Alessandro Portelli

Storytelling is a natural part of the human experience. Human beings communicate meaning through talk. Oral historians have harnessed this tradition of transmitting knowledge and created an important research technique that allows the expression of voice. While storytelling has a deep history, the adaptation of this human process into a legitimated research method is relatively new.

Oral history was established in 1948 as a modern technique for historical documentation when Columbia University historian Allan Nevins began recording the memoirs of persons significant in American Life. (North American Oral History Association, as quoted by Thomson, 1998, p. 581)

Some researchers find it helpful to distinguish between “oral tradition” and “oral history,” the former being the umbrella category in which the oral history method can be placed. “Oral tradition” among many Native American people refers to stories handed down for multiple generations that can also involve nonhuman subjects (Wilson, 1996, p. 8). This differs from the more recent academic use of the term “oral history,” in which personal stories are collected from an individual.
As we will show in this chapter, oral history is a very unique kind of interview situation because the process of storytelling on which it is based is distinct. There are moments of realization, awareness, and, ideally, education and empowerment during the narrative process. When conducting an oral history with a college-aged woman struggling in a serious battle with anorexia nervosa, there was a point, two long sessions into the life history project, when the interviewee noted the moment in her life that culminated in a turn towards anorexia. It was a significant moment in her life narrative that could only have come through by the autobiographical telling of her story. Not only did this represent a major turning point in the respondent’s self-awareness, but it also helped elucidate and expand on existing substantive knowledge about eating disorder vulnerability and the onset of such disorders. The clarity with which Claire notes the moment she turned towards body obsession and the way in which it initially occurred could only have happened through the telling of her story from childhood on.

I kind of focused more on my circumstances and the lack of opportunities that had been available to me. Like, all these things that I had, put up waiting, you know, I had waited for, for so long, and everyone was like, “one day, one day,” and then, that day was here and nothing was happening. You know? And so that was hard. Um, but I and actually it was at that time when I knew I was staying at school, that I remember thinking, ok, obviously I can handle the academics. You know, the friends, maybe I won’t be developing my closest friends at college, but I still have my ones from high school. You know, what am I going to do with this time? Like I was sitting here looking at, a three-year period going, what am I going to do with three years of my life? You know? And I think that was the other disappointing thing, is that with the exception of perspectives, my other classes were like high school. They were very structured, very like, rote memorization, as opposed to: what ideas do you have? Like, do you think this is, a good idea? How do you feel about this? And so I was kinda like, what am I gonna do with three years? And I can remember that day, thinking to myself, well, at least I can come out with what I want to look like. Like, part of being successful to me, like, I had a certain image in my head, and that image was not like, a woman with baby fat on her face. You know? It was very in-shape; it was funny because I never wanted to be skinny. But I wanted to be strong. I always, I mean, especially growing up with guys, I wanted to be able to take them on in basketball. And I wanted to be able to go skiing, you know? I just wanted to be in really good shape. And I was just like, ok, well at least I can, I can control my health. You know? Even though I don’t really have much I can do about this decision, and now looking back I can see that I, you know, that I did have a voice. I could have said forget it, I’m just leaving, you know? But when I weighed the pros and the cons, especially because I was always someone to keep the peace in my house, to disrupt a balance, or to make unnecessary trouble, wasn’t something I was willing to do. So I, you know, I remember saying to myself, well, I’ll just start exercising, to watch what I eat, you know, I mean, it was the first time I wasn’t in organized sports, so like, I wasn’t going from season to season. And um, I was just like, ok, that’s what I’ll do. [Leavy, 1998, interview two with Claire (pseudonym), emphasis added]

What a powerful moment in the research process—the revelation of when and why what would become a life-threatening body obsession began two years earlier.
As you can already begin to see, oral history is a special kind of intensive biography interview. During an oral history project a researcher spends an extended amount of time with one respondent in order to learn extensively about her life or a particular part of her life. The preceding excerpt is taken from a project which used oral history as a way to understand how otherwise successful female college students with eating disorders became so focused on their bodies—what life experiences webbed together in a way that created body image obsession vulnerabilities in Claire and others? But it is not enough to say that we learn about the lives of our respondents as with other qualitative methods of interview and observation, oral history allows researchers to learn about respondents’ lives from their own perspective—where they create meaning, what they deem important, their feelings and attitudes (both explicit and implicit), the relationship between different life experiences or different times in their life—their perspective and their voice on their own life experiences.

Oral histories allow for the collaborative generation of knowledge between the researcher and the research participant. This reciprocal process presents unique opportunities, continual ethical evaluation (heightened in the electronic age), and a particular set of interpretive challenges. Predominantly a feminist method, oral history allows us to get at the valuable knowledge and rich life experience of marginalized persons and groups that would otherwise remain untapped, and, specifically, offers a way of accessing subjugated voices. Beyond contributing to social scientific knowledge substantively, the oral history process can be a rewarding and empowering experience for both the participant and researcher, as in the case of Claire, who later reported feeling empowered by gaining insight regarding pivotal moments in her life.

ORAL HISTORY AS DISTINCT FROM IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW

What is oral history? As we have already said, oral history is a special method of interview where the researcher and research participants spend extended time together engaged in a process of storytelling and listening. In other words, it is a collaborative process of narrative building. However, this alone does not distinguish oral history from other forms of qualitative interview. So the real question is: what makes oral history special? What is unique about this method, how do qualitative researchers use this method, and, what does it add to our knowledge of the social world? In order to explicate the special qualities of oral history, we must differentiate it from in-depth interview, which is the closest alternative.

As we saw in the last chapter, in-depth interviews are an excellent way to gather rich qualitative data from the perspective of the people being studied. The same is true in an oral history. However, when using in-depth interviews an interviewer will typically have a focused topic for the interview and will follow an interview guide which, as we saw, may be semi-structured or relatively unstructured. Interviewees may or may not be asked identical questions, depending on the design and goals of the project. Oral history interviews differ in that, while the researcher is studying a specific topic, the organization of the topic is likely to be far less focused. For example, if you are interested in studying the body image issues women experience while in college, indepth interviews may be the appropriate method for focusing on that issue while still allowing respondents ample room to qualitatively explain what is important in that regard, from their perspective. Now let’s say that you want to study body image issues among college-age women as a part of their life process. Meaning, if you are interested in the life of the respondent from childhood on, such as the various life experiences that may have webbed together to create particular body image vulnerabilities once in college, oral history may be appropriate. This was the case in the study Claire participated in. Oral history allows you to study a long period of a person’s life or even their entire life. You can narrow down the topic, such as body image, work experiences, parenting experiences, etc., but ultimately you will get a much more in-depth story from each individual participant. This depth may sacrifice some breadth as they start to detail particular experiences at the exclusion of others, but we will discuss this more soon.

It is not enough to say that you are studying a longer period of time with oral history; in fact, in some cases this may not even be true. What is really underlying the strength of the method is that you can study process. If you are studying a woman’s life from childhood through college in order to understand her body image issues at the present time, what you will learn about is not only what she is currently experiencing and her perspective on that, but the process that lead her there. Likewise, historical processes and circumstances will underscore her narrative in ways that help us understand individual agency within the context of social and material environments. So, while oral history focuses on the individual and her narrative, it can be used to link micro- and macrophenomena and personal life experiences to broader historical circumstances. Accordingly, oral history is a critical method for understanding life experiences in a more holistic way as compared with other methods of interview. This is congruent with the tenets of qualitative research and can yield not only rich descriptive data but also knowledge about social processes. Some topics simply lend themselves more to one method. History-driven topics are highly congruent with oral history. For example, if you are interested in studying a historical event or a historical time period and how a certain population experienced that event or lived in that period, oral history may be the best method.

Botting (2000) used oral history as a way to understand the experiences of a particular group of working women in the 1920s and 1930s. Specifically, she was interested in domestic servants who had migrated from coastal communities to a mill town in Newfoundland for employment purposes. She used oral history as a way to understand the experiences of both migration and domestic work for that group of female workers, who at the time represented a large proportion of women workers in that area. This kind of research is essential in filling gaps in our current knowledge base of what it means to be a woman from a particular social class in a given time, place, and industry, from the woman’s own perspective. There are numerous examples of how experiences that have not yet been researched could begin to be understood from the vantage point of those who have lived them by using oral history in the way that Botting did. In this way previously excluded groups can share their valuable knowledge with us. In addition to these kinds of expansive experiences, oral history is invaluable in coming to understand how people have experienced historical events of import.

Crothers (2002) launched a fascinating project at Indiana University Southeast in which undergraduate students extensively interviewed community residents about historical events. Specifically, World War II and Korean War veterans were interviewed as were people who lived during the Great Depression. The study had an immeasurable positive effect on both the interviewers and interviewees. One dimension of this outcome could be categorized as community-building because the community learned more about its constituent members. In terms of direct educational benefits, students learned about the relationship between individual experience and socio-historical conditions, allowing the importance of a historical perspective to emerge during the experience of doing qualitative research.

After interviewing World War II and Korean War veterans, students no longer view Pearl Harbor, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Hiroshima, and Inchon as distant locations on a map but as places where young Americans like themselves fought and died in miserable conditions and often without recognition. Students learn that though the veterans invariably remembered their service with pride, most had no desire to repeat the experience. Veterans left permanently disabled, both physically and psychologically, and those who were prisoners of war reinforce the lesson that war, even a “good war,” should be entered only with trepidation. In short, interviews made a profound impression on students. (Crothers, 2002, p. 3)

 

 Additionally, research participants were given a voice and the opportunity to tell their story to interested listeners. This too is a profound and important part of the oral history experience.

Students also interact directly with some of the community’s most undervalued members, senior citizens, who share the richness of their lives and experiences. As one student noted, “I think the older people [involved in the project] were made to feel important. They had a story to tell and I think college students taking the time to investigate their experience made them feel like someone cared about their sacrifice. (Crothers, 2002, p. 3, emphasis added)

When used in these ways, oral history can meet ideals of education and empowerment as well as substantive knowledge building. There are also examples of using oral history as a way of understanding current events of import from the perspective of those experiencing them while they are still fresh.
Merely days after the terrorist attacks of 9–11, “The September 11, 2001, Oral History Narrative and Memory Project” was initiated at Columbia University. Bearman and Marshall Clark were co-founders of this institutionally supported longitudinal research project. Within seven weeks after the event the researchers had collected oral history interviews from almost 200 people, and within six months they had collected an additional 200 oral history interviews, including those with volunteers, rescue workers, survivors, and others who lived or worked in the area of Ground Zero. The researchers were interested in understanding the construction of individual and social memory. Specifically, they wanted to understand the role of the mass media and government in the interpretative process of individuals regarding coming to terms with the events that had transpired. Furthermore, as their interviewees were ethnically diverse, they wanted to understand how a heterogeneous group of people who were at the epicenter of the event has interpreted it and filtered the information and images they were receiving from the larger culture. How did feelings of patriotism and alienation impact the construction of individual memory during the immediate aftermath? In the minds of those there, does 9–11 qualify as a “turning point” in American history as it has repeatedly been portrayed by media analysts and political leaders? These were amongst the questions the researchers had as they listened to the stories of 9–11 from those who had experienced it and were now trying to make sense of it. Oral history became an important way of understanding memory construction as it was actually occurring.

The researchers found that political imagery was an important component in early memory construction. The researchers ended up determining that there were various recurring categories of interpretation that people placed on their experiences in order to make sense of them. These can also be likened to frames through which people come to interpret their experience of the tragedy. Categories/frames included patriotism, flight and refuge, consolation, and solace (p. 7). The frame of interpretation that the researchers were most interested in was the idea of 9–11 as an “apocalypse.”

Perhaps the most important for our ultimate considerations of the significance of September 11 as an axis of national as well as international understanding, the attacks were perceived in direct and indirect ways as an apocalypse. It was registered, in that sense, as a moment that stood outside of time and an event that ended history as we had previously understood it. The interviews we conducted with survivors and eyewitnesses were frequently shot through with religious analogies and metaphors and with apocalyptic imagery from films and movies, demonstrating the ways that many wrestled with questions of good and evil, life and death outside the frame of history as they had previously understood it. (Marshall Clark, 2002, p. 7)

The ability of oral history to tap into the intersection of personal experience, historical circumstance, and cultural frame is clear in the 9–11 oral history study. Moving away from these specific examples, we can make some comments about the relationship between biography, history, and culture as revealed by oral history.

In a general sense, oral history provides a way to invite someone to tell their story—of their past, a past time, a past event, and so on. However, their individual story is always intimately connected to historical conditions and thus extends beyond their own experience. Oral history allows for the merging of individual biography and historical processes. An individual’s story is narrated through memory. This means that their recollection of their experiences, and how they give meaning to those experiences, is about more than “accuracy;” it is also a process of remembering—as they remember, they filter and interpret.

Having said this, there is a tension between history and memory, the collective recorded history and the individual experience of that collective history, that can be revealed, exposed, and explicated though oral history. In this vein Richard Candida Smith (2001) says: “memory and history confront each other across the tape recorder” (p. 728). As we will expand on in our conclusion to this chapter, you can see that oral history is becoming increasingly important in the growing interdisciplinary research on collective memory.

Similar to the study of historical or current events, oral history is also very useful for studying the individual experience of social change and merging social and personal problems. Slater (2000) used oral history in order to understand how four black South African women experienced urbanization under apartheid. The women, as perhaps would be expected, had both shared and individual experiences which are brought out during the life history process. The data show how structural constraints shaped these women’s economic realities in profound ways (p. 38). However, these women also illustrate that their own agency ultimately impacts their lives, as does the social reality that they share.

. . . life histories enable development researchers to understand how the impact of social or economic change differs according to the unique qualities of individual men and women. This is because they allow researchers to explore the relationship between individual people’s ability to take action (their “agency”), and the economic, social, and political structures that surround them. (p. 38)

Slater makes a case that oral history can be an integral method in development research.
As globalization and our study of it increases, oral history can continue to be used to study political, social, and economic changes. In this time of world change, oral history can help us understand both the shared and the personal impact of social upheaval on the individuals living within it. For example, oral history would be a wonderful method for understanding how individuals within Iraq are experiencing the U.S. occupation, political regime shift, and rebuilding of their country. How do individuals adapt to these major social changes? What are individual coping strategies? How do individuals filter and respond differently to these changes? How has social change impacted people’s personal relationships, including marriage, courtship, and parental relationships?

Oral history is also often used to study the experience of oppression—the personal experience of being a member of an oppressed group. Sparkes (1994) conducted an oral history interview project with a lesbian physical education teacher in order to examine the ways that discrimination and heterosexism shaped her workplace experiences. Personalizing the shared experience of oppression is a strength of oral history.

When using oral history researchers may interview fewer people in total but spend more time with each participant, which is likely to occur over several pre-planned interview sessions. Qualitatively inclined researchers who work with human subjects, particularly in fields such as sociology, are likely to be drawn to both in-depth interviews and oral history interviews. A choice between the two should be based on the fit between the research goals and research method. When comparing in-depth interviews with oral history interviews, the appropriateness of the method is related to the topic you are pursuing and the number of respondents and depth of data that you are looking for. It is important not to privilege one method over the other but rather to focus on the strengths of each. Likewise, the two methods can be combined in multimethod designs, though this is pretty uncommon due to their similarities and the fact that they are both very time-consuming.
Now that you are getting a better handle on how oral histories are distinct from traditional in-depth interviews, it is important to examine more closely why oral histories are special and why feminists in particular have worked so hard to revive, study, broaden, and legitimate their use.

End of part I.

Source:
The Practice of Qualitative Research by Sharlene J. Nagy Hesse-Biber and Patricia L. (Lina) Leavy (Aug 9, 2005), Part II: Methods of Data Collection, Chapter 5: ORAL HISTORY: A Collaborative Method of (Auto)Biography Interview



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