Introduction

The essays in this anthology represent, in the broadest sense, an interpretive perspective of inquiry that has flourished in oral history for the past 15 years. This perspective considers oral history interviews as subjective, socially constructed and emergent events; that is, understanding, interpretation, and meaning of lived experience are interactively constructed.

The impetus for this volume was the editor's fascination with the multifaceted complexity of the oral history interview method coupled with the belief that, despite many books that address methodological issues, no single work takes as its focus those complex, interactive processes which constitute the oral history interview. The editors' purpose in developing this anthology, therefore, was to provide a variety of essays which taken together address the possibilities and constraints inherent in oral history interviewing.