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Oral histories and their purpose

6/15/2014

1 Comment

 
When on fieldwork, one of my participants expressed his mother’s concern with oral histories. She stated that a village was dead whenever oral histories were collected. This struck me, for I was in the middle of my own oral history collection. And it got me thinking. Does the collection of stories in our modern world mean that something is about to perish? And if so, can we change how and when we collect it, to seek not the final outcome of a story but the continuation of its unfolding?

First we ask, why do we gather stories? We gather these stories to: preserve a living memory of everyday life; understand a particular event through the stories of the people who lived it; gather alternative histories of a dominant narrative. Granted, many oral histories are used in collecting event histories like the collection of stories from the 9/11 attacks or the English coal miner’s strike. However, in many cases I have noticed that the collection of stories does come at a final point, a kind of last resort. The oral historian is seen as the person to get the story before the last people pass, or before a town is transformed or is removed, and so we end up speaking with the elderly or the last person who saw or experienced the event. Could my friend’s mother have a point?

In my research, I choose to use oral histories because they allow a broader and deeper understanding in the narratives of a rural place. They provide a non-linear and multi viewpoint approach to understanding the landscape as an assemblage of elements. In having my participants share their lives with me, I create my own narrative within the landscape. However, could I have subconsciously chosen to use it because I see the landscape at a point of decline and thus use the oral history as my best means of getting to the heart of the matter?

Stories and storytelling are important in our lives. They form the basis for so much of our identity and collective community. If the collection of these stories though is seen as something of a death sentence then perhaps we are going about the collecting all wrong. Perhaps story collecting should be inclusive, not just focus on the people who lived it, but also the ones who are living it. Focus not only on the past event, which is what the oral history is trying to recall, but also on the unfolding events that occur afterwards. Instead of a history, approach it from an oral tradition, an ever creating and making narrative of which we are all players within it. 


George Jaramillo

1 Comment
Erin
6/15/2014 07:02:57 pm

Yes! Your friend's mother reminds me of James Hogg's mum, who famously said, when Walter Scott started his ballad collecting, that it meant 'they'd never be sung mair.'

Ever since the first days of song/folklore collectors, there's been this attitude of 'get it now, because these are the Last Days.' In a song/story context, this often leads to treating the people being collected from as if they are passive recipients of traditional knowledge rather than actively involved in the creative process. And although this is maybe not so much of an issue when recording life stories, I can see how an 'end of days' attitude could easily lead interviewers to treat people like they are living museum pieces rather than individuals with as much of a presence in the modern world and interest in the future as everyone else.

As someone who is currently involved in recording oral histories of lighthouse keeping, which is in fact something which doesn't happen any more and is at risk of passing out of living memory in Scotland, I am perhaps being a massive hypocrite. And it would have been brilliant had interviews been done while people were still working on Scottish lighthouses.

(Tony Parker did this in English lighthouses, and got some very honest and fascinating perspectives - he used an interesting method where not only were names changed, but when he published transcripts he collated them so that the stories published were actually compilations of several people's experience - so although all of it is true for someone, they are not truly people's stories in the way you might expect. This is the only way to actually get anonymity in a small community like that of lighthouse keepers - if he had only changed the name, everyone would still have known whose story it was, and so people would have been less likely to share the truth of their experiences. This is off topic, but I find it very interesting ...)

I would actually like to know more about the evolution of oral history as a discipline - how related it was to these ballad collecting types. Because, coming from a School of Scottish Studies background, where our work as a department has kind of developed from that sort of collecting to more reflective and detailed oral histories (and my GOD there are some awful ethical decisions to be heard on some of our early tapes) I feel like there is a progression there. But in the wider picture that may not be true. Hmm. Lots of thoughts. I'm supposed to be writing a blog for the Scottish Studies Archives soon so I might look further into this.

Anyway. Every day is indeed the End of Days, but also the start of something else. Gary West (in Voicing Scotland) says that 'tradition is a story about the past, told in the present, looking to the future,' and this is indeed the attitude that you propose we go about interviewing with. And I wholly agree.

But once we open up our interests and decide to aim for a representative picture of people's lives as they're lived in the present day, then we are up against the dilemma of - what do we record? With the current technology available to us, what do we NOT record? (I have certainly been known have had enough and switch my recorder off. 'OH SOD IT, I'm just going to BE at this event rather than recording it.' In fact, many of us are recording our own lives in photos etc more than ever. I remember at Up Helly Aa last year, a mum saying to her child "Pit that camera awa, I want to see du SEEING dis." Which I thought was great.)

I have no answers! And I will probably be back here to disagree with myself later, but should really go and do some work now. Very good post, thank you.

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