Oral History Used for Hearing from Silent Social Classes

Being democratic is one of the most outstanding features of oral history, so it can cover ‎the concerns of all walks of society. Also, since oral history does not suffer from the ‎bottlenecks of other historical disciplines regarding coverage of a phenomenon, it can be ‎decentralized from historiography and be extended to ordinary people. Until the second ‎decade of the twentieth century and the active emergence of the Annales school, ‎historiography would often overlook ordinary people and lower classes of society. Since then, ‎especially over the past seven decades, oral history, combined with other modern styles, has ‎made great efforts to steer historiography from elitism and centralism to multiple social ‎aspects.‎The purpose of this study is to expose the place and status of oral history in social history, ‎therefore, it has addressed two basic questions: 1) Why should the lower classes and the ‎neglected or less seen groups of society be brought back into the spotlight of history? 2) How ‎can oral history materialize the process of democratization and decentralizing history? For ‎this purpose, the present study has touched upon a number of these neglected classes in ‎history and examined and evaluated their conditions and the way in which oral history ‎interacts with them.‎