| Abstract: | This paper reviews critical developments in the internationalhistory of oral history and outlines four paradigmatic revolutionsin theory and practice: the postwar renaissance of memory asa source for 'people's history'; the development, from the late1970s, of 'postpositivist' approaches to memory and subjectivity;a transformation in perceptions about the role of the oral historianas interviewer and analyst from the late 1980s; and the digitalrevolution of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Threaded throughdiscussion of these paradigm shifts are reflections upon fourfactors that have impacted oral history and, in turn, been significantlyinfluenced by oral historians: the growing significance of politicaland legal practices in which personal testimony is a centralresource; the increasing interdisciplinarity of approaches tointerviewing and the interpretation of memory; the proliferationfrom the 1980s of studies concerned with the relationship betweenhistory and memory; and the evolving internationalism of oralhistory. |
