International Oral History Movement
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Introduction
In a recent article in Words and Silences, former director of the Oral History Office of Columbia University Ronald Grele, makes the case that oral history has entered a globalization phase.1 There is now a global network of oral historians who work within the International Oral History Association, as well oral history groups within their own countries. The goal of this essay is to explore the growth of oral history outside of the United States, particularly in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. I will also examine different themes that dominate oral history practices and methodologies in these regions.
Background
In the early twentieth century Europe, oral history interviews were often conducted by folklorists. In 1930s the Department of Irish Folklore was established at University College, Dublin. During the 1950s similar institutions were created in Scotland and Wales, but it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that oral history as it is known today developed out of social history projects.2 Social history proved to be the driving force behind oral history movements all over the world. Oral history was a means for scholars to record the stories of those on the margins of society such as minorities, indigenous peoples, workers, women, and any other oppressed groups.3
According to Grele, oral history did not grow in seclusion in different parts of the world then take hold. Rather, it developed when oral historians from different countries discovered each other.4 Much of this discovery occurred through the Oral History Association in the United States. In a 1975 statement in The Oral History Review, then president of the association Samuel Proctor expressed excitement that “more than 1,200 individuals, libraries, and institutions in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa [were] affiliated” with the association.5 The Oral History Association also helped to created organizations in other countries. Representatives from the U.S. and Canada met in British Columbia the year before to create the Canadian Aural/Oral History Association.6 Within this time period other oral history organizations sprang up across the world including: the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the British Oral History Society, the Virgin Islands Oral History Depository at the Caribbean Research Institute of the College of the Virgin Islands, the Instituto Nacional de Antropologiá e Historia in Mexico.7
The worldwide oral history community continued to grow. The first international history conference was held at the University of Essex in 1979. An important cultural exchange took place at this meeting. Oral historians from around the world realized that they were dealing with similar issues facing a somewhat new and emerging field such as “subjectivity, spontaneity, populism versus elitism, collective memory, working class culture, [and] problems of culture in general.”8 International meetings have continued since the 1970s. The dialogue of approaches and methodologies between participants has led to myriad scholarship published in specialized journals like History Workshop, Oral History, Oral History Review, and the International Journal of Oral History.9 The importance of these publications, as well as the continued presence of international conferences led to the creation of the International Oral History Association (IOHA) in 1996.10 According to its constitution, the goals of the IOHA are to:
A. Provide a forum for oral historians around the world, and a means for cooperation among those concerned with the documentation of human experience. B. Stimulate and publish the results of research in the techniques of oral history. C. Promote the development of standards and principles for individuals, institutions and agencies (both public and private) who have the responsibility for the collection and preservation of historical information gathered through the techniques of oral histories, in all forms. D. Encourage and organize international conferences and meetings. E. Foster a better understanding of the nature and value of oral history. F. Participate in international projects, or devise such projects, and to work with those organizing such projects. G. Support and develop national oral history organisations.11
The IOHA now has its own academic journal (Words and Silences), it produces biannual newsletters, and it holds an official conference every two years, alternating continents after each one.
Oral History in Latin America
Oral history and testimony is not necessarily a phenomenon unique to the late-twentieth century western world. During the 1700s priests, conquerors, and chroniclers recorded the histories of indigenous peoples in Mexico, Central America, and the Andes Mountains through interviews and personal testimony. The main goal of collecting information found in these testimonies was to gain knowledge that could help in colonization and religious conversion processes. Although the written records of these interviews were “colored by cultural assumptions of sixteenth century Europeans,” they still provided crucial information about the social, economic, and religious traditions of the major civilizations in the region.12
In the nineteenth century Latin America, the descendents of the colonizers began to use oral history for a new purpose: nation building. The goal of this practice was to create national identities and histories. Leaders of independence movements interviewed other prominent individuals. For example, during the late 1800s President Bartolomé Mitre of Argentina and Chilean politician Diego Barros Arana solicited interviews of themselves to chronicle political movements in their countries.13
At the dawn of the 1960s oral history in Latin America still focused on nation building events, but the scope of interviewees began to widen. In 1959 The Instituto Nacional de Antropologiá e Historia (INAH) sent researchers to interview participants of the Mexican Revolution. Those interviewed were not just the major actors in the conflict; oral histories participants of all levels were collected and placed in the INAH’s Sound Archive of the Mexican Revolution.14
In the 1970s and 1980s the purpose and methodology behind oral history changed from nation building to activism. One example is that of Chile. During the seventeen year military dictatorship that began in 1973, censorship prevented the prevented historians and social scientists, as well as the press from recording the poverty and violence that wreaked havoc on the nation. Oral history interviews published in the underground press were able to capture events and atrocities that could not be published openly. By the late 1980s thousands of oral history interviews of victims, labor leaders, clergy, former soldiers, and even regime supporters appeared in alternative magazines and newspapers. The story told in these publications contradicted the official one given by the government. Personal testimonies found in the alternative press informed citizens of the consequences of military rule; as a result, Chileans beat the regime in contested elections in 1988 and 1989.15
Activist oral history in Latin America is used to help people cope with tragedy and political unrest in addition to regime change. In Oral History and Public Memory, Riaño-Alcalá discusses the use of group oral history interviewing in the form memory workshops in Colombia. Approximately three million people have fled their homes and almost three hundred thousand live as refugees in their own country because of more than forty years of fighting between guerillas, paramilitary organizations, the military, and drug traffickers. Riaño-Alcalá created the workshops as a forum where displaced people could rebuild their lost senses of trust and community through sharing oral testimonies with each other.16
Oral History in Asia
Oral history developed similarly in Southeast Asia as it had in Latin America, with political elites using it for nation building. Singapore’s Oral History Unit was established as part of the Ministry of Culture in 1979. Early projects within the unit sought to interview government officials and upper-level civil servants to get their expert versions of the country’s history.17
Just as in many Latin American countries oral history was used in Singapore to create a national narrative of colonial exploitation that led to independence and continual progress. In 1979 the prime minister ordered the Oral History Unit to gather material that would tell this story. The interviewees consisted mainly of former members of the People’s Action Party (PAP), the nationalist political party responsible for deterring the establishment of Singapore as a communist state. Three major projects came out of the Oral History Unit: “Political Developments in Singapore 1945-1965”, “Political Developments in Singapore 1965-1975”, and “Pioneers of Singapore.” In all three projects, powerful political figures, bureaucrats, and businessmen were asked non-threatening questions that did not criticize the government or prime minister in any way. As a result, the interviews did not represent the experiences of the majority of society. The Singaporean government restricted access to the recordings and transcripts.18
The Oral History Unit strayed from only interviewing elites toward the late 1970s, but interviews still carried the purpose of building national identity. The “Communities of Singapore” project included hundreds of interviews with people from various ethnic backgrounds. As with previous projects, interviewees were asked a rigid set of questions that did not really relate to their lives or personal experiences. Their answers reinforced the national history approved by the government. Individual voices were lost; storytelling during interviews was discouraged.19
Oral History in Africa
The use of oral history in Africa is somewhat different than that of Latin America or Asia. Oral tradition has been an integral part of researching and writing the continent’s history for decades, so much so that many Africanists have long considered themselves to be oral historians.20 Aside from Islamic states, African societies did not have written languages before European colonization. Written documents, histories, or any sources of information in pre-colonial Africa are virtually nonexistent. Studying African tradition and cultural history requires the extensive use of oral history.21 African historians take the cultural traditions of the distant past and present told in interviews and use them to help explain historical events, both social and political.22
Oral history in Africa often shares the activist nature that is so prevalent in Latin America. Similarly, oral history is used in Africa as a way of dealing with oppression and rebuilding lost communities. Oral history is commonly used in South Africa as a means of recording apartheid experiences and helping its victims deal with their trauma. Museums in the localities of Langa and District Six have become centers for “community regeneration” by collecting oral histories and using them in exhibits.23
During apartheid, Black South Africans in Cape Town were forced to leave their homes. As with the displaced in Colombia, these people experienced “the loss of emotionally and symbolically meaningful places, particularly ‘home’ and ‘community.’”24 The District Six Museum has been particularly effective at rebuilding the sense of community that once existed for blacks in that neighborhood. By visiting and hearing the testimonies, former residents have been able to reconnect with their former home. At the museum they run into old neighbors, revisit the town, and can write their names on a community map that shows where their houses used to stand.25
Conclusion
Oral history has grown all over the world. The creation of international conferences and the IOHA helped to develop methodologies and scholarship, as well as create a massive network of oral historians around the globe. Even though oral history is an interdisciplinary field with many methodologies and practices there are common themes like nation building and activism that have developed in vastly different parts of the world.
Footnotes
1Ronald J. Grele, “From the Intimate Circle to Globalized Oral History,” Words and Silences 4, no. 1 (November 2008): 1.
2David Lance, “Oral History in Britain,” The Oral History Review, 2 (1974): 64.
3Alistair Thomson, “Fifty Years On: An International Perspective on Oral History,” The Journal of American History, 85 no. 2 (September 1998): 584.
4Grele, 2.
5Samuel Proctor, “Oral History Comes of Age,” The Oral History Review, 3 (1975): 1.
6Proctor, 2.
7Proctor, 3-4.
8Grele qtd. in Thomson, 586.
9Thomson, 586.
10International Oral History Association, "About the Association," http://www.iohanet.org/ about/index.html (accessed May 5, 2009).
11International Oral History Association, "Constitution," http://www.iohanet.org/about/documents/7-06revIOHAConstEng.pdf. (accessed May 12, 2009).
12Ivan Jaksic, “Oral History in the Americas,” The Journal of American History 79, no. 2 (September 1992): 590.
13Jaksic, 590-591.
14Jaksic, 594.
15Jaksic, 597-598.
16Pilar Riaño-Alcalá, “Seeing the Past, Visions of the Future: Memory Workshops with Internally Displaced Persons in Colombia,” in Oral History and Public Memory, ed. Oral History and Public Memory, ed. Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes (Philedelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 269-270.
17Kevin Blackburn, “History from Above: The Use of Oral History in Shaping Collective Memory in Singapore,” in Oral History and Public Memory, 31-32.
18Blackburn, 33-34.
19Blackburn, 36.
20Elizabeth Tonkin, "Investigating Oral Tradition." The Journal of African History 27, no. 2 (1986): 210
21Christopher J. Lee, "How to Do Things with Words: African Oral History and Its Textual Incarnations," Words and Silences 4, no. 2: 1
22Tonkin, 203.
23Sean Field, "Imagining Communities: Memory, Loss, and Resilience in Post-Apartheid Cape Town," in Oral History and Public Memory, 108.
24Field, 114.
25Field, 119.
Bibliography
Bibliography Grele, Ronald J. “From the Intimate Circle to Globalized Oral History.” Words and Silences 4, no. 1 (November 2008): 1-4.
Hamilton, Paula and Linda Shopes eds. Oral History and Public Memory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008.
Jaksic, Ivan. “Oral History in the Americas.” The Journal of American History 79, no. 2 (September 1992): 590-600.
Lance, David. “Oral History in Britain.” The Oral History Review, 2 (1974): 64-76.
Lee, Christopher J. “How to Do Things with Words: African Oral History and Its Textual Incarnations.” Words and Silences 4, no. 1 (November 2008):1-5.
Proctor, Samuel. “Oral History Comes of Age,” The Oral History Review, 3 (1975): 1-4. Thomson, Alistair. “Fifty Years On: An International Perspective on Oral History.” The Journal of American History, 85 no. 2 (September 1998): 581-595.
Tonkin, Elizabeth. “Investigating Oral Tradition.” The Journal of African History 27, no. 2: 203-213.
