Decolonizing knowledge production in and through interview research Charles L. Briggs in conversation with Judith Eckert and Georgios Coussios
Hauptsächlicher Artikelinhalt
Abstract
In this interview, Charles Briggs recapitulates his academic career and his scholarly “maturation process,” beginning with his early research experiences. Two particularly influential works – Learning how to ask (1986) and Voices of modernity (Bauman/Briggs 2003) – are highlighted as milestones, and their biographical, research-practical, and theoretical underpinnings are illuminated. The experienced disruption of the methodological premises of interview research and the resulting reflection on its cultural and power-based nature repeatedly emerge as groundbreaking themes. Among other things, Briggs reports in detail on his experiences with community-based research in a Latinx community in New Mexico, and in an Indigenous area of Venezuela during two epidemics. His perspective on interviews and interview research is characterized by their use as “empowerment tools” with which public discourses can be “decolonized,” allowing the voices and perspectives of those who rarely receive this privilege to become public. In this process, he emphasizes that researchers must continually sensitize themselves to the diverse communication styles of their research subjects and cultivate a flexible approach to established methods. At the same time, Briggs underlines the omnipresence of the question-answer scheme in the most diverse interaction contexts of mediatized, Western societies, which makes interviews an unavoidable research instrument for social science.
Bibliographie: Briggs, Charles L./Eckert, Judith/Coussios, Georgios: Decolonizing knowledge production in and through interview research. Charles L. Briggs in conversation with Judith Eckert and Georgios Coussios, BIOS – Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung, Oral History und Lebensverlaufsanalysen, 1+2-2024, S. 252-276.
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