NB! All comments from the audience are removed to secure privacy.
Panel discussion:
Prof. Lynn Abrams, University of Glasgow
Prof. Alessandro Portelli, University of Rome
Prof. Leyla Neyzi, Sabanci University
Dr Kirsi-Maria Hytönen, University of Jyväskylä/HEX
Chair: Dr. Heidi Morrison, Senior Research Fellow, Tampere University/HEX
Granting historical agency to marginalized people was one of the driving forces behind the origins and evolution of the field of oral history. Recently, however, scholars from various fields have brought attention to some problems with the concept of agency. The relationship between agency and oral history is particularly important for historians of experience who use oral history as a critical methodological tool. Memories are a way to understand how individuals make sense of their realities, and how these realities are connected to larger structures and ideologies.
This virtual roundtable will be a platform for oral historians to brainstorm together about the continued usefulness or not of the concept of agency to oral history, and the implications of this for historians of experience. The roundtable will include brief opening remarks on the topic by the participants and then open to a discussion of questions (both pre-formulated and audience-generated). Some of the questions discussed will include: In what ways has the field of oral history evolved on the western liberal conception of the individual, i.e. that humans exert agency when they exercise free fill? What are the limitations to thinking about agency from the perspective of individual choice? What are examples of divergent forms of agency in human experience? How can oral historians discern from interviews the ways in which people’s every-day actions operate on the collective level, i.e. the idea that people’s actions are created through situations? How can an oral historian be sure to not fall into the entitlement trap of using their interviews to “grant” agency to another person or “liberate” marginalized actors from the past? What methodological contributions can historians of experience make to the field of oral history, and vice versa?
Click here to read the panelists’ bios.
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Thank you, very interesting and relevant for me.
My first comment: there is mention in the video of material on the chat – event and books. In this recording, it was not accessible. Are those comments accessible?
I am doing an ethnography, or in reality, interviews. I have too many interviews – 180 interviews. I seem to be good at getting people to trust me and to tell their life story – in regards to coming to faith in Jesus, the role of the Bible in cultural reflection and form, identity process, how they relate with family, community, society, globe and other religions. These people have taken a hybrid identity process, which all Christianity in reality is. They have sensitive forms as they merge with Judaism and Islam. They form in the secular void, that is the space where there is the freedom to put things together in individual or new collective ways. It is a bit like Yoga in Western forms, for Westerners.
I am good at interviews and at analysis, although like today listening to this I have much to learn. I am terrible at transcribing – slow, bored, and tedious. I have moved away from full transcription towards electronic full transcription (that is electronically correct in places and garbled in other places) but in those parts which are of interest via coding, I will do a full transcription. This is then more like investigative journalism. How important is it for others to access full transcriptions, because full-transcriptions will potentially reveal people? Is my approach to partial transcribing viable?
Agency plays a major role in my data because this is about making free choices. They are responding to spiritual experiences to express themselves in ways that were not thought possible before. How do I code agency? Do I look for agency or for the parts that constitute agency, and how to distinguish that from experiences and emotions?
Thank you for some really important discussion, I took notes vigorously.
Richard Croft
15.3.2021 15:10