Life history narratives and community history

Abstract

Basically life history or life story narration in oral history research is the autobiography of a person obtained through interviews and structured conversations. However, it is more than an autobiography and covers the subject's experience and interprets the world he lives in. The interviewer with his framework of questions helps the interviewee in the construction of his narration.' The life history unravelled becomes part of a wider social and historical mosaic that is a comprehensive picture of the social life studied, and can be checked by the interviewer against other available evidence and research. A person's life story is then related to social and historical change. Personal lives are not just individualistic but "move persistently through history and culture"² in a totality taking into account physical needs, social groupings, personal perceptions and historical change in one's own life and the outside world. In short the life history becomes not just a concern for the formation of the private self but traces the relationship between self and his social environment. The life story narrative is enhanced with a social and historical framework when the interviewer with his questions and the interviewee with his narration co-jointly create the resulting interview.