What makes the book distinctive is its focus on interviewing not just as a tool to be used within other frameworks such as case study, action research, evaluation and surveys, but as an approach to organise a project as a whole, to provide frameworks for organising perspectives on the multiple ‘worlds’ of everyday life. It is argued that every project, every methodology, every theoretical perspective has its own rhetorical framework that interacts with the ‘world’ as subject of study or focus for intervention. The interview, as defined in this book, is both the process of constituting and de-constructing world views – it is the inter-view, the place between worlds. Without the ‘inter-view’ no dialogue and no alternatives as a basis for difference, change, and development would be possible. The inter-view as conceived in the book is fundamental to qualitative research as an emancipatory project.
Research practice is thus placed in the context of philosophical, theoretical and methodological debates, taking the reader beyond many introductory texts, making it suitable for all students and researchers who wish to advance the frontiers of their research and engage with contemporary social and political realities.
Introduction
Chapter 1 The interview in the project context
Chapter 2 Language as Method. As model, As World
Chapter 3 Doing the Inter-view
Chapter 4 Interpreting, Understanding, Explaining
Chapter 5 Positioning Subjects, Framing Selves, Making Worlds
Chapter 6 Mapping The Politics: a rhetoric of circumstances, motives and action
Chapter 7 Truth, Witness and betrayal: The ethical framing of interview based research
Chapter 8 From Anecdote to Narrative Case Studies
Chapter 9 From Interviews to Writing
Conclusion