Witness Seminars in Industrial Communities
By Christopher Sellers, M.D., Ph.D., Stony Brook University (July, 2013; revised 2024)
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, I and my team conducted 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). The seminar for the fourth site, Beaumont –Port Arthur, Texas (also a petrochemical region), took place in January, 2017.
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 conducted brought back some results of our study to the communities themselves. Other goals were 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.
The witness seminar idea has been most fully employed in Britain. Here’s an example: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/groups/ich/witness/archives/science/NorthSea.aspx And here’s an overview of how the method has been taken up in history of science and medicine: http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/what-is-a-witness-seminar/ Such seminars, like those being planned, are of limited size and thematic focus. Most of these are also closed to a public or general-interest audience, just as we are planning with our seminars. In our case, having a small closed group is even more essential, as some of the topics under discussion have been locally quite controversial. Not bringing in the press for example, is necessary to ensure frank and honest discussion, rather than grand-standing. Our seminars departed from many of these precedents in that most all of these British examples involve historical decisions and events shared by mostly elite actors: highly educated scientists and professionals. Our seminars employed a somewhat different combination, to bring out voices not just from elite and educated actors, but also others, whether workers or local residents, who may not have such qualifications.
The only close model is a witness seminar undertaken by the well-known Scottish oral historian, Arthur McIvor, among those involved in the Scottish asbestos industry http://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/courses/history/staff/mcivorarthurprof/ . Professor Sellers has been in close consultation with McIvor in developing the protocol for these seminars.
Another social scientific method similar to the witness seminar is that of the focus group. A focus group is a method developed mostly by American social scientists, to probe public opinions about particular topics in greater depth than a survey or some such method would allow. Here’s an outline of the method online: http://www.odi.org.uk/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/7074.pdf While this method has not been employed by historians (to my knowledge), many of its principles are similar to those we did employ. The biggest difference is that while we were interested in different groups’ perceptions of the hazards involved, having people talk about these differences, we were also interested in bringing out differences in narratives, the ways do (or don’t) situate, frame these hazards in terms of their own life stories. Hence the breadth of the main questions being posed: they allowed our contributors a freer reign, to tell stories about their experiences, rather than just give opinions.
In sum, our seminars, while borrowing on established methods, forged methodological innovations of their own. That is because of the kind of history we sought to illuminate as well as the fact that having four of these, in two very different national cultures, adds to the comparative dimensions. As with all these other models on which we are building, full consent forms and permissions were presented to participants before and after the proceedings, and all proceedings were recorded and transcribed, as well as videotaped. While the videos continued to be available on Youtube, the current website “Stories of Environmental and Climate Justice” serves as the central repository for this project.
Dates, Places, and Links:
August 3, 2013—Witness Seminar I in El Paso, Texas, USA,
August 10, 2013—Witness Seminar in Chihuahua City, Chihuahua, Mexico.
August 12, 2013—Follow-up Witness Seminar in El Paso, Texas, USA.
August 16, 2013–Follow-up Witness Seminar in Chihuahua City, Chihuahua, Mexico.
August 16, 2013—Witness Seminar in Minatitlan, Veracruz, Mexico.
January 14, 2017–Witness Seminar in Port Arthur/Beaumont, Texas, USA (with partial support from the Baylor Institute for Oral History)
–From Myrna Santiago, “Mexico’s Energy Reform; National Coffers, Local Consequences,” The Stansbury Forum [originally published in Revista; Harvard Review of Latin America (Fall, 2015)] (accessed October 31, 2024)
“The small, white-washed classroom at the University in Minatitlán, Veracruz, was packed with a couple dozen people who, although neighbors, had never met. Several members of a fishing cooperative, a pediatrician, a toxicologist from Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), a biologist turned environmental activist, a couple of retired oil workers, a Pemex engineer, two medical students, neighbors of the local refinery, and community activists all turned out to discuss relations between Pemex and surrounding communities.
“Invited by my colleague, the historian Christopher Sellers from Stony Brook University, to this unusual witness seminar, participants squeezed around tables set up with tiny voice recorders. I had a supporting role, helping to manage the meeting and translate if necessary. I was also thrilled to visit for the first time Minatitlán and its twin down the road, the port of Coatzacoalcos, the hubs of the oil and petrochemical industry in southern Veracruz and two of the most polluted cities in Mexico.
The reason for my excitement had its own history…”
–From Nicole JeanBaptiste, “Bearing Witness to the Witness Seminar,” (May 11, 2015), Blog of Columbia Oral History Master of Arts Program, New York, NY, USA (accessed October 31, 2024)
“A few weeks ago Christopher Sellers gave a talk on the witness seminar, a tool he’s relied upon quite heavily for an oral history project that he’s leading, which explores the history of an industrial site and its relations to its past workers and surrounding community. Originally developed by the Institute for Contemporary British History (ICBH) the witness seminar has been employed as an alternative interviewing technique for those engaging in oral history collection. In the case of Sellers’s study he brings together 10-12 people with extended but very different perspectives on the history of the hazards of lead and petro-chemicals at four industrial sites in Texas and Mexico.
In a sense learning of the witness seminar as an interview format troubled some of the comforting responses I’ve developed to the oral historian student’s question around what constitutes a really good interview or at least a properly conducted interview….”