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Given the anthropological focus on ethnography as a kind of deep immersion, the interview poses theoretical and methodological challenges for the discipline. This volume explores those challenges and argues that the interview should be seen as a special, productive site of ethnographic encounter, a site of a very particular and important kind of knowing. In a range of social contexts and cultural settings, contributors show how the interview is experienced and imagined as a kind of space within which personal, biographic and social cues and norms can be explored and interrogated. The interview possesses its own authenticity, therefore-true to the persons involved and true to their moment of interaction-whilst at the same time providing information on human capacities and proclivities that is generalizable beyond particular social and cultural contexts.
List of contents
Introduction: The Interview as Analytical Category
James Staples and Katherine Smith Chapter 1. The Transcendent Subject? Biography as a Medium for Writing 'Life and Times'
Pat Caplan Chapter 2. Using and Refusing Antiretroviral Drugs in South Africa: Towards a Biographical Approach
Isak Niehaus Chapter 3. An 'Up and Down Life': Understanding Leprosy through Biography
James Staples Chapter 4. Finding My Wit: Explaining Banter and Making the Effortless Appear in the Unstructured Interview
Katherine Smith Chapter 5. 'Different Times' and Other 'Altermodern' Possibilities: Filming Interviews with Children as Ethnographic 'Wanderings'
Angels Trias i Valls Chapter 6. Dialogues with Anthropologists: Where Interviews Become Relevant
Judith Okley Chapter 7. Talking and Acting for Our Rights: The Interview in an Action-research Setting
Ana Lopes Epilogue: Extraordinary Encounter? The Interview as an Ironical Moment
Nigel Rapport Notes on Contributors
About the author
James Staples is Senior Lecturer in anthropology at Brunel University London, author of
Peculiar People, Amazing Lives (Orient Longman, 2007) and
Leprosy in India: Journeys With A Tamil Brahmin (Lexington Books, 2014), editor of
Livelihoods at the Margins (Left Coast Press, 2007) and two recent volumes on suicide. He has published numerous journal articles and chapters on his work in South India.
Summary
The interview creates a context of interaction with a particular authenticity to experience. Contributors explore how the interview is experienced as a particular kind of knowing within which personal, biographic, and social norms are explored and interrogated, providing direction and awareness for future encounters.
Additional text
“…a diverse group of scholars who have a broad range of experience as ethnographers and whose work with interviews, life stories and biography highlight the extraordinariness of social encounters.” · Tamara Kohn, University of Melbourne
“Each chapter is well written and has something interesting . . . to say about interviewing. . . All in all, a genuinely absorbing read which has prompted me to think about interviewing in new ways.” · Peter Collins, Durham University
