Yow on ethnography do I like them too much?

• the essay outlines the "conceptual shift which makes acknowledgement of the interviewer's reactions to, and intrusions into, research speakable by surveying disciplines that use in-depth interview as a research method"

 

• interview effects on the interviewer - looking at "motives for doing the project, feelings about the narrator, interviewer's reaction to the narrator's testimony, intrusion of the interviewer's assumptions and of the interviewer's self-schema into the interviewing and interpretive processes"

 

• 1975 - book Envelopes of Sound, articulated an awareness of the effects of the interview process on the interviewer and the effects of the interviewer on the process. "the historian, first as interviewer and transcriber and later as analyst, posed serious theoretical problems," and mentioned the differences found between interviewer and interviewee (class - dress, speech manners) distort the information/the interview

 

• no such thing as "objective" history

 

• 1970's article by Luisa Passerini - she acknowledged that oral history is subjective, and argued that historians could use that subjectivity in understanding history because both the interviewer and interviewee invest events with meaning

 

• 1974 - Martin Duberman in book, Black Mountain "the issue is not whether the individual historian should appear in his books, but how he should appear....because 'objectivity' has been the ideal, the personal components that go into historical reconstruction have not been candidly revealed, made accessible to scrutiny" (terry cook - archival macroappraisal is in line with this thinking)

 

• R.G. Collingwood - (writes on the philosophy of history) - history cannot exist outside of human consciousness - the interpreter is at the center of the process of understanding the past

 

• 1970s-1980s in history, focus on the quantification of historical data...oral historians, because they were using living witnesses wanted to show that their method was rigorous, a disinterested pursuit of truth, and therefore respectable.

 

• early 1980s - the above thoughts were looked at as flawed...current of skepticism gaining force in regards to antitheoretical/antiphilosophical objectivist empiricism. a questioning of the ideal of scientific objectivity in various disciplines...

 

• Abraham Kaplan in the book The Conduct of Inquiry "no human observation can be 'immaculate'" - "making an observation we are not passive but active; and we are doing something, not only wit hour eyes and our minds, but also with our lips, hands, feet - and guts" (YES!)

 

• anthropologist Victor Turner: one can have an 'objective relation to one's own subjectivity' and can use self-scrutiny to gain greater understanding of the research one is engaged in

 

• ethnographic descriptions and ethnological analyses: part hermeneutics, interpretive activities based on contextual information and mediated texts (Bob Scholte)

 

• 1970s - anthropologists used reflexivity as a means of critiquing and understanding their own research process

 

• anthropologists James Clifford and Clifford Geertz: subjectivity must be acknowledged and can be used to enhance the research process

 

• Dennis Tedlock: intersubjectivity - it is the researcher's questions and informant's answers that must be scrutinized - the dialogue is important

 

• 1980s -book People Studying People: The Human Element in Fieldwork  - role of researcher's emotions

 

• 1980s - Renato Rosaldo reminds that age, gender, outsider's position, identification with a particular political regime, certain life experiences all influence what an ethnographer learns in fieldwork - "objectivity has lost it monopoly status"

 

• biographers too had ascribed to objectivity, but shifted:  "biography is the perfect enterprise to transcend that ideal and show the value of assimilating subjectivity in a larger conception of knowledge." (Carl Pletsch)

 

• asking questions as a researcher: how have my attitudes, demeanors, personality and expectancies shaped the outcome? (Ken Plummer)

 

• feminist theorists also questioning...relationships of power in society - working separately in various disciplines, history, anthro., psych., but talking with one another

 

• Sherna Gluck: speculated on how the difference in culture between interviewer and interviewee (gender, race, class, ethnicity, etc) affects the interview

 

• feminist researchers using in-depth interview were concerned with how the dominant position of the researcher - who knows all the questions to ask and by implication, the answers - can subdue narrator...and possibility of exploitation of narrator (as a researcher must question ourselves, our biases, our purposes, our reactions to narrator and the process and the effects our research has on the narrator)

 

• given all of the above critiques  - the ideal of objectivity in mainstream sociology, psych., economics, poli. sci., remain. BUT, qualitative soc., ethnography, biography and feminist theory have embraced conceptual shifts to insist on the awareness of the interactive process between interviewer/interviewee and interviewer/content

 

• meanings are arrived at through intersubjectivity of subject and object

 

• these shifts also affected oral history - beginning in 1987, many oral historians wrote about their motivations and feelings about the interviewing project they were engaged in..and moving on, have often explored ways gender, class, ethnicity etc affected interaction with the narrator.

 

• book - Interactive Oral History Interviewing  - the emerging relationship between the interviewer and interviewee is the key component in understanding the meaning created during the interview

 

• practitioners and instructors need to begin incorporating concept of reflexivity into writing and teaching, not only questioning work, but placing published writing in a total context which includes revelation of own agendas..the reader needs to know what influences research and interpretation....!

 

• Yow's aims: 1. understanding the subjective aspect of the research and interpretation in order to 2. carry out the project with as much objectivity as possible and use subjectivity to advantage

 

• to Yow, objectivity in research has two aspects 1. collection of all information, including subjective bearing directly on the research question 2. critical examination of the evidence with the methods of examination themselves under scrutiny 

 

• difficulties: 1. need to move beyond our self-schemas (preconceived ideas about what a person or situation ought to be according to our own life experiences/cultures) and focus the interview on what is important to the interviewees (not what is important to us) 2. gender and age dynamics/differences between interviewer/interviewee 3. transference of past feelings/experiences into the interview process 4. interviewer too invested in topic, too closely identifying with person/cause 5. differences in ideologies between interviewer and interviewee - perhaps hard to be open to someone with whom we cannot empathize - interviewers who can respond to narrators with empathy can expect fuller answers

 

• Yow lists good questions to ask oneself during the interview process:
  • what am i feeling about the narrator
  • what similarities/differences impinge on this interpersonal situation?
  • how does my ideology affect this process?
  • why am i doing this project in the first place?
  • what other choices did i have  - topics/questions. why didn't i choose them?
  • what other possible interpretations are there?
  • what are the effects on me as i go about this research?
  • how are my reactions impinging on the research?