Interviewing and Representation in Qualitative Research Projects

by Schostak

• ISBN13: 9780335212408
• ISBN10: 0335212409
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-11-01
• Publisher: Open University Press

Summary

The book explores the processes of interviewing in relationship to developing and implementing qualitative research projects. Too often interviewing is seen as a 'tool' for data collection that is employed using different 'techniques' in different contexts. Interviewing is a complex, subtle process that cannot be separated from the dynamic of the project nor from the multiple and changing contexts of everyday life. The book therefore explores the process of interviewing within the contexts of the contemporary debates concerning such issues as 'knowledge', 'freedom', 'power', 'ethics', 'feminism', 'postcolonialism' 'modernism and postmodernism', 'globalisation' and so on. 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, surveys and so on 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, no alternatives as a basis for difference, change, development is possible. Each cha

Author Biography

John Schostak is Research Professor of Education within the Education and Social Research Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(8)
The Interview in the Project Context	9	(17)
Language as Method. As Model, As World	26	(22)
Doing the Inter-view	48	(19)
Interpreting, Understanding, Explaining	67	(20)
Positioning Subjects, Framing Selves, Making Worlds	87	(16)
Mapping The Politics: A rhetoric of circumstances, motives and action	103	(19)
Truth, Witness and Betrayal: The ethical framing of interview based research	122	(18)
From Anecdote to Narrative Case Studies	140	(20)
From Inter-views to Writing	160	(17)
Exit Strategies	177	(2)
References	179	(6)
Name Index	185	(2)
Index	187