Oral History and Shared Authority

Today in our Research and Fieldwork class we began to discuss oral history in preparation for the oral history project we are doing later in the semester.  Many questions and debates arose about oral history as we discussed the topic and research methodology.  Many people believe that oral history is important because it allows alternative stories to be told, not just the standard the winner writes history ones.  Oral history is highly dependent on the interviewee, the person narrating the story and providing the information.   Questions start to arise when as researchers we question the validity and the "truth" of different statements made.  Some people consider oral histories to be less reliable because they are stories that are often recalled years after the fact, and many researchers probably are just not that comfortable using oral histories.  Oral History has only become big in the last half-century and most college students are still taught how to conduct research with written records.  How much more valid are written records though, is a diary all that different then an account from a person taken orally? Are newspapers tell the truth or just trying to get a good story? When a person writes a letter are they guaranteed to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth? NO.

Oral histories don't need to be used to nail down facts by themselves, but they can be used to determine the meanings of actions and events.  And really, not to get to philosophical, but is there really one truth out there.  The stories are often the truths according to the narrator.

The big question we had today was, however, about shared authority.  The best definition that we were able to come up with in class seemed to be that shared authority is trying to share the interpretive authority, and that both the interviewee and the interviewer should have a say in the final product.  The problems that arose were could you use information that would but the person in a bad-light?  Do you have to respect their wishes if they don't want something that they said publicized?  Do you have the right to contradict their statements as a researcher if you find opposing evidence? etc.

I think one of the problems of our class was that we entered with a very scientific mindset, that the "Truth" is always the ultimate goal, and it was our duty to seek it out and share it as much as possible, even if it meant contradicting an interviewee, telling the bad side of their story that they themselves did not want to share, or blatantly saying that what they said was a lie and analyzing what they said.

As researchers who are used to manipulating and twisting all the information we can get from sources, sometimes I think it is easy to forget that the interviewee is a person, a person who deserves our respect on many levels.  First and foremost though, they are taking the time to sit down with us an tell us a story, time that they did not need to share.  If we start presenting negative images that they don't want presented we are breaking a level of trust that they put in us when they agreed to do the interview, we are also could be causing harm to them, by releasing something that they did not want release, they still are living people with lives, friends, families, and communities to go back to.  On a more professional level is getting the whole exact story out of every person so important that we are willing to alienate people in the process, or is keeping people comfortable and having a good reputation whereby many more interviews can be done better? That seems to be a personal question for every researcher?  I think there is a degree of ethics, empathy and humanity that is needed to be a public historian, one needs to actually remember and consider the public and those being interviewed are people, and in a museum class that is devoted to public services, sometimes not sharing the whole truth, and thus saving people pain, might be a better plan, at least initially.