Catarina Valdigem Pereira
Objects of Collective Remembering in Postcoloniality among Portuguese Muslims of Indian and Mozambican origins
My PhD research is fully granted by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) and it aims to understand the processes through which different generations of Portuguese Muslims of Indian and Mozambican origins, based in Lisbon metropolitan area (Portugal), have been sustaining and reproducing collective memories of belonging through the constant apprehension and appropriation of ‘sensory objects’ made available in a more or less constant manner within their private spaces of interaction. My assumptions are that objects of both material and immaterial formats and shapes, such as decorative objects of the home, personal and cherished items, food recipes and dishes, and media contents/ objects, hold an equal potential to enact recollections of past lived experiences and to facilitate the work of imagination of past events among different generations of the members of this postcolonial group. What holds this overall range of objects together are their sensory qualities and ability to enact overlapping collective memories of belonging, which can be summarized in general ideas of Indian-ness, Muslim-ness, Mozambican-ness and of Portuguese-ness. With these assumptions, I undertook a 12 months’ sensuous and tasteful ethnography (Stoller 1989), within these subjects’ private spaces of relation, giving priority to religious and communitarian settings, as well as, to the domestic spaces, which I was kindly given access to.
Considering this particular community triangular migration trajectory (starting from India/Pakistan, then to Mozambique, during the Portuguese colonial empire, and from there to Lisbon, after decolonization), I have been articulating a conceptual framework, which discusses the ‘Colonial’ and the ‘Postcolonial’, and its intersections with the notions of ‘Collective Memory’, ‘Materiality’ and the ‘Sensory’. This reflection is also placed within the context of subjective practices of apprehension and appropriation of material culture and sensory objects, and the complex mnemonic narratives that result from there.
A few preliminary findings of my research project are presented in a paper published in the Bocc – Biblioteca On-line de Ciências da Comunicação, UBI (Portugal), with the title “Remembering with and through ‘media objects’ among Portuguese Muslims of Indian and Mozambican Origins: a family case study” http://www.bocc.ubi.pt/pag/pereira-catarina-remembering-with-and-trough-media-objects.pdf
From March 2004 to March 2006, I worked as a research assistant in the research project “Television and Images of Difference”, supervised by Dr. Isabel Ferin Cunha, based at the Research Centre for Media and Journalism (CIMJ – Centro de Investigação Media e Jornalismo), Lisbon, also sponsored by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia). My participation in this research project included undertaking both a television content analysis via SPSS, a reception study - using qualitative methodologies and techniques, which included focus groups, in-depth individual interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, among different gendered and ethnic groups (Gipsy Women, Old Women, Brazilian Women and Young Girls from 8-12) - and writing articles in books and periodicals with referees. Few online links are available in http://200.144.189.42/ojs/index.php/mediajornalismo/article/view/6138 and http://ebookbrowse.com/01-05-catarina-valdigem-pdf-d49766277.
My participation in this research project took place while conducting a MA research in Communication and Cultural Industries, which I concluded in 2005 at the Portuguese Catholic University (UCP – Universidade Católica Portuguesa), Lisbon, with the thesis title: “TV as a mediator of cultural hybridity processes: a reception study of the Brazilian telenovela ‘O Clone’”. A brief summary of the MA thesis findings can be found in papers presented in conference proceedings (Intercom, 2005; Sopcom, 2005). Online links are available in http://www.intercom.org.br/papers/nacionais/2005/resumos/R1913-1.pdf and http://www.bocc.ubi.pt/pag/valdigem-catarina-industria-cultural-televisiva-fonte-mediadora-processos.pdf.