The Challenge of Modernity to a Peripheral Island in a Sea of Oil: issues about oral history as a research method arising from the study of Shetland’s changing working culture and sense of identity

Alexandra Brehme (AHRC Doctoral Student, University of Aberdeen) [BIO]

Email: a.brehme@abdn.ac.uk

 

ABSTRACT:

Over the last three decades, oral history has become increasingly popular as a method within academia and beyond. The paper – focusing on my research as a doctoral student on the most northerly Scottish island group, Shetland (60° North), which was faced, in the 1970s, with the arrival of multinationals exploiting North Sea oil – will discuss how I have gone about conducting life-story interviews, and the strengths and weaknesses of interviews as primary sources. It will raise a number of methodological issues, including those surrounding the inter-subjectivity of interviewer and interviewee and the problematic nature of memory processes – thus addressing some of the main criticisms of oral history. It will refer to issues about ethics and technology. Examples from interviews that were more and less successful will be played and discussed. The underlying argument will be that the inclusive nature of a biographical interview is highly conducive to researching social and cultural change.