A word that I'd never heard before seems to be cropping up a lot recently: methodology. ("A way of doing things," I seem to remember? I'll check the dictionary...)
meth-od-ol-o-gy: the system of principles, practices, and procedures applied to any specific branch of knowledge.
Right, that would make sense...
So, can Oral History have a methodology that is science based (last class's discussion)? If you'd asked me that question a month ago, I would have said no, absolutely not-- why not appreciate the stories for what they are, and stop trying to analyze them and graph them, and plot them and test them and do whatever else it is that you might do to something scientific? Stories are art, not science.
But now, I don't know. I couldn't say for sure what's changed my mind (or at least got me thinking and questioning), but it could be my recently realized fasicantion with the Scientific Method, and the possibility of a connection between it and art. Art and science have been intertwined in the past (think da Vinci), and the interview process... scientific method... there are some similarities, I think....
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What is science? Is it as embedded in social context as stories/narratives are (Friday's class discussion)? Can stories, like science, create a social context for themselves? I think part of the root cause of our discussion about scientific legitimacy of oral histories might stem from our perceived rigidity of those definitions.
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