Interviews as Activated Storytelling

Challenging the sanitized view of interview participants in standardized survey interviews, Interviews as Activated Storytelling contends that interviews are meaning-making occasions that produce useful but context-sensitive knowledge. Through a series of case studies, this book illustrates that research participants are not simply there for the asking and answering, but rather respond in relation to the conditions of particular social worlds, such that interview interaction and interpretation must be conditioned by and take into account the social worlds referenced in the process. The contributing authors explore how prior conceptions of interview participants as well as the interview process constructively inform and shape—or ‘activate’—the narrative process from beginning to end across diverse social worlds. Together with Crafting Ethnographic Fieldwork: Sites, Selves, and Social Worlds (2023), the two volumes offer experienced insights into the full range of analytic and procedural issues involved in qualitative discovery and documentation. The book therefore will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in research methods and social theory.