Oral history and public memories by Hamilton and Shopes (2008) address the topics of “oral history, memory, and the public” (p. vii). Oral history is a documented story of an individual concerning a specific topic and/or event in time. The authors utilize many researchers and historians to explore the historical question, which is solely focused on the social practice of oral history.
As discussed by the Hamilton and Shopes (2008), there are two core observations within the text. (1) Oral history is typically semi-private. Originally, it was rarely taken “out of the house” and now, primarily due to digitization, the practice has been taken “down the street” for others to enjoy and learn from. (2) Oral history is rarely a central practice in various professions such as history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, even in recent scholarship where history and memory are inevitably entangled. This is demonstrated through the various stories concerning oral history and public memory told by researchers and historians.
The observations presented by the authors are surely valid. Though oral history has not been considered nor utilized as a central research practice, it definitely is and should be for fields involving cultural studies. Oral history is a social practice which connects the past and the present like any other form of history does. This practice is much more than a simple archival activity; it is a form of historical preservation…if you will. Otherwise, the history within the story of a specified time period would be lost. Think about any war, slavery, the Holocaust, any natural disaster, any era or time period in history. What if we did not know the stories of the people? What if no one thought to record the memories and thoughts of the primary resource? We as researchers would have lost out on many aspects of research. Overall, I found Oral history and public memories to be simply informative and supportive of the social practice of oral history.
Hamilton, P., & Shopes, L. (2008). Oral history and public memories. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University
Press.
In your analysis you said "oral histories are semi-private." I agree with your statement in most instances, but the chapter over the Homeless Oral History Project tells another story when the author projects his interviews on a television in the park and presents his interviews over a radio broadcast. His goal is to broadcast the story of homeless people in Cleveland in order to give them a voice in the community. From this book I found oral histories to have use in society, especially in getting multiple perspectives over subjects.
ReplyDeleteThe value you give to oral histories is completely valid. They are wonderful ways of preserving at type of primary source, and unless they are recorded while the subject is alive, those memories are truly lost forever. The ephemeral status of memory makes these oral histories all the more important, along with their rising status in historical study. While history and memory come together in oral histories, the issue of memory in comparison to memory projects in this book seemed the most interesting to me.
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