Week Thirteen

I found this week’s case studies on sites of conscience to be very moving and uplifting. We read articles about the Tenement Museum on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the Terezín Memorial, and the District Six Museum in South Africa. At some points the readings even had me crying! Another thing that really stuck out to me in these readings and which I mentioned briefly in our class discussion, was the intersection between public history and collective action. I mentioned that I am taking a communications class on social movement theory and I wanted to use this week’s blog as an opportunity to apply some of those concepts more clearly to my particular reading on the Tenement Museum. 

Some concepts that I thought were really applicable were the idea of class consciousness, consciousness raising and network formation. Class consciousness is when a person or group of people begin to identify the privileges and disadvantages they are subjected to based on their class or social position, and work for one’s class interests. It is similar to consciousness raising in which a person obtains a growing awareness of how an aspect of their identity shapes their life. Consciousness raising is also the term used to describe when you attempt to bring attention to a particular cause or issue. Network formation is pretty self explanatory; it is the culmination and creation of relationships between individuals and institutions who each have a different skill, perspective, or resource to contribute to a movement. 

In choosing to bring awareness to the current plight of immigrants through the historical context of immigrants who lived in the Tenements in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Tenement Museum engaged in consciousness raising. In order to combat romanticization of the past and glorification of the struggles of early immigrants, the Tenement Museum began to hire recent immigrants to connect their immigration story with those who lived in the apartment building. Those who sympathized with early immigrants yet believed recent immigrants to be in the wrong hopefully were able to see that immigrants have similar experiences and endure similar conditions throughout history therefore broadening their empathy to include contemporary immigrants. This change in thinking was really fostered through their “Kitchen Conversations” which is a post-tour program for visitors to have dialogue. 

Their program “Shared Journeys” creates a space for new immigrants to explore “the connections between the stories of the residents of 97 Orchard Street and the challenges faced by immigrant communities today.” (pg 48) Participants are obviously well aware of the struggles and disadvantages they are subjected to, but seeing their struggles reflected in historical context alongside others with whom they share experiences could help to connect it directly with their social status as an immigrant and see themselves as part of a network. The program includes adult ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes in which they are given vocabulary lists containing words that will help them advocate for their community. Through this they can engage in class consciousness by working towards the interest of their “class” or community. They also create a network of immigrants who have in common knowledge from the class and can share their own personal knowledge of resources and skills. When they go into their community and talk about what they learned in the program, they are adding to a network of individuals who are equipped with resources to fight against inequality and unjust conditions.

Links to sources: Buechler – Understanding Social Movements and Castells – Networks of Outrage and Hope