Volume 2 / Athens 2000 "Approaching Oral History in Greece Today: Trends and the Research Process" Athens, 29 January 1999 by Pothiti Hantzaroula The use of oral sources by several disciplines, such as anthropology, history, sociology, and psychoanalysis, and the understanding of the communicative dimension of the research process and scholarly production have transformed the ways in which the object of scholarly inquiry is perceived and have shifted the focus from information gathering to the interactive process between researcher and subject during the interview but also to the importance of this interaction in the production of the text. This trend is related to the retreat of a global subject and the recognition of other subjects in historical change. Thus, as Luisa Passerini argues, the re-establishment of subjectivity in the subjects we study and the substitution of the concept of objectivity for inter-subjectivity forms a general methodoIogical criterion in scholarly work. This emphasis in the process of the interview and the roIe of the researcher's experiences, age, social and geographical background in shaping the interview and the text framed the conference's structure and aims, an emphasis which is reflected aIso in the conference's title. Besides, one of the major objectives of the conference was to map out the territory of the themes and research interests of scholars who work in the fieId of oral history in Greece today. The conference was organized by The National Center for Social Research (EKKE) in January 1999 in Athens. The first session was devoted to the Second WorId War, to the Resistance and the CiviI War. The participants expIored the way in which a research topic is constructed. Riki van Boeschoten referring to her field work in Western Macedonia during the Civil War argued that the roIe of a community of memory, the self- representation of the narrator, the local community and the reIationship between researcher and narrator were decisive factors for the formation of memory. Lie Sarafi discussed the implication of the researcher in the choice and construction of a historical topic through her participation in a particuIar community and her personaI and family history, which Ied to the research of the origins of the Civil War in two rural communities in Central Greece. The focus of the second session was the use of Iife-stories of immigrants/refugees and internaI migrants from rural backgrounds. The participants dealt with the relationship between the different spatiaI and temporaI dimensions that exist in the process of cIinical-type interviews (Klimis Navridis) and the role of migration and of the geographical and sociaI background in shaping the perceptions and choices of the interviewees and their relationship with industrial employment (Georgia Petraki). In the third session under the title Women and Oral Testimonies, Eleni Papagaroufali, through her ethnographic research on body donators approached the relationship between researcher and interviewee as a somatic interaction challenging the dichotomy between "body language" and "verbal language". Tania Vosniadou using the life-histories of women of three generations explored the mother-daughter relationship and the way in which her own experience as a daughter and mother influenced her methodological and analytical approaches in the field of psychology and the practice of psychotherapy. The fourth session continues with the question of youth. The paper of Nikolas Christakis aimed at the exploration of the psycho-social identity of independent rock-groups in Greece and dealt with the problems that arise in sociological research of youth, that is the use of life-story in the case of young people. These problems are related to the tensions between researcher and interviewee due to their generation difference and to the conflicting and nostalgic feelings within the subjectivity of the researcher when he deals with two different worlds. The paper of Tasoula Vervenioti used two interviews of police officers from different political backgrounds to argue about the various layers of time and space in the narration but also in the process of the interview. In the framework of the last session on Jewish memory and oral testimonies Rena Molho gave a detailed description of the methodological procedure of the interview as it is defined by the Archive of visual and aural testimonies of survivors of the genocide, the "SHOAH Visual History Foundation" in Los Angeles, and presented the aims and the function of the Archives. Erica Amarillio gave a vigorous account of her experience of collecting testimonies of Greek Jews in Salonika who survived of concentration camps. Her presentation combined the difficulties of conducting interviews with survivors, an attempt that started in 1989, due to the painful memories of such a borderline experience with her personal involvement as a survivor of Auschwitz, and the influence that the listening of the accounts of bodily and emotional torture involves during and after the interviews. The variety of epistemological backgrounds of the participants and the interdisciplinarity of the approaches were fruitful for reflecting on the blending of disciplinary languages and the infiltation of mainly anthropology into historical scholarship. In the round-table discussion, which was conducted by Aleka Boutzouvi, Frangiski Ambatzopoulou, Anna Vidali, Nikos Panayiotopoulos, Marina Petronoti and Nora Skouteri-Didaskalou discussed the role of the researcher in oral history. Nora Skouteri-Didaskalou summarized the general anxiety about the overrepresentation of the subjectivity of the researcher in the papers as well as in recent scholarship. In a powerful text which combined the voices of the self-reflective researcher and the interviewee she pointed out to the hierarchies and differences (class, geographical, and age) which underlie and structure the process of interviewing and invited researchers to interrogate the categories they use. Moreover she questioned the extent to which the awareness of the role of the researcher influences the research process. This comment iIIustrated the dangers that arise from the lack of balance in the handling of the interaction between the researcher's subjectivity and the subjectivity of the object of the research which can lead to a narcissistic privileging of the voice of the researcher. A methodological endeavor of inter-subjectivity has to take into account the effect of the relationship between interviewer and interviewee in the production of the text and due to the fact that the interview is above all a relationship it has to stress the influence of the narration and the subjectivity of the interviewee in the shaping of the interview and the text. Return to Top