100 Questions/11
Translated by Mandana Karimi
2026-01-03
We asked several researchers and activists in the field of oral history to express their views on oral history questions. The names of each participant are listed at the beginning of their answers, and the text of all the answers will be published on this portal by the end of the week. The goal of this project is to open new doors to an issue and promote scientific discussions in the field of oral history.
In this project, a question is asked every Saturday, and we ask experts to present their views in the form of a short text (about 100 words) by the end of the week. All the answers will be published together so that the audience can compare and analyze the views.
The content is the opinions of the senders and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Oral History website. Although the answers are supposed to be based on about 100 words, in order to be polite and not to leave the discussion incomplete, in some cases, answers longer than this are also accepted.
This time, we asked experts to submit their answers by Sunday night so that all answers can be published on Tuesday.
Question 11:
Is oral history standardizable?
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Answer to Question 11:
Mohammad Mehdi Behdarvand
Oral history is “standardizable,” but it is not “dryly moldable.” The two have a subtle difference, and many of the methodological disputes about oral history begin precisely from this point. Oral history is a “human narrative”; its raw material is memory, lived experience, emotion, silence, pause, and even error. If we stuff it into rigid formats like official history or an academic paper, we will kill it; and if we say that because it is human, it has no rules, we will end up with unstructured memoirs. The standardization of oral history lies in the process, not in the content; Standards for honesty, accuracy, and transparency, not for equalizing voices.
Mohammad Mehdi Abdollahzadeh
Standards in oral history, as a scientific indicator, are of considerable necessity for carrying out relevant activities and evaluating its results and outputs. In the past one hundred years, our country has gone through important events, and it is necessary to use the principles and techniques of oral history to historiography of these events. It is also necessary for activists in this field to be as familiar with theoretical foundations as possible so that the output of their work is scientifically credible. Just as standards have been defined in some countries, this is also possible in Iran; especially when adequate training and continuous retraining are not possible, the existence of general, organizational, and specialized standards becomes doubly important.
Hassan Beheshtipour
Oral history has various components. Some of these components, such as methodology or ethical principles that must be observed, can be defined as standards; But when it comes to content and interpretation, we cannot and should not seek standardization. The essence of oral history is based on creative thinking, personal feelings and interpretations, and standardizing content means ignoring the diversity of perspectives and the complexity of narratives. Every narrative and every narrator require a flexible approach, and a fixed standard may prevent the narrator from expressing his or her experiences in depth. In contrast, the work process - from the stages of recording audio or video, archiving audio, video and written sources, indexing, compliance with recording standards, storage formats and documentation of metadata - can and should be standardized. Also, principles such as informed consent, the narrator’s right to correct or limit access, privacy and transparency in the use of interviews are considered global and accepted standards.
Abolfazl Hassanabadi
One of the concerns of oral history institutions and centers, especially the World Oral History Association, has been to conduct oral history interviews in a structured manner around the world and to provide a suitable platform for accepting oral history data as valuable information; especially in response to doubts raised about the unreliability of the content of this data. Accordingly, the first guidelines were developed in 1968 by the World Oral History Association, outlining the general guidelines for conducting interviews, and changes were made to them between 1979 and 1989, in accordance with the current conditions. The principles defined in the World Oral History Standards include commitment to interviewees, responsibility to the profession and the public, responsibility of archival and supporting institutions, and guidelines for implementing oral history projects and evaluating them. These standards have been developed in such a way that oral history activists at different levels can benefit from them at different stages of their work. However, unfortunately, oral history standards have not been widely accepted in Iran; while it is necessary to pay more serious attention to them in oral history centers, in addition to teaching in educational workshops.
Hamid Qazvini
Standards are regulations that are established and implemented in the modern world with the aim of strengthening social order and discipline. In scientific activities, standards are a common set of regulations for researchers, observing which provides a clear framework for evaluating work. Oral history, which is defined under the humanities, is still far from common standards, despite adhering to research methodologies in project design and implementation. The diversity of topics, the plurality of narrators, and the different circumstances of each of them in interviews and publications force the researcher to be creative that may not be acceptable to everyone. It is difficult to require all oral history researchers to adhere to a specific framework. Of course, each publisher or research organization can define standards for itself that cannot be generalized to others.
Shafiqeh Niknafs
Oral history has a standard in method and practice. For more than seventy years, experts interested in oral history have been trying to use other sciences such as sociology, psychology, ethnology, anthropology, linguistics, and feminist studies to achieve theoretical tools and to give credibility to the position of oral history among academics. So far, several manuals have been compiled, one of which is the Oxford Handbook of Oral History, which explains the method of preparing an oral history plan, interview techniques, the impact of gender in interviews, memory and narrative studies, evaluation and analysis, and ethical and legal considerations.
Seyyed Mohammad Sadeq Faiz
Oral history is taught in universities as a field or research method and is essential for understanding the human and micro dimensions of history. Provided that it is used with a critical scientific method and in conjunction with other evidence. This method is not a substitute for written documents, but a valuable complement to them. Standardization means adhering to scientific frameworks in collection and analysis, not inherent superiority over other written documents. Because oral history often records perspectives that are ignored in official documents. Although the impact of time and personal orientations on memories in oral history can be corrected to some extent by analytical methods, a distinction must be made between academic standards and the public perception of an authentic document.
Abol-Fat’h Mo’men
The standard in oral history should cover all its stages; from subject finding and interviewing - which should preferably be visual so that the narrator’s body language is also recorded - to implementation and publication. Since oral history is not a concept separate from history, the first standards should be aimed at the interviewer; a person who, with knowledge of the subject and historical knowledge, can obtain high-quality data in the conversation. Therefore, the interviewer must have at least professional standards; As in implementation, editing, and publishing, this necessity also exists. In Iran, due to the large number of oral history custodians, each institution usually acts according to its own taste and the focus is often on publication; unlike many other countries where oral history is based on archives and use by researchers. Therefore, oral history in practice has progressed more according to taste and creativity and has not followed a specific standard. For this reason, we need to formulate general, public, as well as detailed and precise standards; standards that are different from guidelines and regulations. Undoubtedly, if oral history is to move on a scientific path, like any other scientific field, it needs its own standards that all custodians and centers follow.
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