Contemplation on the relationship between oral history and historical sociology

Hamid Qazvini
Translated by: M. B. Khoshnevisan

2025-3-3

Historical sociology is a subfield of sociology that focuses on the processes and development of social structures in history with a rational, critical, and creative perspective.

This interdisciplinary science, combining history and sociology, studies social structures, processes, and social developments in the context of time.

The goal of sociological studies is to measure the influence of social forces on individual actions, seeking to find the rules governing human behavior to predict and control social events. History attempts to understand events and the main essence of phenomena by utilizing sources.[1]

Combining the two naturally forms historical sociology, answering how societies live and change throughout history.[2]

In simple terms, historical sociology is the study of the past to understand how societies function and change. It has garnered attention from historians and sociologists studying the interaction of past and present, events, processes, activism, and structuring.[3]

Now, we must explore whether oral history can contribute to strengthening historical sociology by collecting large and small qualitative data. Can sociology help examine lived experiences by recording the memories, observations, and actions of individuals? Oral history provides insights into experiences and details of daily life, social relations, and the impact of social and historical structures not recorded in official documents or correspondence.

Oral history has the potential to provide sociologists with greater depth of knowledge. For instance, interviews with individuals present during historical events like the Islamic Revolution or the Sacred Defense offer researchers in-depth, first-hand information about the lives and times of people, their connection to the events, and the social and psychological effects on society.

Oral history data is highly flexible due to its informality and diversity, allowing for multifaceted analysis of identity, social resistance, and cultural change. By collecting individuals’ experiences of social change, oral history helps historical sociology deepen understanding of long-term trends and how social structures influence individuals’ lives and vice versa.

This connection creates a deeper understanding of social and historical relationships, painting a more comprehensive picture of social change. Oral history helps analyze social processes not only from the perspective of elites and macrostructures but also from the viewpoint of individuals who experienced these changes, filling gaps in purely macroscopic analyses. By documenting individual narratives, oral history helps historical sociology analyze the interaction between individual decisions and structural pressures, such as examining the impact of macroeconomic policies on the daily lives of different classes through oral interviews.

Furthermore, oral history helps examine the extent of the human factor's influence in shaping historical and social developments. Written documents and official sources often lack information about marginalized groups, minorities, or weaker classes of society; oral history compensates for this deficiency, providing a more complete image of society.

Oral history is a rich source for analyzing popular culture and changes in value systems, such as collecting oral memories about religious traditions and beliefs in different societies over time. Therefore, oral history complements historical sociology as a reliable tool, playing an effective role in deepening understanding.