John Benjamins Publishing Company
Oral history and political elites: Interviewing (and transcribing) lobbyists
Abstract
This chapter discusses some of the methodological issues which arose in my interviews with lobbyists in Washington, London and Brussels. While all research projects are different, this chapter attempts to highlight some key issues around interviewing which researchers need to consider – such as interview structure, the ethics of transcribing, and editing transcriptions for publication – and to provide an account of how they were addressed in the course of this particular project. It ends by urging that such transcripts become generally available to other researchers, as they constitute a potentially fruitful data resource of no less importance than the quantitative datasets which tend to be more commonly available.
Abstract
This chapter discusses some of the methodological issues which arose in my interviews with lobbyists in Washington, London and Brussels. While all research projects are different, this chapter attempts to highlight some key issues around interviewing which researchers need to consider – such as interview structure, the ethics of transcribing, and editing transcriptions for publication – and to provide an account of how they were addressed in the course of this particular project. It ends by urging that such transcripts become generally available to other researchers, as they constitute a potentially fruitful data resource of no less importance than the quantitative datasets which tend to be more commonly available.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of editors and contributors vii
- Foreword ix
- From the editors xi
-
Section 1. Fieldwork challenges
- Trust in the empathic interview 3
- Oral historian: Neither moralizer nor informer 15
- Memorable belongings 27
- Oral history & e-research: Collecting memories of the 1960´s and 1970´s youth culture 35
- Oral history and political elites: Interviewing (and transcribing) lobbyists 47
-
Section 2. Doing gender
- Doing gender within oral history 63
- The dialogues in-between: A phenomenological perspective on women's oral history interviews 77
- The problems of articulating beingness in women's oral histories 87
-
Section 3. Behind and beyond the stories
- Conversations with survivors of the siege of Leningrad: Between myth and history 101
- Women soldiers and women prisoners: Oral testimonies of Ruta Czaplińska and Elżbieta Zawacka 115
- 'The stranger within my Gate': Irish emigrant narratives of exile, tradition and modernity in post-war Britain 129
-
Section 4. Public space challenges
- Painting in sound: Aural history and audio art 147
- Oral history as a dialogue with the Polish-Jewish past of a local community from the perspective of social pedagogy 169
- Sharing oral history with the wider public: Experiences of the Refugee Communities History Project 179
-
Section 5. Story - oral history - historiography
- The ethics of oral history: Expectations, responsibilities, and dissociations 195
- Life story interviews and the "Truth of Memory": Some aspects of oral history from a historico-philosophical perspective 205
- Index 217
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of editors and contributors vii
- Foreword ix
- From the editors xi
-
Section 1. Fieldwork challenges
- Trust in the empathic interview 3
- Oral historian: Neither moralizer nor informer 15
- Memorable belongings 27
- Oral history & e-research: Collecting memories of the 1960´s and 1970´s youth culture 35
- Oral history and political elites: Interviewing (and transcribing) lobbyists 47
-
Section 2. Doing gender
- Doing gender within oral history 63
- The dialogues in-between: A phenomenological perspective on women's oral history interviews 77
- The problems of articulating beingness in women's oral histories 87
-
Section 3. Behind and beyond the stories
- Conversations with survivors of the siege of Leningrad: Between myth and history 101
- Women soldiers and women prisoners: Oral testimonies of Ruta Czaplińska and Elżbieta Zawacka 115
- 'The stranger within my Gate': Irish emigrant narratives of exile, tradition and modernity in post-war Britain 129
-
Section 4. Public space challenges
- Painting in sound: Aural history and audio art 147
- Oral history as a dialogue with the Polish-Jewish past of a local community from the perspective of social pedagogy 169
- Sharing oral history with the wider public: Experiences of the Refugee Communities History Project 179
-
Section 5. Story - oral history - historiography
- The ethics of oral history: Expectations, responsibilities, and dissociations 195
- Life story interviews and the "Truth of Memory": Some aspects of oral history from a historico-philosophical perspective 205
- Index 217
