How Ethnographic Is Ethnographic Interview?

Abstract

Fieldwork conversation is part and parcel of the participant observation method to such an extent that analyzing its specifics is rarely deemed necessary in anthropological or ethnographic practice. Fieldwork conversation is often interchangeably called “interview”, yet I would argue that the latter term may be rather thought of as referring to sociological methods of inquiry. The interview genre not infrequently makes the interlocutor adopt the position of an outsider vis-à-vis his or her own culture, which goes counter to the very point of participant observation. This may make anthropologists feel uneasy about the question of how ethnographic the ethnographic interview really is. I argue that fieldwork conversation – and fieldwork interview as a formally institutionalized genre of the latter – may require special analytic tools designed specifically for the context of oral communication. Viewing ethnographic interview as a speech situation and employing concepts of Bakhtin’s dialogic theory, I attempt to show how the use of methods targeted at the analysis of speech helps us receive better answers to the ethnographic questions that we pose. As a case in point, I draw on the experience of my own fieldwork conversations or interviews with garden owners in the Leningrad region.