The oral history reader

Abstract

In the second half of the twentieth century, oral history—‘the interviewing of eye-witness participants in the events of the past for the purposes of historical reconstruction’ — has had a significant impact upon contemporary history as practised in many countries. While interviews with members of social and political elites have complemented existing documentary sources, the most distinctive contribution of oral history has been to include within the historical record the experiences and perspectives of groups of people who might otherwise have been ‘hidden from history’, perhaps written about by social observers or in offical documents, but only rarely preserved in personal papers or scraps of autobiographical writing. Through oral history interviews, working-class men and women, indigenous peoples or members of cultural minorities, amongst others, have inscribed their experiences on the historical record, and offered their own interpretations of history. More specifically, interviews have documented particular aspects of historical experience which tend to be missing from other sources, such as personal relations, domestic work or family life, and they have resonated with the subjective or personal meanings of lived experience.