Contexts and Subjectivities

Challenging the static view of the respondent that characterizes standardized research interviews, Interviews as Activated Storytelling demonstrates through a series of case studies that interviews are interactional, meaning-making processes that produce useful but context-sensitive knowledge.

Challenging the sanitized view of participants in standardized surveys, Interviews as Activated Storytelling contends that interviewing is a meaning-making process producing useful but context-sensitive knowledge. Through a series of case studies, the book illustrates that participants are not simply there for asking and answering, but inquire and respond in terms of attendant interests and social worlds. Interview interaction and interpretation must take these into account against standardization. In two parts, chapters explore how conditions of the interview process (contexts) and conceptions of interview participants (subjectivities) narratively inform and shape—activate—interviewing and its results. Together with the previously published book Crafting Ethnographic Fieldwork: Sites, Selves, and Social Worlds, insights into the full range of procedural issues in qualitative research are offered.