On the theme: « Renewing Interview Methods to Free Up the Respondent’s Voice »
Editors: Amélie Robert and Félix Lefebvre
Amélie Robert and Félix Lefebvre
Foreword (p. 15-28)
Hervé Breton
«Narrative Inquiry and Embodied Stories: Examining the Conditions for Accessing Lived Experience During Research» (p. 31-55)
Abstract: In qualitative research, approaches involving narratives are often classified as narrative inquiry. This text aims to characterize this field of research, which is distinctive for its focus on understanding phenomena experienced by individuals through the practice of self-narration. This is achieved by defining several theoretical and methodological criteria: differentiating types of discourse, specifying modes of expression, and formalizing narrative frameworks. This groundwork allows for a deeper understanding of the practice and stakes of narrative interviews, the refinement of guiding techniques, and the characterization of the temporal and experiential dimensions of narrative data.
Keywords: Interview, Inquiry, Microphenomenology, Narrative, Narrative Research, Lived Experience.
Marine Bikard
«What Our Hands Can Tell Us» (p. 57-100)
Abstract: By paying attention to the body during the interview, I seek to generate a grounded and renewed discourse. This attention changes the conception of the interview, which is less a collection of information than a performative game, with a desire to open a mobile and living relationship with memory in the exchange. This also involves the sociologist’s body, the way they play with their presence and the setting. More particularly, narratives from the hands’ viewpoint bring the body into play in the very act of speaking, offering access to lived experience from memories that have been little used. Through them, the experience appears fundamentally in relation to the context, caught up in the fabric of life’s contingencies, remembered by the body through its gestures and sensations and emotions that ran through it. They also reveal an intelligence and imagination that are largely situated in the body, porous to its environment. In this way, they open to an ecological understanding of our actions, revealing the entanglement between our behavior and the environment.
Keywords: Sociology, Dance, Performance, Perception, Improvisation, Hand, Memory.
Yann Bruna
«Methodological Issues Involved in Using Online Activity Traces in an Interview Situation» (p. 101-134)
Abstract: For more than two decades, web data has been used more and more frequently in empirical research in the social sciences. Because of the possibilities for mass retrieval of digital traces and their sheer volume, the use of these data is often reduced to a quantitative approach. Based on the results of five qualitative surveys carried out over the last ten years, all of which using digital traces in interview situations, this article shows the extent to which web data can also be a valuable and enlightening material in qualitative approaches, mainly for the purpose of freeing the interviewee to speak. Aside from the possibilities of accompanying or even demonstrating the discourse, the opportunities offered by the use of digital traces must be accompanied by an awareness of the associated biases and limitations.
Keywords: Qualitative Methods, Digital Traces, Web Data, Interviews.
Leïla Baracchini et Mélanie Duval
«Sharing Images, Rethinking Rock Art heritage: A Photovoice Project with the !Xun and Khwe Communities of Platfontein (South Africa)» (p. 135-179)
Abstract: This article reflects on a photovoice project carried out in 2022 with San communities in South Africa. The project is the result of a participatory and collaborative approach involving an interdisciplinary team of researchers (ANR COSMO-ART), South African academic and cultural institutions, and two local NGOs. The study took place in Platfontein (Northern Cape, South Africa), among the !Xun and Khwe war refugees from Angola and Namibia, who, in 1997, became custodians of a South African rock art site. Charged with studying the relationship between these communities and their rock art heritage, we discuss in this article how photovoice contributes to the emergence of an understanding of heritage “from below”, which differs significantly from a nationalist, touristic, and economic perspective, and instead highlights a vision of heritage rooted in people’s everyday practices and experiences.
Keywords: Cultural Heritage, Rock Art, Photovoice, Participative Methodology, Khoisan, South Africa, Territory, Everyday Heritage, Indigenous.
Frédérique Jankowski
«Forum Theatre Plays to Explore Feelings of Socio-Environmental Injustice in Senegal. A Pragmatic Survey Method» (p. 181-213)
Abstract: How can feelings of socio-environmental injustice be captured as an experience? How can these feelings be turned into objects of collective enquiry shared between researchers and informants? To answer these questions, a number of survey devices have been developed based on forum theatre performances in Senegal. This article presents these devices from a pragmatic perspective. This method is based on the representation of situations that affect actors gathered in public in different ways. Unlike traditional qualitative research methods, the affective dimension structures these investigative processes. Such an approach meets the ethical challenges of research by defining situations of investigation shared between researcher and informant. The voice of the informants is at the heart of the theatrical device: a voice put into body and on stage, it becomes critical and analytical within the forums associated with the performances. However, the article highlights certain framing effects and ethical risks associated with these methods of enquiry, which open up the possibility of new worlds as they explore them.
Keywords: Forum Theatre, Pragmatic Enquiry, Feelings of Injustice, Emotional Work, Interviewer Informant Relationship.
Marie-Julie Catoir-Brisson
«Pandemic-Responsive Qualitative Research: Integrating Sensitive Methods and Co-Design Media» (p. 215-250)
Abstract: This article focuses on the survey systems used in research through co-design in diverse fields (health, climate, natural risks) in the context of a pandemic. Sensitive methods and co-design media play a role in the research methodology, to immerse in the field, co-construct projects with participants and communicate about the current project. Emphasis is placed on the investigation phase with various materials: photography, video, illustration, social media. The mobilization of these media in the investigation raises methodological questions, addressed using examples: how did these methods emerge in particular situations and with specific participants? Which media were mobilized and with what aims? The article highlights the methodological contributions and challenges of these renewed approaches to qualitative research. The stake is also to analyze the affective relationships generated by these media to address complex subjects involving sensoriality, and to propose a reflexive framework for qualitative research.
Keywords: Investigation Systems, Pandemic, Sensitive Methods, Methodological Creativity, Media, Co-Design.
Arthur Ducasse
«Freeing Speech from Routine Patterns. Interview Experiments on Pedestrian Mobilities in Bogotá (Colombia) and Lima (Peru)» (p. 251-294)
Abstract: This article aims to contribute to the debate on mobility research methods. It describes three interview methods and their limitations in capturing the perceptions, experiences, and practices of everyday walking. This social geography research is based on a year and a half of fieldwork in the Andean metropolises, which combines a phase of semistructured interviews, go-along walks, and photo-elicitation interviews. This paper presents the challenges of foreign language research based on speech analysis and analyzes the complementarity of the collected discourses. In addition, it highlights the difficulty of freeing these voices from routine experience. Finally, several suggestions for using images to build knowledge about the experiences and practices of everyday walking are presented.
Keywords: Walking, Bogota, Lima, Go-Along, Photo-Elicitation Interview, Routine.
Théa Manola et Camille Mortelette
«To Survey Ordinary Sensitive Experiences: Tools, Approaches, and Challenges» (p. 295-331)
Abstract: This article aims to detail the methodological approach used in the survey conducted with residents of three neighborhoods: Champs Bleus (Vezin-le-Coquet), La Brasserie (Strasbourg), and La Villeneuve (Grenoble). Specifically, it focuses on the methodological tools employed in this context: commented walks and sensory kits. This survey was carried out as part of the PROSECO research project (ANR-20-CE22-0002-01). First, we will explain the reasons that led us to use “nontraditional” methodological tools, which, despite their unconventional nature, are rooted in the social sciences and used within an “academic” research framework. We will also describe these tools in detail, explaining how they were adapted and implemented during the survey. Next, we will adopt a reflexive approach to discuss the roles and positions of researchers in conducting the survey and the contributions of these tools. Finally, we will share our reflections on the challenges, uncertainties, and difficulties encountered when using these “non-traditional” tools.
Keywords: Survey, Sensitive, Eco-District, Inhabitants.