The French Social Security Oral History Project

Establishing oral history consists not in collecting together archives already in existence, but in producing oral documents to replace and supplement written documents. Oral documentation appears to be particularly suited to preserve and transmit all oral traditions which have left no written traces, including descriptions of patterns of occupational behavior and of everyday life. Oral history seems a priori to be less well adapted to document the history of governmental administrative organizations insofar as such organizations operate by way of texts and in accordance with written rules, and agencies produce chroniclers who write their history even as the events are actually taking place. Paradoxically, however, the history of the French Social Security constitutes a subject which lends itself exceptionally well to the establishment of an oral history. Financed by the Interministerial Committee for the History of the Social Security, an oral history program was entrusted to the Center for Historical Research. The project began April, 1975 and is still in progress. As of May, 1976, twenty-three persons have been interviewed and forty-six interviews have been conducted. This program is the first oral history undertaking in France, and it is to serve as a model for other projects currently being prepared. The history of the Social Security is at once the history of legislation, the history of organization (the Caisses), the history of a central State administration,' and the history of collaboration or confrontation of various social groups: civil servants, doctors, trade unionists, management, members of social institutions, and politicians. Oral history, by virtue of its systematic character

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