ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical, methodological, and ethical issues surrounding oral history for qualitative researchers including an examination of various types of oral history projects, participants, power issues, issues of researcher-narrator-participant relationships in oral history, and Institutional Research Boards (IRBs). Theory, methods, and ethics are intertwined in oral history research, with each having an impact on the other.
The chapter illustrates the characteristics of oral history, examines how theories of the self impact oral history approaches, and discusses the meaning of intersubjectivity. Further, the meaning of orality in oral history, oral history narration as performance, and the concepts of neutrality and objectivity, as well as what it means to adopt a critical perspective as a researcher are examined in this chapter.
