Author
Associate Professor
Abstract
There is considerable disagreement about the usefulness and the appropriateness of “oral history”. Oral history collects historical data by solely an interview, that if, further developed can be turned into a text. But the question that arises is, in what context does this text qualify as a historical text? Can oral history texts be used as historiographical texts? This article attempts to answer these questions by a methodical approach, and survey the evolutionary process of Iran’s oral history. This article will also survey concepts such as, the narrative oral history, the combination oral history, the descriptive oral history, as well as oral historiography. Although this article makes a distinction between these concepts, it argues that oral historiography is in last evolutionary phase of oral history knowledge which has not been fully explored in Iran. Thus the main purpose is to attempt to analyze different aspects, features, and methods of collecting data, and compare oral history with historiography. It aims to further develop this method, and create a clear framework for future studies.
Keywords
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