are influenced by mass‐mediated images that position Flint and its residents in a certain way. Through the voicing of outsiders who engage in the circulation of negative discourses about Flint, residents then insert their own voices as they contest negative discourses about the city. Here, the images that they project about life in Flint provide a powerful counternarrative about what it means to have lived in the city during its deindustrializing period. This suggests that oral history interviews are an important site for the discursive production (and contestation) of individual and collective identities for Flint residents.