Volume 4, No. 2 – May 2003

One Thing Leads to Another Or: Self-Reflexivity as Method

Olaf Jensen & Harald Welzer (Germany)

Abstract: Based on examples of interview material out of several of our research projects we show how the phenomenon of interest is represented in the research situation itself. Interaction processes between interviewee and interviewer are interpreted as gauges of a reality beyond the research situation, since these interaction processes are also part of everyday communications. Using this perspective, we demonstrate how issues of interest are discussed and bargained in the interview itself. Using the methodology of Hermeneutic Dialogue Analyses we perceive interview data not as something indicating bits of reality lying outside the research situation but as in-vivo-data of actual social reality to be researched and interpreted.

Key words: qualitative research, intersubjective production of text, hermeneutic dialogue analysis, symbolic interactionism, research on transitions, research on traditions of historical consciousness, research on national socialism

This contribution is only available as a full text in the German language. German text

Volume 4, No. 2   Table of Contents

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