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Abstract
This article offers a survey of the past fifty years’ literature on oral history and ethics, arguing that oral historians’ approaches to ethics have emerged from two major fears: the fear of failing as researchers and the fear of failing our narrators and doing harm. These professional and personal fears have evolved through three distinct but overlapping phases: postwar positivism, the subjective turn, and contemporary interdisciplinarity. Confronting them makes it possible to understand the complex questions behind oral historians’ preoccupations. This sheds light on how oral history has evolved and expanded as a field, and what we hope it can and will achieve.
We would like to thank Teresa Barnett for inviting us to be a part of this special section and for pushing us to deeply think about how the ethical roots of oral history practice have evolved over the past fifty years. We are equally indebted to Kathryn Nasstrom for her thoughtful questions and valuable critique of this piece.
Notes
1 Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 2000), 4-5.
2 Anna Sheftel chaired this panel, and participants included Stacey Zembrzycki, Margo Shea, Sherna Berger Gluck, and Janis Thiessen. For more, see Margo Shea’s reflections: “‘Humbling Moments’ at the Oral History Association Meeting,” last modified October 13, 2014, http://www.theflickeringlamp.org/2014/10/humbling-moments-at-oral-history.html.
3 See Valerie Yow’s discussion of “corridor talk” in “‘Do I Like Them Too Much?’: Effects of the Oral History Interview on the Interviewer and Vice-Versa,” Oral History Review 24, no. 1 (1997): 55.
4 Sigmond Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920).
5 For a similar argument, see Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki, “Introduction,” in Oral History Off the Record: Toward an Ethnography of Practice, ed. Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 1-19.
6 We have tried to make this an international discussion, but we recognize that, given its scope, the article is very much grounded in American literature. That said, we hope this piece starts a conversation that encourages others to write about the particular ways that ethics have evolved in other countries and regions, such as Australia, Britain, Canada, and Latin America, among others.
7 Linda Shopes, “‘Insights and Oversights’: Reflections on the Documentary Tradition and the Theoretical Turn in Oral History,” Oral History Review 41, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2014): 258.
8 While Alistair Thomson characterizes the various shifts in oral history as “paradigm transformations,” we view them, much as Linda Shopes does, as ongoing debates with uneasy linear transitions that lack a clear beginning and end. See Thomson, “Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History,” Oral History Review 34, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2007): 49-71; Shopes, “‘Insights and Oversights,’” 257-268.
9 Thomson, “Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History,” 51. For more on this early history see Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, 3rd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 25-82; Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 19-46.
10 Shopes, “‘Insights and Oversights,’” 261.
11 “Goals and Guidelines for Oral History: Report of the Subcommittee on Goals and Guidelines for the Oral History Association,” (Oral History Association, 1968), 1.
12 “Goals and Guidelines,” 1.
13 “Goals and Guidelines,” 2.
14 “Goals and Guidelines,” 9.
15 Shopes, “‘Insights and Oversights,’” 259.
16 In the Oral History Review 1 (1973) see specifically: Alex Haley, “Black History, Oral History, and Genealogy,” 1-19; Mary Patrick, “Indian Urbanization in Dallas: A Second Trail of Tears,” 48-65; Joseph Romney, “Legal Considerations in Oral History,” 66-76; James E. Sargent, “Oral History, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the New Deal: Some Recollections of Adolf A. Berle Jr., Lewis W. Douglas, And Raymond Moley,” 92-109.
17 Quoted in Sargent, “Oral History,” 93.
18 Sargent, “Oral History,” 96.
19 Amelia R. Fry, “Reflections on Ethics,” Oral History Review 3, no. 1 (1975): 17.
20 Fry, “Reflections on Ethics,” 19
21 Fry, “Reflections on Ethics,” 20.
22 “Oral History Evaluation Guidelines: The Wingspread Conference,” Oral History Review 8 (1980): 6.
23 “Oral History Evaluation Guidelines,” 6-19.
24 “Oral History Evaluation Guidelines,” 8.
25 “Oral History Evaluation Guidelines,” 9.
26 Shopes, “‘Insights and Oversights,’” 258.
27 Shopes, “‘Insights and Oversights,’” 260.
28 See Victor Turner, “Foreword to Bennetta Jules-Rosette’s African Apostles: Ritual and Conversion in the Church of John Maranke (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 8, as cited in Valerie Yow, “‘Do I Like Them Too Much?,’” 63.
29 Shopes, “‘Insights and Oversights,’” 258.
30 Sherna Berger Gluck, “What’s So Special about Women? Women’s Oral History,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 2, no. 2 (Summer 1977): 7.
31 Gluck, “What’s So Special,” 5.
32 Susan H. Armitage, “The Next Step,” Frontiers 7, no. 1 (1983): 3-8.
33 Also see Susan H. Armitage, ed., “Special Edition on Varieties of Women’s Oral History,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 19, no. 2 (1998); Susan H. Armitage, “Special Issue on Problems and Perplexities in Women’s Oral History,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 19, 3 (1998). Note that all four special issues of Frontiers were published as Women’s Oral History: The Frontiers Reader (Susan H. Armitage, Patricia Hart, and Karen Weathermon, eds. [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002]).
34 Micaela di Leonardo, “Oral History as Ethnographic Encounter,” Oral History Review 15 (Spring 1987): 1-20; Michael Kenny, “The Patron-Client Relationship in Interviewing: An Anthropological View,” Oral History Review 15 (Spring 1987): 71-79.
35 Kathryn Anderson et al., “Beginning Where We Are: Feminist Methodology in Oral History,” Oral History Review 15 (Spring 1987): 108.
36 Anderson, “Beginning Where We Are,” 109.
37 Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai, eds., Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (New York: Routledge, 1991).
38 Daphne Patai, “U.S. Academics and Third World Women: Is Ethical Research Possible?” in Women’s Words, 137.
39 Kristina Minister, “A Feminist Frame for the Oral History Interview,” in Women’s Words, 38
40 Judith Stacey, “Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?” in Women’s Words, 111-119.
41 Katherine Borland, “‘That’s Not What I Said’: Interpretive Conflict in Oral Narrative Research,” in Women’s Words, 63-75.
42 Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai, “Afterword,” in Women’s Words, 222.
43 Daphne Patai, “Ethical Problems of Personal Narratives, or, Who Should Eat the Last Piece of Cake?,” International Journal of Oral History 8, no. 1 (February 1987): 5-27.
44 See Alessandro Portelli, “The Peculiarities of Oral History,” History Workshop Journal 12 (Autumn 1981): 96-107.
45 Alessandro Portelli, “Research as an Experiment in Equality,” in The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 29-44.
46 Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli, 43.
47 Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli, 43.
48 Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990).
49 Steven High, “Sharing Authority: An Introduction,” Journal of Canadian Studies 43, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 13.
50 Shopes, “‘Insights and Oversights,’” 265-66.
51 According to Michael Frisch, “sharing authority is an approach to doing oral history” whereas “a shared authority is something we need to recognize in it.” See Frisch, “Sharing Authority: Oral History and the Collaborative Process,” Oral History Review 30, no. 1 (January 2003): 113. Also see Stacey Zembrzycki, According to Baba: A Collaborative Oral History of Sudbury’s Ukrainian Community (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014), 8.
52 Nan Alamilla Boyd and Horacio N. Roque Ramírez, eds., Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Sheftel and Zembrzycki, eds., Oral History Off the Record.
53 Horacio N. Roque Ramírez and Nan Alamilla Boyd, “Introduction: Close Encounters—The Body and Knowledge in Queer Oral History,” in Bodies of Evidence, 5.
54 Daniel James, Doňa María’s Story: Life, History, Memory, and Political Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000). Also see the chapters written by Martha Norkunas, Alan Wong, Stacey Zembrzycki, and Alessandro Portelli in Oral History Off the Record.
55 See, for example, David Palmer, “‘Every Morning Before You Open the Door You Have to Watch for that Brown Envelope’: Complexities and Challenges of Undertaking Oral History with Ethiopian Forced Migrants in London, U.K,” Oral History Review 37, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2010): 35-53; Nadia Jones-Gailani, “Third Parties in ‘Third Spaces’: Reflecting on the Role of the Translator in Oral History Interviews with Iraqi Diasporic Women,” in Oral History Off the Record, 169-83.
56 Alessandro Portelli, They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
57 Alessandro Portelli, “Afterword,” in Oral History Off the Record, 273-86.
58 Jennifer Scanlon, “Challenging the Imbalances of Power in Feminist Oral History: Developing a Take-and-Give Methodology,” Women’s Studies International Forum 16, no. 6 (1993): 639-45.
59 Wendy Rickard, “Oral History—‘More Dangerous than Therapy’?: Interviewees’ Reflections on Recording Traumatic or Taboo Issues,” Oral History 26, no. 2 (Autumn 1998): 34-48.
60 Yow, “‘Do I Like Them Too Much?,’” 56.
61 Mark Cave, “Introduction: What Remains–Reflections on Crisis in Oral History,” in Mark Cave and Stephen M. Sloan, eds., Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 11.
62 See, for instance, David W. Jones, “Distressing Histories and Unhappy Interviewing,” Oral History 26, no. 2 (Autumn, 1998): 49-56.
63 See, for example, Henry Greenspan, On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Beyond Testimony, 2nd. ed. (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2010); Kim Lacy Rogers, Selma Leydesdorff, and Graham Dawson, eds., Trauma: Life Stories of Survivors (London: Transaction Press, 1999); Mark Klempner, “Navigating Life Review Interviews with Survivors of Trauma,” Oral History Review 27, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2000): 67-83.
64 Sean Field, “Beyond ‘Healing’: Trauma, Oral History and Regeneration,” Oral History 34, no. 1 (2006): 40.
65 “Beyond ‘Healing,’” 31-42.
66 Henry Greenspan, “The Unsaid, the Incommunicable, the Unbearable, and the Irretrievable,” Oral History Review 41, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2014): 229-43.
67 Sherna Berger Gluck, “From California to Kufr Nameh and Back: Reflections on 40 Years of Feminist Oral History,” in Oral History Off the Record, 25-42.
68 Mary Larson asks similar questions when contemplating the ethical issues that arise with the digitization of oral histories: “Steering Clear of the Rocks: A Look at the Current State of Oral History Ethics in the Digital Age,” Oral History Review 40, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2013): 46-7.
69 Antonius Robben, “The Politics of Truth and Emotion among Victims and Perpetrators of Violence,” in Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival, ed. Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius Robben (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 81-103.
70 Kathleen Blee, “Evidence, Empathy, and Ethics: Lessons from Oral Histories of the Klan,” The American Historical Review 80, 2 (September 1993): 593-606.
71 Blee, “Evidence, Empathy, and Ethics,” 604.
72 For another example of this dilemma, see Erin Jessee, “The Limits of Oral History: Ethics and Methodology amid Highly Politicized Research Settings,” Oral History Review 38, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2011): 287-307.
73 Carrie Hamilton, “On Being a ‘Good’ Interviewer: Empathy, Ethics and the Politics of Oral History,” Oral History 36, no. 2 (2008): 42.
74 Pamela Sugiman, “I Can Hear Lois Now: Corrections to My Story of the Internment of Japanese Canadians—‘For the Record,’” in Oral History Off the Record, 149-167.
75 Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki, “Only Human: A Reflection on the Ethical and Methodological Challenges of Working with ‘Difficult’ Stories,” Oral History Review 37, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2010): 204-05.
76 Tracy E. K’Meyer and A. Glenn Crothers, “‘If I See Some of This in Writing, I’m Going to Shoot You’: Reluctant Narrators, Taboo Topics, and the Ethical Dilemmas of the Oral Historian,” Oral History Review 34, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2007): 71-93.
77 K’Meyer and Crothers, “‘If I See Some of This,’” 81-82.
78 For the most recent articulation of the OHA’s “Principles and Best Practices,” go to Oral History Association, “Principles for Oral History and Best Practices for Oral History,” accessed September 10, 2015, http://www.oralhistory.org/about/principles-and-practices/.
79 Zembrzycki, According to Baba.
80 Anna Sheftel, “‘I Don’t Fancy History Very Much’: Reflections on Interview Recruitment and Refusal in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in Oral History Off the Record, 255-72.
81 For a similar perspective on the Canadian research landscape, see Jennifer M. Kilty, Maritza Felices-Luna, and Sheryl C. Fabian, eds., Demarginalizing Voices: Commitment, Emotion, and Action in Qualitative Research (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014); Nancy Janovicek, “Oral History and Ethical Practice after TCPS2,” in The Canadian Oral History Reader, ed. Kristina R. Llewellyn, Alexander Freund, and Nolan Reilly (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 73-97.
82 Larson, ”Steering Clear of Rocks.“
83 To view this document, go to Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Research Involving Humans (TCPS2), accessed September 10, 2015, http://www.pre.ethics.gc.ca/pdf/eng/tcps2/TCPS_2_FINAL_Web.pdf.
84 Will C. van den Hoonaard, “How Positivism Is Colonizing Qualitative Research through Ethics Review,” in Demarginalizing Voices: Commitment, Emotion, and Action in Qualitative Research, ed. Jennifer M. Kilty, Maritza Felices-Luna, and Sheryl C. Fabian (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014), 175, 177.
85 Maritza Felices-Luna, “Fighting the Big Bad Wolf: Why All the Fuss about Ethics Review Boards?” in Demarginalizing Voices, 208-211.
86 Felices-Luna, “Fighting the Big Bad Wolf,” 207.
87 Alessandro Portelli, The Battle of Valle Giula: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 56.
88 See Federal Register, “Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects,” last modified September 8, 2015, https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/09/08/2015-21756/federal-policy-for-the-protection-of-human-subjects#h-34; Oral History Association, “What’s New,” accessed September 15, 2015, http://www.oralhistory.org/2015/09/08/oral-history-recommended-to-be-excluded-from-irb-review/.
89 For a thorough overview of the case, see Beth McMurtie, “Secrets from Belfast: How Boston College’s Oral History of the Troubles Fell Victim to an International Murder Investigation,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, last modified January 26, 2014, http://chronicle.com/article/Secrets-from-Belfast/144059/
90 See, for example, Jon Marcus, “Oral History: Where Next after the Belfast Project?,” The Times Higher Education, last modified June 4, 2014, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/oral-history-where-next-after-the-belfast-project/2013679.article.
91 Marcus, “Oral History”; Also see Oral History Association, “Oral History Association Response to Developments in Boston College Case,” last modified May 5, 2014, http://www.oralhistory.org/2014/05/05/oral-history-association-response-to-developments-in-boston-college-case/.
92 For a nuanced discussion on this question of failed trust in the Boston College case, see Margo Shea, “Return to Sender: Lessons from Boston College’s Belfast Project,” last modified May 9, 2014, http://www.theflickeringlamp.org/2014/05/return-to-sender-lessons-from-boston.html.
93 See Natalie Samson, “Quebec Ruling Supports Confidentiality of Researchers’ Interviews,” University Affairs, last modified March 5, 2014, http://www.universityaffairs.ca/quebec-ruling-supports-confidentiality-of-researchers-interviews/.
94 Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, x.