ABSTRACT
Much academic writing on interview methodology is centered on such practical problems as how to go about asking the kinds of questions that will allow us to create a coherent text-whom to ask and how to represent the answers. But the need to ask is rarely questioned, and the hierarchical division of “Knowers,” which allows one group to ask and requires the other to answer, is largely taken for granted. The many investigations that are undertaken with the express intention of improving material conditions for the marginalized respondent (or those presumed to be represented by, or included in, the respondent’s position) imply that, in order to be useful, these knowledge-producing conversations must take place with individuals or groups who are less privileged than the researcher, or are somehow in need of the interventions suggested or enacted by the research process.
