So They Understand: Cultural Issues in Oral History (review)

In So they understand: Cultural issues in oral history, William Schneider explores how stories can be recorded and preserved so that their meaning is understood by future generations. Ch. 1, ‘Introduction’ (3–18), presents the problem: how to capture the fluidity of oral traditions via fixed recordings. In order for stories to be understood, interviewers must strive to preserve their context as well as individual performances.

S describes his experience as an oral historian working with native Alaskan communities in Ch. 2, ‘A career full of stories’ (19–36), and outlines the various forms of oral tradition in Ch. 3, ‘What’s in a story’ (37–52). Ch. 4, ‘Sorting out oral tradition and oral history’ (53–67), defines oral history in relation to personal narratives and oral tradition and discusses ‘the authoring function’, the potentially adverse influence of interviewer selection and interpretation.

In Ch. 5, ‘Personal narratives: Shared one to another’ (71–80), S elaborates on the nature of personal narratives—shared experiences that enhance our understanding of a larger story. Expanding the definition of oral history, Ch. 6, ‘Gathering to tell stories: The neglected genre of oral history’ (81–94), explores recordings of public forums, hearings, and elders conferences. Ch. 7, ‘In search of the story: Interviewers and their narrators’ (95–108), presents three examples of oral history projects, exploring the ways that interviewers relate to narrators and creatively engage their material. Continuing on this theme, Ch. 8, ‘Life histories: The constructed genre’ (109–22), discusses the nature of oral biographies and the interviewer’s challenge of providing context without obscuring the narrator’s voice.

The final four chapters shift the focus to broader issues raised by stories. Ch. 9, ‘The whole truth and nothing but the truth’ (125–35), explores internal and external tests of validity. In Ch. 10, ‘Issues of representation’ (137–47), S describes the use of context statements and audiovisual materials. Ch. 11, ‘Intellectual property rights and the public: Unfinished business’ (149–60), explores the use of release forms, the potentially competing needs of different interest groups, and the benefits and challenges of electronic access to oral histories. Finally, Ch. 12, ‘The public record’ (161–67), concludes with a discussion of the ‘production of history’—that is, the active collection and presentation of information for historical intelligibility. S observes that oral histories held by archival repositories are rarely used by the communities from which they originated and suggests that it is in the retelling, the performance, of stories that people connect with their meaning. Therefore, the challenge for curators of oral history is to bring stories into the public sphere where they may continue to inform and stimulate discussion.

S’s book does not explicitly address questions regarding appraisal (i.e. how the historical significance of a text is evaluated), which would seem to be an area ripe for analysis vis-à-vis cultural diversity. Nonetheless, So they understand. . . is an engaging and thought-provoking work that will be of particular interest to discourse analysts, linguistic anthropologists, and researchers concerned with archival theory and practice.