Paper short abstract:

Based on the research project Lojas da Baixa & Chiado: património vivo e imaterial (Downtown & Chiado: live and inmaterial patrimony), taken by the Gabinete de Estudos Olisiponenses – CML (Lisbon Studies Bureau - Lisbon City Hall), we try to recover and rebuilt the “colective memory” (Halbwachs) of 21st Century ardinas – newspaper street vendors – throughout oral history, with all its (des)continuities.

Paper long abstract:

The present reflection is noting more that a small part of the research project Lojas da Baixa & Chiado: património vivo e imaterial (Downtown & Chiado: live and inmaterial patrimony), taken by the Gabinete de Estudos Olisiponenses - CML (Lisbon Studies Bureau - Lisbon City Hall). This project takes form in the shops that are part of Baixa (literally Downtown) and Chiado areas, as for the "voice", it is represented by the shops' owners, managers and craftsmen, as for the "life" it is expressed by the "colour" captured by photographer Luís Pavão lens. But, among over half-hundred different business activities and more then one thousand shops that make up this commercial mosaic, where stories are gathered, built and interpreted, in order to understand the working class memories that help us to understand how complex and plural is the concept of identity, we have chosen the 21st Century ardinas, i.e., newspaper street vendors. In the forefront of a "struggle" for a "place", we mean a physical and a social place in the city, that sometimes is translated in a certain blend between people and places. "Viewers" of a multicultural flow of people that show Lisbon's new (and growing) maritime centrality.

Being aware that from this memory recover may result emotions, hence is "purifying" attitude; nevertheless there are obvious family solidarity dynamics. Therefore, oral history may be an auxiliary to History as a science. But the "memory-boom" phenomenon has an other explanation, memory is becoming a patrimony for places, representing an asset.