Query: Actively Involving Participants in Making Sense of Their Narrative Discrepancies

Johana Wyss Discussion

Hello everyone,

 

I have a question regarding research methods and methodology. Can you think about any existing work in Anthropology (and other disciplines) which, as part of its methodology, confronted informants with their previous statements? Of course, probably all of us experienced in the field that our research participants made series of statements at some point which were in a direct contradiction to when they said previously. However, can you recommend any literature which tries to incorporate this as both method and methodology? For example, showing the informants transcriptions of their previous interviews and asking them to make sense of the discrepancies ? I am sure that similar things have been done, but I struggle to find relevant publications. 

 

Thank you so much! 

Johana Wyss  

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Hi Johana,

Elaine Lawless has done something great work around this in terms of reflecting on how she portrays her contributors in her writing and what they make of that - this is in '"I was afraid someone like you... an outsider... would misunderstand": Negotiating interpretive differences between ethnographers and subjects', Journal of American Folklore, vol 105 (417), p.302 (1992)

She calls this sharing and feedback process 'reciprocal ethnography' - see more on this in '"Reciprocal" Ethnography: No one said it was easy', Journal of Folklore Research, vol 37 (2-3), p.197 (2000)

Hope these
helpful if you've not made use of them already.