ABSTRACT
There are many silences. For Quakers silence is pregnant with spirit, prayer, possibility. For some religious sects it is a way of life. It is often used as a form of punishment, especially for children, but also sometimes for prisoners. Memories can be lost for a number of reasons, and their retrieval is rarely straightforward, arguably more a process of re-structuring than remembering: 'there is no "work of memory" without a corresponding "work of forgetting"'. Silence and power work hand in hand. In documentary records what appears on the agenda or in the variables chosen for analysis often represents only the acceptable, anodyne face of that issue. Silences at all levels, individual and collective, relate to issues and aspects deemed unacceptable, unattractive and/or dangerous to those who impose the silence for whatever reasons. Life histories and documents, quantitative and qualitative sources are all full of silences.
