Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Research Methods by John H Stanfield II

Author:John H Stanfield II [Stanfield, John H II]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611320015
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2011-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

Part II: Mixed Methods

8 Multiple Methods in Research on Twenty-First-Century Plantation Museums and Slave Cabins in the U.S. South

Stephen Small

Introduction

Thousands of plantation museum sites containing buildings and structures constructed during the antebellum period or earlier still exist across the U.S. South at the start of the twenty-first century, and many of these sites house original slave cabins (Eichstedt & Small 2002; Mooney 2004; Small 2009). Scholars from various disciplines have analyzed these sites, including slave cabins, and most of the research on the cabins has focused on their history and archeology (Singleton 1991; Vlach 1993; Wilkie 2000).

In recent decades, a growing body of research on contemporary plantation museum sites—by public historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and museum specialists—has emerged, and the primary focus of this work has been on the role, operations, and functioning of these sites in the present rather than the past (Eichstedt & Small 2002; Horton & Horton 2006; Mooney 2004). These studies explore how heritage tourist sites discuss or avoid discussion of slavery, racialized segregation and injustice, and their legacies. They focus on the discursive strategies used and the ways in which images and representations work alongside textual language using euphemisms, evasions, and erasures. These analysts raise issues about public history, collective memory, the operation of gender ideologies, and the many aspects of power inequalities underlying the institutions and their operations. Representational strategies of race and slavery at heritage sites have also been linked to similar strategies operating in the realm of politics and the media (Hall 1997; Omi & Winant 1986; Small 2002). And they resonate with broader studies of collective memory (see, e.g., Trouillot 1995).

Studies of plantation museum sites use a variety of methodologies and methods and draw on a wide range of empirical data, including historical archives, archaeology and architecture, site observations and ethnography, discourses, texts, and visual images as well as interviews. Data have also been collected from websites. Analysts of African American Studies and African Diapora Studies have been centrally involved in this work (Horton & Horton 2006). They have deployed multidisciplinary perspectives, added substantial empirical insights, and expanded the sources of data consulted, including African American testimony, folklore and literature, music, art, and performance, and archeology and architecture (Franklin & McKee 2004; Singleton 1991). They have also carried out comparisons across the Diaspora (Horton & Horton 2006).

This chapter discusses research that I'm currently conducting on the organization. operations, and functioning of plantation museum sites in the U.S. South; it describes the multiple qualitative methods I have used to collect data from a wide range of sites, with a particular focus on slave cabins. My primary focus is on the contemporary sites and their representations of the past, rather than on their historical details. In other words, I'm interested in the past in the present, in the strategies and tactics used by site professionals today—including the layout of sites, the use of texts and images, and the stories told by tour guides—to convey messages about the nature, significance, and legacy of slavery and southern history.

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