Narrative feminist research interviewing with ‘inconvenient groups’ about sensitive topics: affect, iteration and assemblages

Abstract

This article has been written for qualitative researchers inclined towards in-person, narrative interviewing with members of groups designated ‘inconvenient’ or ‘hard to reach’, about sensitive or controversial topics. The aim is to critically reflect on narrative research interviewing practices we have undertaken in Australia with (1) women who had recently survived domestic violence and had relocated with ‘their animal companions’; and (2) dairy farmers discussing challenges to their wellbeing and that of ‘their livestock’. The themes of affect, iteration and assemblages guide our discussion. Affect speaks to emotions; iteration to researchers raising prior interview content with subsequent participants; and assemblages to the process of piecing together an analysis that later appears seamless. With some caveats, we argue that (in-person) narrative interviewing has the potential to generate rapport with diverse participants that enables the production of ‘good data’, that is, data that are rich in detail but also politicised.

The Performative Narrative Interview: A creative strategy for data production drawing on dialogical narrative theory

“…Dialogue always implies the reproduction of expressive and repressive patterns of communication, including when that dialogue is between participant and researcher during a narrative interview. These repressive patterns align with what feminist researchers have called omnipresent power imbalances between researchers and participants (Fraser and Taylor, 2020) and therefore the reflexive stance of the research was crucial. Both research participants and researchers carry their own rehearsed and internalised repressive and expressive patterns of communication, that may lead the participants to feel reluctant about sharing certain intimate or painful life experiences.…”

“…Narrative inquiry represents a diverse field of research (Whitaker and Atkinson, 2019) and the PNI offers one possible methodological strategy to approach the exigent challenges of producing data on subjectivity. As a dialogic approach, the PNI contributes to those theoretical and methodological researchers who attempt to defy individualism in the study of subjectivity, without dismissing the individual experiences of the subject (e.g., Fraser and Taylor, 2020; Wells et al, 2020). Dialogism has shown to be a promising theoretical and methodological basis for the empirical study of subjectivity, dissolving dualisms such as individual/social, body/language, identity/multiplicity, and passivity/agency (Frank, 2012; Hermans, 2008).…”

“…This does not mean that "everything goes". As feminist and other researchers have argued (Author et al, 2016;Fraser & Taylor, 2020), constant reflection around difficult emotions, methodological questions, and ethical issues is an unwavering commitment of the PNI. Other relevant aspects regarding data analysis from a dialogic perspective such as utilizing videos and not transcripts to include body language and tones of voice into the analysis are discussed in a forthcoming article.…”

“…Probably, the most important methodological strategy to produce empirical narrative data has been the narrative interview (Blakely and Moles, 2017). However, the many diverse and even contradictory ways to conduct narrative interviews (e.g., Alheit and Dausien 1985;Fraser and Taylor, 2020), has made it difficult for researchers to understand what they are doing when they are conducting a narrative interview (Silverman, 2017). This may be indicative of a deeper issue within social scientific narrative inquiry: empirical researchers' surprisingly limited engagement with the theories of language that inform our projects (see Hyvärinen, 2010, for a discussion on different language theories within narrative studies).…”