Sustainability History Project

Once again, student responses to our readings this quarter have provided many fruitful avenues for thought and discussion, and I wanted to bring some of these topics to the attention of the broader community.

This post complements last quarter’s discussion of student responses to the same readings, Discussion of oral history methods & philosophy.

How Oral History Will Help Us Achieve Our Goals

In the post from April 27, 2010, I wrote that the practice of oral history “contributes directly to sustainability by providing a more representative and democratic interpretation of historical events.” I found that in the reading responses this quarter, many students engaged with this idea. One student wrote that “Instead of looking at the broad history of sustainability we are looking for more specific answers on the different ways that sustainability might look like.” To achieve this, as another student wrote, we are using oral history techniques to “allow the subject we are studying to teach us, and not to approach the study with a strict, preconceived idea of what we are interviewing the subject about.”

Further, as another student indicates, “the act of recording the oral histories of our community members is sustainable unto itself because through oral histories we, in part, seek to bring social equity to the history of our community members.” Additionally, “Oral histories are useful for our exploration of sustainability in Oregon because collectively they allow us to look at sustainability from all different viewpoints and in a variety of different themes. Because we will work collectively and may contribute to work already completed by former [students in] Documenting Sustainable Practices classes, we will be creating a thick description which strengthens our conclusions we draw from the collected data (Geertz, cited in in Yow).”

The points above provide an effective overview of why we’re approaching our documentation project by using the oral history method. To follow-up with these comments, I see our role in recording community members’ stories as a way to provide a venue for their perspective and add to our understanding of the topics we’re researching as well as increase our knowledge of the diversity of the community itself.

Bias & Veracity in Oral History

A student wrote “I understand that we don’t have the time or resources to interview multiple people but would this be optimal in getting a complete history?” Additionally, this student wrote, “Since we are only interviewing one person won’t biased get in the way of documenting a more whole picture of what we are trying to accomplish?” My response to this was that, yes, it would be preferred to interview multiple people, and also to do a series of interviews with the same person so as to get deeper into various topics. However, since we simply don’t have the time in the quarter to do this, I see a strength of the SHP as providing a broad range of interviews from diverse individuals in the community, thereby substituting breadth for depth in this particular regard.

Addressing another point about bias and inclusiveness in oral history, one student observed that “Yow made a good point in mentioning a fault of oral histories, in that shy people often will not come forward for the interview process, and so oral histories are often told by articulates and extroverts, whose take of the world or an event may differ from introverted personalities (Yow, 17).” This observation highlights a good point. One of the potential limits of oral history as a primary source is that it is, by definition, going to include only those people who are alive to be interviewed, can be contacted, and who agree to being interviewed. Keeping this in mind is important when using oral histories as sources.

Another student observed that “oral history is a better way to document history because in some ways it is more accurate than what has been done in the past . . . we are able to have a more complete history because of who is interviewed and how. This makes us look at history differently.” The most important distinction here is that the reason oral histories can help make historical narratives more accurate isn’t necessarily because oral histories provide facts and data, but because oral histories can (and often are) used to document the lives of people and groups that have not previously been included in the historical record in any detail. So, the accuracy comes in providing a broader range of sources for scholars to incorporate into their work.

Oral History & Memory

Regarding personal memory & the practice of oral history, a student wrote that “research has found that people often forget details in the direct aftermath, which can actually be recalled better later, but that at the same time, later recollections forget other details. The recollection depends on uniqueness, consequentiality, unexpectedness, and emotional provocation (Yow, 19-20).” This is a great point and a fascinating issue. We could spend an entire quarter discussing the dynamics of memory itself, and how contingent it is. This is why it’s important when using oral histories—and any source, really—to triangulate sources so as to minimize (or at least be more aware of) potential biases.

Framing Oral History Interview Questions

A student asked, “How do I know what a good question to ask is versus a bad one?” I’ve just written some guidelines to help us formulate interview questions. We’ll also be conducting research, formulating questions, and discussing this process over the next few weeks. By the end of this process, we all will be in a position to answer this question!

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