Theme 3 – Oral History

24.2.2021

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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Panel videos

Comments

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

HI Heidi and Presenters,

this series of talk seem fascinating and most especially thanks Heidi for compiling the main points.

I especially find important the point on “agency as an event vs agency as the narration of that event”, and would like to add / ask (which question of course also relates to other points) the consideration about the production / performance of agency. I do not see this as a ‘discrepancy’ between what happened and what is told about – as for me oral history is not about confirming a historical truth; rather perhaps I see the process of narration as the performance of agency while narrating the self. So perhaps for me it is also about showing and seeing one’s self as agentic to recreate one’s life history with a view on the present (who is there and what the person aims to achieve with the responses, the respondent’s current life context etc. ) and future. So it seems time is also an important consideration in regards to agency and imagination – how to fill those gaps that are missing from memory or those that are intentionally forgotten.

What do you think, any comments and thoughts on this?

Zsuzsa Millei

10.3.2021 12:27

Thank you for your message. Actually, after I posted those main points, I went back in and changed the line “agency as an event vs. agency as narration of that event” to “agency as an event AND agency as narration of that event.” Sandro brought that correction to my attention, because YES, as you say, agency is both the event and the telling of the event. They are not in opposition but speak to one another. The way a person tells their story is in relation to the present context and is as telling as the event itself. No one tells their story the same way twice.

Heidi Morrison

11.3.2021 10:50

And, these were the questions asked to the Roundtable participants yesterday:

– Broadly speaking, what comes to mind when you think of the topic of agency and oral history?

– In what ways have 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 (if any) to thinking about agency from the perspective of individual choice?

– What are examples of divergent forms of agency in human experience?

– 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?

Heidi Morrison

10.3.2021 11:48

Thank you to the Roundtable participants and to all those who attended.

For those who might be interested, here is a recap of some of the main ideas we discussed yesterday:

– Oral history can go against the false ideology of individual free will to recognize the collective, politicized relationships that impact our range of possibilities.

– There may be a discrepancy between how people describe their behavior and what they actually do (or did), particularly in the context of migration.

– Oral historians do not grant agency, but instead can help organize agency.

– We, as oral historians, often receive our agency (i.e. self-understanding) from the subaltern.

– It is critical that we keep the ideas of power and politics in any discussion of agency.

– Agency as a myth, since it is impossible to define an individual apart from larger structures. What is an individual in the first place?

– The collaborative process with the interviewee is one way of dealing with the power of insider vs outsiderness.

– Agency as an event AND agency as the narration of that event.

– Resistance can exist in someone’s head, but not necessarily in their actions and VICE VERSA.

– People can privilege elements that fit the expectations of what they should be.

– Discussion of whether or not suicide is a form of free will.

– How people narrate the chain of events in their life to give themselves agency as they see fit.

– The oral historian does not have the power to grant agency to anyone.

– Sometimes when people talk about their life histories, they talk about experiences they did not live through themselves. They see themselves as part of a chain of events.

– Communities of experience.

– Difficult memories can be a good space to approach experience.

– Temporality and experience.

Please feel free to add to this list or make other comments. Heidi

Heidi Morrison

10.3.2021 11:47