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Oral history for people or people for oral history
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Use of oral history in the recent decade has been institutionalized as a powerful tool in collecting, organizing and archiving the information data in different areas in Iran and today, the oral historians are not following to prove the significance of the efficiency of oral history and it seems that in view of the oral history capacities in the community, it is now time to deal with new working subjects and grounds. One of the most pivotal questions in this regard is the status of the people in Iranian oral history. Are the people a tool for collecting and documenting subjects or is oral history a means for helping the people to achieve their goals and desires? Where is the status of people in history? Can they have an impact on their historic fate? The reviewing of implemented plans in Iranian oral history shows that most of the conducted interviews have monologue nature and have been carried out on the basis of special goals and applications. Being oral history as a state tool and its concentration on two or three special subjects have caused the trace of the people to be seen less in the implemented works, and thus a few oral history plans with popular and collective nature like interviewing the families of the martyrs have not been successful in terms of content due to lack of planning.
The human community is a collection of connecting, intellectual entanglements and oral history can create a close connection between small details with the generalities of a big community through providing the grounds for achieving the wishes, desires and needs of the people who like to know more about their family roots, history of ancestors and sites, making the close history more understandable for the community of its audiences. This approach causes us to deal with the incidents to which are paid less attention through using oral history in implementing minor researches and using history in the people’s daily life becomes more tangible. In fact, this oral history application helps the people to write and even make the history in the future. Use of oral history in Iran at its best serves the interpretation and explanation of historical facts in line with the politics carried out with unwise policy. The issue that should be taken serious is that the people are seen less at the center of oral historiography. Use of oral history in issues such as the community’s therapeutic, and an inter-generational and inter-racial bond indicates that it can be a serious tool at the service of the people and solving their problems. It is necessary for the institutions and oral historians to think of the people, their needs and desires while opening historical realities and unknown issues through defining plans about the community.
Abolfazl Hassan Abadi (PhD)
Translated by: Mohammad Bagher Khoshnevisan
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