In early February 2021, I began oral history interviews with drug policy actors for my postdoctoral project and second book. For ethics and consent purposes, I am in the middle of transcribing the recordings from my first interview with a key person who helped develop Edinburgh’s HIV through injecting drug use (IDU) response.
It was fascinating the many levels of analysis one could approach this material with. On a basic factual level, there were critical contextual details we still have no knowledge of. I was not aware of, nor was it in the literature I studied, the relationship of past Scottish responses to glue sniffing that created the conditions for Edinburgh’s explosive HIV through IDU epidemic in ‘85. Or how template American AIDS prevention models based on gay or bisexual men were difficult to adapt to drug users in metropolitan areas. I was also particularly interested in people’s different speaking and communication styles. I barely asked 2 questions over a 2-hour interview. I suspect on another day, I could have asked 10 questions, depending on the interviewee’s mood.
Interviews are dynamic and multi-layered sources of information. Each research project contributes new insights into how we communicate and relate to one another. There are formal methodological approaches that list in detail the steps and tips to successfully conduct oral history interviews. The Oral History Association (OHA) lists four key best practice elements: preparation, interviewing, preservation and access/use.[1] Judith Moyer’s ‘Step-by-Step Guide to Oral History’ defines oral history as ‘the systematic collection of living people’s testimony about their own experiences’ and is ‘not folklore, gossip, hearsay, or rumor.’[2] The Smithsonian Institution advises ‘[w]ith the equipment, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE until you can use it in your sleep’, further relating Martha Ross’s ‘Six R’s of Oral History Interviewing’: research, rapport, restraint, retreat, review and respect.[3]
I don’t disagree but I would caution against getting too bureaucratic about data gathering. It’s not necessary for social scientific interviews to aim for total scientific rationality because it usually ends up with, well, more details. I always tell my supervisees not to let the methodology overwhelm the significant question or analysis. This is particularly so with oral histories, as their repositories are easy to create but not to use in my opinion. It’s time consuming to peel through pages and pages of conversations that might swerve in different directions depending on the interviewer or interviewee’s mood.
I believe we have yet to fully utilize oral histories as data sources. The most interesting oral histories are institutional projects, such as the World Bank’s Oral History Program.[4] Some of these interviews are historical events themselves, such as those conducted by Bank historians in late 1991 with key Indian officials like LC Jain or Bimal Jalan, just months after India’s formal declaration of economic liberalisation. For instance, a fascinating anecdote from Attila Karaosmanoglu’s interview (Asia Vice President and friend and former Bank colleague of Jalan) that Bimal Jalan does not relate in any of his semi-autobiographical books is that they had lunch together as India’s balance of payments crisis unfolded. Apparently, when Karaosmanoglu pushed for policy change, Jalan angrily replied, ‘why do you have to use every occasion when we sit together to read us the riot act?’ (Karaosmanoglu Interview, 1994/1995, p. 48).[5] We can feel the anger and tension between two old friends who both understand India and the World Bank’s relationship, yet find themselves at odds in a particular decision for reasons we are not quite yet sure of. Oral histories can be the glue holding together or giving character to official archival documentation of important global events.
Academic books tend to use interviews as evidence,
especially in global history, of a factual event not available in the public domain or an encompassing statement reinforcing the author’s argument. For instance, to make a claim that ‘it was obvious that the man at the top, František Šorm, set the tone for the open mindedness and creative energy bubbling up in the Institutes of the Prague Academy’, Renilde Loeckx’s Cold War Triangle: How Scientists in East and West tamed HIV uses ‘Ref. 26: Interview with Prof. Marc van Montagu’. Initially, I thought I would have preferred that Loeckx quote van Montagu’s actual words: it’s a closed loop without allowing readers’ access into the conversation. But I also realized the significance of Loeckx writing as a former diplomat, not an academic historian. The reference page (screenshot below) is full of recollections and anecdotes that reveal as much about her positionality in relation to her experiences, observations and interviewees. We might see what is called ‘bias’, not as a detraction, but a boost to the particular story of Cold War scientific collaboration she wants to tell. Of course, professional historians of the actual period may have some issues.[6]
I am still reading 『国際協力の戦後史』, an edited compilation of an oral history interview with Araki Mitsuya, editor of “Kokusai Kaihatsu Journal”. It is so far an interesting perspective from which to tell the story of Japan’s post-war aid and method to communicate this story to readers. If I find that there are any unique insights for communicating history, I will review it in a future blog post.
I am sitting on a set of fascinating archival documents from WHO Geneva on its many activities in relation to global drugs control, surveillance and governance that I am piecing through, at the same time that I conduct these drug policy actors' interviews. I am reminded that my project itself is making and re-making oral history as a methodology. Researching contemporary global history is very much an iterative process between the archives and oral histories.
[1]‘Best Practices’, Oral History Association, <https://www.oralhistory.org/best-practices/>. [2] Judith Moyer, ‘Step-by-Step Guide to Oral History’, Do History (1999). <http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html#SEQUENCE>. [3] ‘How to Do Oral History’, Smithsonian Institution Archives. <https://siarchives.si.edu/history/how-do-oral-history>. [4] Devesh Kapur, John P. Lewis and Richard Webb’s The World Bank: Its First Half Century (Brookings Institution Press: Washington DC, 1997). WBG Archives: Oral History Program. <https://oralhistory.worldbank.org/>. [5] Attila Karaosmanoglu Interviewed by Jochen Kraske and William Becker, 17 November 1994 and 10/18 January 1995, World Bank Oral History Programme, <https://oralhistory.worldbank.org/transcripts/transcript-oral-history-interview-attila-karaosmanoglu-held-november-17-1994-and>, p. 48. [6] Reviewed by Dora Vargha (University of Exeter), ‘Vargha on Loeckx, “Cold War Triangle: How Scientists in East and West Tamed HIV”’, H-Diplo (February 2019), Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York). <https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/reviews/3788302/vargha-loeckx-cold-war-triangle-how-scientists-east-and-west-tamed>.
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