Oral history for building social movements, then and now

In the Afterword to their edited collection Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai remind us that:

[W]e must not be lulled into the belief that the mere doing of this kind of work [oral history] is likely to bring about social transformation, but even less should we give in to the scholar’s doubts by demeaning the powerful contribution that oral history can make to the process of change. ¹