Reply To: Block 4

[Nicholas Hopwood]

Yes, the issue of power imbalance is important, and can be thought through and enacted in a number of ways. It is hard to draw the line between rigorously trying to get to the edges of a participant’s understanding or account of something, and that then turning into attempts to trick them (or that at least being how participants experience it). What Ilaria and I have been proposing is an idea of the interview where our concerns are about creating a context (social, material, gendered, aged etc) in which people can talk comfortably from their strengths – an experience in which they may turn out to be more knowledgeable than they had thought before… but seeing this as a fluid, constructive process in which new ideas might come about. This doesn’t render questions of rigour or trust moot, but configures them differently, drawing attention to things like the body, materialities, not just truth and memory. So perhaps more in an arts than a science block?!

I’m glad you, like others, have found the plumb idea useful: the key is to take what works for you, adapt it, put it to work, and forget the rest! (That’s not cheating or being sloppy, that’s being an agentic appropriator of tools and resources)