Volume 36, No 2 (2008) Abstracts
ON BEING A ‘GOOD’ INTERVIEWER: EMPATHY, ETHICS AND THE POLITICS OF ORAL HISTORY,
Carrie Hamilton
Abstract: This paper explores ethical and political questions involved in interviewing informants defined simultaneously as ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ of past violence. It recognises the political urgency of oral history interviews with subjects marginalised or oppressed by traditional historical narratives. It also stresses the important work on power dynamics in the oral history interview and in particular the impact of feminist oral history. In light of the increased influence memory studies and models of interviewing as witnessing and testimony, however, the article cautions against the tendency for interviewers to identify too closely with victims of past violences. With examples from experiences of interviewing female supporters of political violence in the Basque country, the article argues the need to consider the complexities of empathy and emotion in the interview setting, and the importance of distinguishing between empathy and solidarity in oral history.
Key words: empathy, emotion, ethics, feminism, memory, solidarity
Carrie Hamilton teaches Spanish and History at Roehampton University, London. Her oral history of women and political violence in the Basque country, Women and ETA: The Gender Politics of Radical Basque Nationalism, is published by Manchester University Press, 2007. She is currently completing a book on sexual politics and oral history in socialist Cuba.
COMING TO THE END OF THE LINE? IDENTITY, WORK AND STRUCTURES OF FEELING, John Kirk
Abstract: This article seeks to explore the link between work and social identity. It comes from a study of 120 work-life histories collected from respondents in three occupational sectors: railways, teachers, banking. These oral testimonies form the core of the research project and are instrumental in constructing a theoretically informed empirical analysis on the topic of work and its contemporary significance. This article asks some preliminary questions about how to examine and scrutinise these work-life histories through aspects of narrative analysis that then helps explore ‘structures of feeling.’ Key to this is some understanding of narrative structures and language in use, and the article draws on the work of Raymond Williams and Valentin Volosinov to illuminate these concerns.
Key words: work-life histories; structures of feeling; dialogics; narrative
John Kirk is a Senior Research Fellow at the Working Lives Research Institute. He has published widely of working-class culture and working-class writing and is the author of Twentieth Century Writing and the British Working Class, University of Wales Press, 2003, and Class, Culture and Social Change: On the Trail of the Working Class, Palgrave, 2007.
NARRATIVES OF SOUTH ASIAN MUSLIM WOMEN IN LEICESTER 1964-2004, Joanna Herbert and Richard Rodger
Abstract:This article draws on interviews with South Asian Muslim women and explores the narratives of suffering, which were used to articulate their gendered experiences of growing up in the household and their encounters with Islamophobia following September 11th. It is argued that, in the process of analysis, it is important to attend to other features of the narrative, such as the trajectory of the life story, to highlight moments of negotiation and agency, to contextualise the interviews with secondary sources, and to reflect on the role of the interview relationships. This helps to avoid reproducing misunderstandings about South Asian Muslims and ultimately challenges stereotypes that Muslim women are helpless victims or that Muslims are self-segregating.
Key words: Narratives, cross-cultural interview, Islamophobia, South Asian Muslims
Joanna Herbert is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London. Her research focuses on experiences of migration, including the South Asian diaspora and low paid migrants in London. Her current project is on oral histories of Ugandan Asians in Britain.
Richard Rodger is Professor of Economic and Social History, Edinburgh University. Previously, he was director of the East Midlands Oral History Archive, Leicester and has published widely on the social, cultural and economic history of 19th and 20th century British towns and cities. In 2004 he was elected to the Academy of Social Sciences.
MEMORY AND SILENCE IN THE VIETNAMESE DIASPORA: THE NARRATIVES OF TWO SISTERS, Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen
Abstract: In one of the largest and most visible diasporas of the late twentieth century, approximately two million Vietnamese left their homeland after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and made new lives for themselves overseas. This article examines the experiences of two sisters who escaped from Vietnam in 1978 and lost their only brother at sea during the journey. A third sister also escaped but has since died of cancer. The narratives of the two surviving sisters reveal distinct interpretations of past traumas, as well as the silences in their lives. Their retellings crisscross and shape each other to paint a multifaceted portrait of sibling relationships, the experience of exodus, the pain of loss, and the challenges of moving on.
Key words: Vietnamese diaspora; refugees; memory; sisters; silence; trauma
Nathalie Nguyen holds an ARC Australian Research Fellowship at the Australian Centre, the University of Melbourne. Her books are Voyage of Hope: Vietnamese Australian Women’s Narratives (2005), which was shortlisted for the 2007 NSW Premier’s Literary Award, and Vietnamese Voices: Gender and Cultural Identity in the Vietnamese Francophone Novel (2003).
LAND, IDENTITY, SCHOOL: EXPLORING WOMEN’S IDENTITY WITH LAND IN SCOTLAND THROUGH THE EXPERIENCE OF BOARDING SCHOOL, Chriss Bull, Alastair McIntosh and Colin Clark
Abstract: This study explores the effects of private British boarding school on women landowners’ identity and their relationship to the land. In noting how the private British boarding school system and the Empire were symbiotically related, it discusses how the ruling class were shaped within boarding institutions that cultivated hegemonic superiority and self-perpetuating patterns of subjugation and domination. Boarding school ethos has played a key role in maintaining these ‘norms’ of power as the young strive for place and identity within hierarchical, closed environments. Using a indepth qualitative, grounded theory approach, eleven women in Scotland shared their stories with the primary researcher, all of whom were ex-boarders and experienced being removed from their home environment usually in pre-adolescence. Almost exclusively, these women felt that their sense of identity had been damaged whilst being formed in the process. In adulthood, they felt possessive and territorial in arguably compensatory ways over their land, space and privacy. This possibly sheds light on dynamics of landownership that extend beyond usual considerations of economics and status. The study both commences and concludes by noting the implications for people-land relationships in the light of Scotland’s land reform process.
Key words: land reform; boarding school; identity formation; women; psychohistory
Chriss Bull graduated with Distinction from the MSc programme in human ecology at the Centre for Human Ecology where she contributed to a programme of research into urban and rural community regeneration assisted by WWF International.
Alastair McIntosh is a Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology, a Visiting Fellow of the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulster, and Visiting Professor of Human Ecology at the Department of Geography and Sociology in the University of Strathclyde. He has published on land reform, ecology and climate change.
Colin Clark is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. His research interests are located within the broad field of ethnic and racial studies, specifically issues relating to identity, culture and citizenship.
WHOSE COMMUNITY?: THE SHAPING OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN A VOLUNTEER PROJECT, Paul Thompson and Brenda Corti
Abstract: The great majority of recent community oral projects, particularly those currently supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, are carried out by volunteers primarily interested in local history rather than in academic research. This has been a major change brought through the growth of local oral history activity since the 1980s. By contrast, earlier most community studies were carried out by social researchers, mainly anthropologists and sociologists, who had their own intellectual traditions, and sought through their investigations to confirm or develop these wider perspectives. What is the significance of this change for our understanding of community history? This paper is a reflection on three ways in which different approaches bring different results. The first is the choice of who to interview, and how this is shaped by local factors. The second is the content of the interview, and the censorships which take place both in the interview and afterwards. The third is the relationship with the local audience, which turns out to be equally strong with both types of project. Lastly, the authors appeal for more sharing of the findings of community projects as a contributions to our understanding of wider social change.
Key words: community studies; networks;self-censorship; sharing findings; volunteers
Paul Thompson is Founding Editor of Oral History, author of The Voice of the Past, and founder of National Life Stories at the British Library. He is now Emeritus Professor in Sociology at the University of Essex, and is director and interviewer on the Wivenhoe Oral History Group’s project, ‘Remembering Wivenhoe’.
Brenda Corti is Secretary and Administrator and also interviewer on ‘Remembering Wivenhoe’, Life Member of the Oral History Society, and for many years Review Editor of Oral History.
ORAL HISTORY ON TELEVISION:
A RESTROSPECTIVE, Steve Humphries
Abstract: At the 2006 Oral History Society conference, historian and documentary film producer Steve Humphries spoke about his experiences developing and producing oral history programmes for television over the last twenty-five years. This is an edited transcript of the talk. Humphries outlines the rise and fall (and rise again) of interest in oral history among those who commission television programmes, drawing attention to the role of individual documentary pioneers such as Stephen Peet, whom this event commemorates – as well as the influence of new technology and audience research – in driving some of the major shifts in television history programming. In the process of this overarching narrative he argues that oral history is particularly important for at least three reasons: it provides access to unique stories, although often with a deeper social significance; that it packs considerable emotional power; and finally, as people’s history, oral history has been a major force for the democratisation of history on television.
Key words: Television; oral history; interviewing; audience and market research; technology
Steve Humphries has had a lifelong passion for oral history has made over 120 life story based history documentaries and authored twenty oral histories of Britain in the twentieth century. Since 1992 he has produced and directed films for all the main terrestrial channels from his Bristol based production company, Testimony Films.