ABSTRACT

The use of the interview in research marks a move away from seeing human subjects as simply manipulable and data as somehow external to individuals, and towards regarding knowledge as generated between humans, often through conversations (Kvale, 1996:11). Regarding an interview, as Kvale (ibid.: 14) remarks, as an interview, an interchange of views between two or more people on a topic of mutual interest, sees the centrality of human interaction for knowledge production, and emphasizes the social situatedness of research data. As we suggested in Chapter 2, knowledge should be seen as constructed between participants, generating data rather than capta (Laing, 1967:53). As such, the interview is not exclusively either subjective or objective, it is inter subjective (ibid.: 66). Interviews enable participants-be they interviewers or intervieweesto discuss their interpretations of the world in which they live, and to express how they regard situations from their own point of view. In these senses the interview is not simply concerned with collecting data about life: it is part of life itself, its human embeddedness is inescapable.