[author]Xiong Hao

[content]

The theory of interviews

Xiong Hao

Associate Professor of Fudan University Law School

 

Abstract: "Interview" is the most important and common research method in legal anthropology. Due to its highly contextualized nature, existing studies have rarely conducted theoretical refinement of it from a methodological perspective with a high degree of principle. This has led to the loss of the ontological dimension of the "interview" method, making it merely a step and process of interpersonal dialogue. Based on the theoretical foundation of legal anthropology, by grasping three core categories, namely structure - the social embedding of the interviewee, concept - the semantic features that need clarification, and empowerment - the narrative subjectivity that endowing the conversation subject with life experience, the theoretical principles that should be followed in the ontological and value dimensions of visits and conversations can be sorted out. The refinement and generalization of interview theory can help us understand the ontological significance of interviews more clearly and provide principle basis and theoretical guidance for various dialogue practices with intersubjective significance, including interviews.

Key words: Interview Structure; Concept; Empowerment Dialogic

 

Introduction

Interviews are the most commonly used and widespread method in the study of legal anthropology. The mechanism seems not complicated, that is, researchers raise specific questions and respondents give corresponding responses. However, the actual occurrence of an effective interview in field research is often not easy. To achieve academic goals through interviews, researchers need to have good methodological training and relevant experience accumulation. Take the study of legal anthropology in China as an example. Interviews are not an easy task to carry out. This is mainly because: First, an effective interview is actually a deep exchange of lives, which depends on the full trust of both parties in each other. In reality, the instinctive self-protection awareness of the respondents (such as those working in political and judicial organs) leads to insufficient trust between the two sides of the conversation, which causes researchers to encounter various difficulties when obtaining first-hand information through interviews. As the strict academic ethics of empirical research have not yet been widely established in China, if researchers deviate from the most fundamental "non-harm principle" of academic research when publishing their research results, it is likely to cause distress to the respondents, which to some extent also intensifies the respondents' rejection of interviews.

Secondly, unlike the highly structured questionnaires in quantitative research, qualitative interviews are usually conducted in a loose conversational context and cannot be completed by thorough preparation in advance and following the clues later. The diffuse nature of interviews often appears more subtle in the process of participatory observation with anthropological significance. Because this process usually naturally embeds the interview in an informal way into the fragmented process of interpersonal interaction. Perhaps many scholars think that an interview is just a simple interpersonal dialogue process that does not require methodological cognitive support. However, once they enter the real field scene, they will find that the interview process is flexible, repetitive, intermittent and long - where it starts and where it ends. How to unfold, how to transition, and how to maintain a healthy atmosphere and the necessary driving force for progress during a conversation - researchers often feel at a loss on these issues. Of course, the theories and methods of interviews do not pose a problem for senior and already prestigious academic masters, as they have accumulated sufficient social capital. In their interviews, the researchers are fully in a dominant position within the power structure. Many times, the interviewees are more like cooperating with the work rather than being interviewed. In this case, the "theory of interviewing" as a question was naturally overlooked in their research perspective.

It should be noted that research taking "interviews" themselves as the research object is a real issue, but the existing research results are not satisfactory. At present, all the research we can see about interviews themselves is overly simplistic and trivial. Most of them are general summaries of the research process based on individual experience. This makes the question of "how to conduct interviews" either become completely unnecessary common sense - one needs to be patient, sincere, and make the interviewees willing to speak. Either it becomes a kind of bottom-level art confined within personal experience and cannot be shared with others, eventually falling into the consensus that Song Dynasty poet Zhao Xiaoxiang described as "The subtleties are hard to share with you." As mentioned earlier, an interview is not entirely a standardized question-and-answer process. It cannot and should not be rigid into fixed steps or definite means, thus becoming some kind of mechanical process framework. However, it is still possible, necessary and meaningful to construct a theoretical cognitive framework with a high degree of principle regarding the interview process. These principle frameworks can help us associate interviews with the ontological dimensions of field research, thereby dominating fragmented interview experiences and technical processes, and explaining why this technique is used, as well as the underlying mechanisms, reasoning, and reasons behind it. Ultimately, this deepens our theoretical understanding of interviews rather than merely viewing them as some kind of personalized random process. In order to achieve "a clear overview", this article distills three fundamental categories related to interviews: "structure", "concept", and "empowerment". Based on these three fundamental categories, a theoretical understanding of interviews is constructed, with the aim of providing relatively clear practical guidance and theoretical generalization for fieldwork, promoting the reflection of experience on theory, and the guidance of theory on practical operation. Ultimately, it enables the field workers to improve their interviewing skills and methodological awareness.

1. Structure: The social Embeddedness of Respondents

What is structure? We define this term in the sense of structuralism. Structure is the context in which the subject's action is embedded, a kind of traction, restriction and shaping of the subject's action formed by natural conditions, cultural customs, social traditions, disciplinary systems and existing institutional frameworks. Under the framework of structuralism, these social forces external to the subject are regarded as the reasons that influence people's choices and freedom of action. So in the view of structuralists, human beings are not absolutely autonomous, self-willed and free. Human subjectivity is the consequence of a certain structural writing and is a passive voice. The highly insightful "word game" of postmodern theorists regarding the noun usage (subjectivity) and verb usage (submission) of the subject - subject/subject to, suggests that the subject is not a naturally autonomous qualification, but rather a social creation "bestowed by others" after birth. The structuralist approach is also described by some social scientists as the socialization paradigm. This paradigm ontologically holds that human behavior is fundamentally subject to the social system (especially institutions and culture), and this restraint reflects the social system's dominance over the individual, while also shaping the individual's internal drive to submit to the social system. The structural functionalism of Comde-Spencer-Durkheim and Merton can be regarded as the concrete manifestation of this paradigm in social science theory. In a more recent period, Mark Granovetter developed the concept of "embedment" within the context of structuralism. It is used to explain the logic of interaction between the subject and the social structure - "The actions and decisions of the actor are not like an atom outside the social environment, nor do they blindly adhere to the script given to them by the type of society they happen to be in." Conversely, their attempts at purposeful behavior are embedded in specific and continuous social relationship systems.

The structural perspective actually reminds us that a living person is an existence subject to social facts. We always stand at this end of the established facts. At this moment when historical time has become an established fact, we receive the past of a nation, inherit the memory of a ethnic group, and use a common language and symbols. Or more specifically, we live within a certain modern nation-state, cultural domain, institutional structure, ideology and power relations. To a large extent, these external social factors constitute restrictions on the initiative of the subject. Such restrictions are not explicit regulations and systems in a normative sense, nor are they violent coercion and compulsion. Instead, they are a kind of restraint on imagination, existential consciousness, boundaries of identity, meaning and narrative possibilities. For instance, the Inuit have dozens of distinguishing words for "snow". In the Chinese context, ancient Chinese assigned specific names to the castration of various animals, such as "sheep rijie", "dog riyi", "chicken riyan", "human Rigong", and "cat Rijing". If we are not within the cultural context of the Inuit or the Chinese, we cannot grasp these subtle understandings of the world. Then, conversely, within a specific cultural context, we are both bestowed by it and restricted by it. Therefore, this kind of fulfillment and restriction constitutes the content of a person's subjectivity.

When re-examining the subjectivity constructed and depicted by rationalism and liberalism from a structural perspective, it is easy to discover the fragility of this construction and depiction when detached from the social context - subjectivity cannot originate from a purely endogenous free will, but rather from those external forces that eventually seep into our skin imperceptibly. Internalizing and shaping our "self-righteous" selves. In Heidegger's concept, this kind of prior and presupposition of structure is what he calls the "pre-structure" of understanding. The occurrence of this "pre-structure" in the interview is already certain and inevitable. The process of an interview is an interaction among "multiple subjects", and it is precisely our distinct prestructures that constitute the distinct you and me, and form the foundation and basis for why the individual "I" becomes "I" rather than "you" or "he". It is the difference in structural embedding that constitutes the difference in the "pre-structure". It is the plural form of the "pre-structure" that constitutes the plural form of subjectivity and the reality of multi-subject interaction. In this regard, Gadamer's words seem more direct - "It is not our judgment, but our prejudice that constitutes our being."

Here we summarize the meaning of structure to emphasize that, whether in philosophy or anthropology, the constructive power that structure exerts on human subjectivity and the fact that people's behaviors are influenced by it is very obvious. Therefore, in a methodological sense, structural issues constitute the reason why people cannot directly understand each other, and also make the effort to understand each other necessary. In the field research of legal anthropology, an interview implies the interweaving and superimposition of different structures of the visitor and the interviewee. We can even use marriage as a metaphor for the interaction relationship within it. In a highly individual sense, marriage is merely understood as the institutional connection formed after two people have a deep affection for each other. However, in a structural sense, marriage is not merely a joyous encounter on a narrow cross-section; it also implies the overlapping of two sets of "structures", indicating whether lifestyle, spiritual values, family background, cultural tacit understanding, and wealth level can coexist harmoniously in some organic and mutually amicable way. In this sense, the interviews in the field investigation of legal anthropology are not an "exchange of information", but a "marriage of meaning". The researcher's sensitivity and self-awareness of the structural status of the respondents is one of the most important theoretical consciousnesses in the interview process, and this theoretical awareness even exists before the research design and the beginning of the interview process. Starting from the methodological fundamental category of the marriage of structural awareness and "meaning", the specific "action guidelines" in a large number of qualitative studies can be effectively governed.

For instance, when conducting field research, anthropological researchers usually remind other colleagues entering the field to pay attention to their dress, avoiding being overly glamorous or unconventional. Because overly glamorous clothing can highlight the heterogeneity of the researcher's structural state, it hinders the researcher from smoothly and organically connecting with the local structural context, thereby causing alienation in the interview. For instance, researchers have suggested that the interview process should be conducted as much as possible at the respondents' workplace. This is partly because the state in the workplace is often what we truly need to understand, and partly because the workplace of the respondents, which is a part of their life world, can provide structural information for us to understand their words and behaviors. The real-life scenarios embedded in the respondents are an inevitable part that field research needs to understand. For instance, when we feel unfamiliar with or unable to grasp the structure of the interviewee, this "marriage of meaning" requires a "matchmaker". An effective "matchmaker" is an intermediary who is well-versed in the structural conditions of both the interviewee and the interviewee. His job is not merely to act as a trust conductor or liaison intermediary for the connection between the two sides, but more importantly, to serve as a "transitional structure" for the interconnection and mutual understanding of unfamiliar structures. Strangers in a conversation can of course communicate, but it is not easy for them to reach a deep understanding of the structural conditions embedded in each other. The content that is called "local knowledge" is not only reliable information obtained from the respondents, but also should be an exposure of the meaning of the structural situation embedded in the respondents. Otherwise, if we rashly enter another structure with the limitations, preconceptions, assumptions and ideologies of our previous structure, the friction between the structures will make it extremely difficult to realize the deep value of the interview, if not impossible. With the assistance of a suitable intermediary, namely a transitional structure, what is achieved is not only the collection of information, but also the understanding of the meaning of the structure. In the terms of receptive aesthetics, it is better to achieve what is called "visual field fusion".

In addition to this pre-existing structure that influences and even shapes meaning for the interviewer and the interviewee, we should also be sensitive to the fact that the process of the interview itself constitutes a structure, a presence structure, that is, the structure also includes the interpersonal control formed in the specific and detailed interview process. In the interview, the active intervention of the researcher, the responses of the respondents, the behaviors of some participants without obvious self-awareness, and the environmental Settings will all have structural impacts. For example:

The leader wanted the members to talk about their fears of leaving the hospital. At first, he looked at Joe, an overly enthusiastic member sitting on the leader's left.

Leader: All of you may have some fears related to leaving the hospital. I hope some of you can talk about these fears. (Now scanning the members in the middle of the group) Who would like to talk to everyone about these fears? Whether it's serious or mild, it doesn't matter. (The leader's gaze is now fixed on the members on the right.)

In this example, the leader hopes that the members in the middle or on the right side of the group will speak first. By leaving Joe completely out of his sight when he ended his question, the leader increased the opportunity for a member other than Joe to start the discussion.

Leaders can also apply their gaze to help them cut off the words of the members who are speaking. If a member has been speaking for a while, a very subtle but often helpful interrupting technique is for the leader to avoid eye contact with the speaker. When leaders do not pay attention to what they say, members usually stop quickly.

The above example vividly demonstrates the influence of the presence structure on interpersonal dialogue, and this influence even has a certain "micro-political science" flavor. In response to this, Giddens keenly put forward the concept of "duality of structure". In Giddens' view, structure is not rigid and unchangeable. In fact, there is an inclusive reality relationship between "structure" and its sociological opposite category "agency". Therefore, structure can affect initiative, and the superposition of active behaviors can also form a new structural environment or structural constraint, thereby influencing subsequent behaviors. Structure - initiative - A new structure composed of initiative - new initiative. All dialogue processes take place in such a dual state of structure and initiative that may be obvious or hidden. Therefore, the interviewer should also remain sensitive to the "new structure composed of the active". Theoretically, it is necessary to fully understand the dialectical relationship of nesting and interaction among "activation-structure". In practice, being aware of one's own behavior, even if the attitude is sincere, kind and earnest, inevitably creates a structural state of interaction with the interviewee. Some power oppression with micro-political significance still has the potential to passively embed the respondents into the subject structure of the visitors (researchers), thereby obscuring the respondents' deep subject consciousness. For instance, in anthropological interviews, respondents often show a disconnect between the stage performance and the backstage reality. Many field workers were treated as honored guests by their hosts, who conversed with them in a particularly respectful and polite manner, and so on. In this way, there may be a risk that masters are ashamed to show certain aspects of society to high-level strangers, and thus professional workers may never see those aspects. The emergence of this situation actually reveals the problem that the subjective state of the visitors suppresses the subjectivity of the respondents, causing them to "stitch" themselves into the structural setting of the visitors in some unnatural way. Therefore, sensitivity to the pre-structure and on-site structure, as well as the influence of one's own behavior and even those inanimate objects on the structural state of the interview, is of great significance for ensuring an effective, genuine and in-depth interview process. We will further elaborate on this point in the "Empowerment" section of the following text.

 

2. Concept: Semantic features to be clarified

In their renowned book "Cognitive Management", Angelo and Brian list semantic barriers as one of the three significant obstacles that affect effective communication. They gave an example, saying: "When a supervisor tells you, 'We need to finish this right away.'" What does this mean? Does "we" merely refer to you? Or does it refer to you and your colleagues? Or what about you, your colleagues and your boss? Does "immediately" refer to today, tomorrow or next week? Similarly, in the book "The Essentials of Ethnographic Methods" written by Stephen et al., the author gives an example to remind us: "Ask the respondents to clarify the meaning of a certain word - you used the word 'play'." What do you mean? Could you give an example to illustrate what you mean by "play around"?

Human beings grasp the external world through concepts, so all verbal expressions take concepts as their carriers of meaning. However, both sociolinguistics and hermeneutics hold that concepts are ambiguous. Even if the users of concepts strive to make them detailed and precise, they cannot completely narrow down the space for their multiple interpretations. The so-called "signifier", "author dead", "thrown state" and "subject perspective" discussed by theorists all involve the issue of uncertainty in language and concepts. Russell summarized the above situation as a classic proposition in philosophy - "the table and the table itself". Suppose there is a table in front of us. Our senses can only capture its texture, color, volume, hardness and its physical existence. But these five aspects must have gone through some highly abstract process in our minds before they become what we call a "table". But the concept of "table" has transformed the true texture into a kind of treatment, a kind of condensation, and a kind of isolation of the true texture through words. So when we ask "What is this?", you will find that a description like "This is a table" is actually very inaccurate. Because some of the texture experiences of the table itself that originated from perceptual cognition were washed away in the process of abstract concept, when we use the phrase "this is a table" to describe that specific perceptual object, we ultimately cannot distinguish the completely different concrete images of "this table" and "that table". In other words, when I describe it in words, I am already reducing it. Then, if we further describe how wide and high this table is, what color it is, and in which specific location it is placed, can we accurately describe it? That's not the case. In a dialogue context, if these seemingly objective word descriptions unfortunately appear in non-consensus areas of the interlocutors' understanding (for instance, our understandings of concepts like "high" and "red" are not exactly the same), it still seems like a "chicken talking to duck" of mutual understanding. As Bergson once pointed out:

The way we grasp dynamic objects by means of unchanging concepts is necessary for common sense and language, for real life, and even for empirical science. However, there are misunderstandings or even dangers in people's understanding of traditional concepts. This is because what each concept describes in terms of an object is merely what this object shares with other objects or similar properties. This similar property is an attribute of an object. This attribute seems to possess a part of its object, which easily leads us to think that if we arrange the concepts one by one, it is equivalent to reconstituting the whole of the object itself from its various parts, and thus can be said to have obtained the "spiritual equivalent" of the object... This understanding is incorrect because in fact, what these individual concepts can offer us is by no means a real image of the object, but merely a conceptual representation of the object. They can only transform certain general, or rather non-individual aspects of the object into symbols. Therefore... Concepts offer us nothing but the shadow of reality.

It is difficult to reach the truth with concepts. Not only that, the use of "concepts" may also lead the interview into a rigid trap, that is, attempting to use the uniformity of words to cover up and eliminate the diversity, vividness and complexity of life meaning and life experience. Nietzsche pointed out that "for thousands of years, everything that philosophers have dealt with has been a mummy of concepts." Nothing real escapes their clutches alive. When they express admiration, these gentlemen who worship conceptual idols are actually slaughtering and peeling - when they express admiration, they turn everything into something life-threatening... What exists does not change, and what changes does not exist. In this sense, concepts not only fail to truly describe reality but also pose a danger of encroaching upon it. What is even more dangerous is to rely on a priori logical, abstract and standardized conceptual system to enter the field. This rigid conceptual setting is fatal for interviewers in field research to enter the meaning world of the respondents. Because it uses abstract concepts as tools, and although concepts are useful as tools to satisfy the practical purposes of our lives, it is impossible to reach the most intrinsic essence of things through them, for they can only change into stillness, the individual into the general, the miscellaneous into the single, and the whole into the part. In a word, to dismember the ceaselessly flowing, living reality into a pile of lifeless fragments.

By now, we have identified two characteristics of conceptual words: one is ambiguity, and the other is rigidity. The former constitutes the driving force of the interview, while the latter constitutes the issues that require our special attention. Based on this, we need to constantly "question" the concepts during the interview process. Since we do not trust rigid concepts, for researchers, the responses of many respondents still need to be constantly "clarified" in order to more comprehensively explore and release the meaning space of these conceptual terms. Thus, in the interview, we can transform more seemingly "clear" but actually vague words into further inquiries and content that requires clarification from the interviewees. The "distrust" maintained towards concepts can provide an extremely broad space for inquiry during the interview process. The extent to which this space can be opened up by the interviewer indicates the extent to which the interviewee's life trajectory can be fully extended, marking the quality and depth of an interview. For instance, as a scholar specializing in conflict resolution, when I enter the field of conflict scenarios, I often encounter respondents who extensively use value judgments and adjectives to describe conflicts in order to express their preferences, feelings, impressions, and attitudes - "I am extremely disgusted by their noise every night", "He must be sick", "It should be him, he is this kind of person", etc. In this case, the interviewer can intervene through the technique of "paraphrasing" to clarify and discover the specific meanings of these ambiguous words:

"Disturbing the residents" -- "Often singing loudly at two or three o 'clock in the morning."

"Aversion" -- "Unable to fall asleep at night, insomnia affects work and health."

"Sick" -- "It was he who broke the traffic rules first."

"It should be him." -- "I saw a person in the surveillance video who looked very similar to him."

"Such people" -- "have a bad temper and may cause harm to others."

Note that here it is not only about factual identification of the words, but also about inviting the other party to further clarify the meaning of the words and the factual scene. It should be known that the unique truth belonging to the interviewer does not self-manifest; instead, it is often obscured by rigid and abstract concepts. Re-inviting the genuine issues, empirical facts and the deep-seated concerns of the interviewees from complex and vague adjective expressions is the key to unfolding the interview. This kind of identification is not one-off. When the other party gives us a clarifying answer, it may also include new concepts. Maintaining a continuous "skepticism" towards concepts and then inviting interviewees to further clarify these concepts is a key process in the interview. For example:

"Aversion" -- "Unable to fall asleep at night, insomnia affects work and health."

Further inquiry and elaboration can be made on this statement:

How late is it usually in the dead of night? What do you mean by "work"? What specific impacts has it had on work? What do you mean by "health"? Or, could you give an example of what specific feelings and states affect one's health?"

The concepts constantly emerging in the interaction, through continuous "sensitivity", "doubt" and "problemization", form interactive opportunities for inquiry, observation and curiosity one after another. Thus, concepts form one doorway or handle after another that leads us to a deep understanding. More specifically, in the general direction of inquiry, observation and curiosity, we encourage respondents to shift from "conceptual discourse" to "narrative discourse" by posing conceptual questions. What exactly happened, what was encountered, what caused such a view, and in what kind of real circumstances, interpersonal interactions, and power structures ultimately formed such an understanding are far more important than "what it was".

At the interview site, we expect to make the interviewees the narrative subjects through a large number of open-ended questions and everyday language, thereby returning to their experience processes, achieving a certain fluidity in narration and discovering a certain context. Narrative is not judgment or argumentation; rather, it is more like a script, a flowing process with a beginning, development, encounters, impressions, experiences, emotions, outcomes, characters, images, and interactions. Narrative enables researchers to enter the perspective of the research subjects, share a similar vision with them, care for their care, and understand their understanding. If concepts offer vague and rigid breakpoints, violent abstractions of empirical facts and the process of experience, and coverings and belittling the narrative subjectivity of the interviewee, then the continuous unfolding of the narrative provides a continuous and rich process dimension for the interview, thereby offering researchers a textured meaning support for understanding the interviewee and activating the rigid state of the concept. Yes, "activation" - this word is most appropriate to describe the change from "concept" to "narrative" in the interview process. Let the empirical power contained in the respondents' lives flow out fully, and reduce the concept to rich texture details, to local knowledge, life processes, individual writing, coherent scripts, and subjective roles. Through "description", rather than making "judgments"; Emphasize "process" rather than "node"; Only by relying on "curiosity" rather than "discrimination" can the experience of the interviewee be activated, can it be proved that you have truly found the right interviewee rather than a "bystander" of the event process, can it break through the confusion of concepts in our understanding of real experiences, and can the information that truly touches the dimension of the subject's meaning be fully disclosed.

 

3. Empowerment: Endow the conversation partner with the narrative subjectivity of life experience

The method of interviewing stands on the base of anthropology, and thus it also shares the fundamental value concerns of anthropology. From an anthropological perspective, quantifying data is a violent process of flattening life. Merely focusing on data is a disregard and indifference towards the profound meaning space of individuals. Yes, "Simplifying people and what they do into numbers has a certain 'dehumanized' effect (people are more likely to overlook the matters involved in 'numbers without personal emotional color' compared to the concerns of flesh and blood humans), and it hinders us from discussing important issues that are not so easy to mathematize." Here we are not saying that data is unimportant, but rather that it is very likely that we will lose the answers to some truly important questions in the data - what makes them unique based on different subject perspectives. Therefore, from a methodological perspective, quantitative and qualitative research respectively imply some prerequisite value assumptions:

(Quantitative research) assumes that the objects and time that researchers focus on exist independently of people's cognition, and thus they are merely a true appearance... The view that events can present different appearances due to the construction of participants, and that each appearance is true in a certain sense, constitutes the basis of qualitative interviews, but is not recognized by positivists. For instance, based on the fundamental principles of positivism, research and investigation designs questions such as "How old are you?" Or "Who did you vote for in the last election?" Ask the interviewee standardized questions like these. In their view, this simple standard definition is beyond doubt because most people hold a consensus on the meaning of the problem. However, people's understanding of fairness, happiness or religious belief varies. Interpretists accuse this practice of imposing standard definitions on different groups of people of being prone to misunderstandings and confusion - when two people are answered with the same "yes", they may contain different meanings.

Therefore, in the context of anthropological field research, the function of an interview is to dig out the intrinsic meaning hidden deep within the surface narrative, to enter the other party's "structure", to understand the other party's "concept", rather than controlling and enveloping the other party with a preconceived structure or conceptual system. Therefore, for legal anthropologists conducting field research, "the focus is on the complex characteristics of individual cases rather than the mother as a whole." It is not an display of a series of values. What we want to discover is the actual situation of a complex system with boundaries... This research process requires researchers to have a deep understanding of the field and social structure in which the interviewees are embedded, to sincerely integrate the perspective of the "outsider" with that of the "insider" under study, and to have a high degree of reflexivity in every step of the research progress, being vigilant against the fact that knowledge power and interpretive impulses Pierce through the thin film of reality, thereby creating new domination. Therefore, in both the process dimension and the goal dimension, an interview should be an empowering activity, that is, to give the other party strength. It is about allowing those who truly have life experiences to express their own experiences, concerns, difficulties, and perceptions, complete their own narrative scripts, and become the true masters of their own narratives - this is not merely a matter of studying ethical issues; more importantly, it concerns the value of interviews and the fundamental significance of field investigations. If the purpose of your interview is not to make the interviewee truly the subject of the narrative, but merely to have him become another mechanical endorser of your past opinions, or a minor technical parameter and empirical evidence, then why bother to complete the interview so meticulously and comprehensively? Allowing the parties involved to fully express themselves and enabling the researchers themselves to be qualified listeners is the basic empowerment awareness that interviewers need during the interview process.

It was Foucault who provided a more profound theoretical explanation for this issue. It is well known that Foucault exposed the constitutive relationship between knowledge and power, and he believed that power constructs and produces "truth" in the process of operation - these concepts seem to have all become well-known in the academic circle. At the technical level, Foucault's fundamental viewpoints were adopted by psychology and became narrative dialogue methods, and this method effectively realized the empowerment function of interviews at the technical level. Regarding this, Michael White and David Epston clearly expounded on this issue in their renowned book "Story, Knowledge, Power: The Power of Narrative Therapy". They point out that in the modern knowledge framework, the superiority of certain knowledge is induced, that is, some knowledge is superior to others, and thus oppression and submission arise. This superior knowledge forms the mainstream narrative, becoming a kind of "comprehensive despotism", which may suffocate other narratives. When scholars enter the field, they often inadvertently carry this superiority. This superiority may manifest as one's confidence in the field conditions, a sense of achievement in knowledge, a firm belief in research design and presuppositions, a condescending attitude resulting from professionalism, and a definite and definite judgment. Familiarity with theories and the immersion of previous field experience allow researchers to claim to be experts. They no longer need to cautiously enter this unfamiliar territory of the field - "I really understand them. I can handle it!" We are often consciously or unconsciously enveloped by the sense of superiority of professional knowledge, so White and Epston remind us:

We can only assume that we are always involved in the realm of power/knowledge. So we strive to set up some situations to encourage and criticize the practices we have formed in this field. We need to identify the ideological context in which our actions are situated and explore the history of these ideas. Only in this way can we clearly recognize the possible effects, dangers and limitations of these ideas and our approaches.

More specifically, White and Epston suggest that when interpersonal interaction occurs, we should separate the interviewee from the integrated knowledge, consciously observe the other party's "compliant" state, awaken the "active spirit" of the other party's subject, and revive the suppressed knowledge of the interviewee. "Invite people to think about how to open up space for the future implementation and dissemination of this knowledge. He will start to appreciate his unique history of struggle and incorporate this knowledge more clearly when shaping his life and relationships. Therefore, researchers need to awaken the subjectivity of the other party and listen to the true "grassroots stories", those that may be suppressed by mainstream narratives. The "lower-class stories" here are not a kind of left-wing romanticism that holds that intellectuals should bend down and care about the life experiences of the working masses - no. The so-called "underlying story" here refers to the situation where the individual narrative that the interviewee originally possesses is crushed, weakened and excluded by the mainstream expression, to the extent that the interviewee is unable to describe their own story with their own language system, thus falling into a state of verbal weakness or the interviewee's inability to control their words.

The author once encountered such a situation when doing fieldwork in a Dai village in Dehong, Yunnan. When we conduct anthropological interviews with residents and village cadres on legal issues, upon learning of your questions, they will skillfully mobilize a series of mainstream political discourses such as "enhanced legal awareness" and "solving problems through law" to depict the facts of life. If we rush to conclude from this that the villagers' "legal awareness" has improved, we will be blinded by their attachment to the mainstream narrative. What we see might merely be the patchwork and stitching between personal words and political discourse. This kind of splicing and sewing with mainstream narratives enables individuals to speak confidently, allowing their words to receive the reward of "political correctness" and the approval of scholars. But perhaps this kind of narrative attachment and discourse splicing is not the truth itself. Interviews should delve more delicately into the real world and further question whether the stories at the bottom are really like this. How do villagers understand the so-called "solving problems through the law", how do they understand the elements, values and strategies in dispute resolution, and how do they understand the institutional supply of the modern judicial system? It must be pointed out that these ways of asking questions are far from "local knowledge", and they lack respect for the embedding of local structures and subject concepts. Perhaps better and more empowering questions should be asked in dialects:

"What do you mean? Is there a fight in the village? Should the elders handle it?"

"Are you guys going to take a look when you're dealing with it?"

"Did you hurt someone? What should I do?"

"Did the house decoration team say it? Was it the village office that said it?"

"What if the village cadres can't handle it?"

It is these more empowering questions that may liberate the underlying experience and thus provide an opportunity to be overturned. Otherwise, at the level of abstract words, the consequence of our careful inquiry is merely to confirm the effective penetration of the national political narrative in the grassroots society, without effectively approaching and exploring the actual state of the grassroots society.

Of course, to get the parties involved into a narrative state, a series of effective dialogue methods are needed. The general principle is to maintain an inviting attitude towards the other party, your interviewee, and always remind yourself that the other party is the master of your narrative, not the researcher. When time permits, researchers should, as much as possible, "assist" rather than "dominate" the context of the conversation. What we need to do is to make the other party tell the "story" thoroughly

"What was the situation that day?"

"What time do you leave home?"

"How could you think of the court?"

"What were you thinking at that time?"

All questions should be raised at the right time with the aim of completing the other party's narrative, rather than based on obtaining answers that align with one's own research plan. We are the "facilitators" in the interview. Therefore, during the interview process, the interviewer should be vigilant against the unconscious interaction structure that dominates the other party. It is true that we also form structures in the process of microscopic dialogue, but this structure should be an assisting one. If we want to avoid the tension between structure and empowerment, we need to maintain a certain continuous reflexivity in the interview process and try to prevent the structure from entering a dominant state. If the purpose of our interview is to reverse the "underlying narrative" through empowerment, then we must maintain an open structure during the negotiation process to support the interviewee's motivation, interest and ability to tell the story, encourage him to complete the story, and constantly remind himself to understand, explore, restore and appreciate the "other party's" structural process, structural state and structural awareness.

For instance, the interviewer should be aware that the one-dimensional interview itself, where one person keeps asking questions while the other keeps answering, is very likely to constitute a submissive structure in the first place. A single source of power, a single narrative direction, and a single character setting - all these elements point to control and to some kind of structural dominance. If such a situation occurs, the interviewer needs to restore the two-way nature of the conversation, also talk about themselves, as well as their experiences, processes and structural conditions, gradually transforming the interview to some extent into an interactive chat, so that narration and listening, as an interactive state of power, can be appropriately replaced, and the right to speak can maintain a healthy flow between the visitor and the interviewee This interactive state is the ideal state of empowerment. For instance, the interviewer should exercise restraint in a highly efficient state of domination and control, strive to avoid the impulse to evaluate what the interviewee says, and control themselves from comparing what the interviewee says with their own past experiences - no evaluation, no comparison. Try to restrain the alienation of the interview process by the task-oriented state - "A total of ten questions", "a total of 30 minutes" - such mechanical Settings will make the other party become the object of the conversation, cooperating with you to complete the task, thus preventing the narrative power from being gradually transferred to the true subject of the meaning story through the empowerment process, and thus suppressing the release of more genuine meaning.

 

4. Conclusion

As the most important method in the field investigation of legal anthropology, interviews are a kind of situational knowledge. In other words, it is very difficult for us to rigidly outline the practical operation map and process steps for all specific interview scenarios. However, some fundamental principles and theoretical frameworks still need to be established. These principle frameworks can link interviews with the ontological dimensions of qualitative research, helping us to manage fragmented interview experiences and technical processes, and explain why this technique is used, as well as the underlying mechanisms, reasoning, and reasons behind it, thereby deepening our theoretical understanding of interviews rather than merely viewing them as some kind of personalized random process.

In this article, these principles are summarized into three theoretical categories, namely structure, concept and empowerment. These three concepts can help us understand and clarify the chaotic interview process. In an ontological sense, structure refers to the process, cultural and contextual framework in which the subject is embedded. This kind of embedding varies from person to person and is highly individualized. This unique structural embedding of each individual makes it necessary to explore meaning through interviews. In a methodological sense, we should pay attention to the influence and shaping of the interviewer and other external environments as structural elements on the interview process, and maintain reflection on the dominant presence structure.

The so-called concept refers to the words held by the interviewee during the interview process. The sensitivity to "concepts" is essentially the sensitivity to the ambiguity of the signifier objects of concepts, and the sensitivity to the stripping of real life produced by language through abstraction. During the interview process, the meaning, mechanism, object and field of the concept should be scripted and developed through questioning. Efforts should be made to break through the wrapped state of the concept film on the objective world, and many already "clear" and "understood" concept expressions should be continuously "questioned", so as to effectively extend the depth of the interview and strive to reach the narrative scene of the interview.

Finally, there is "empowerment", which provides guidance on the process and goal-oriented nature of the interview from the perspective of the composition of power. The essence of an interview is to inquire about the true meaning of the other person's life world, allowing the narration of the specific individual's life meaning to unfold. The process of the researcher entering the case, questioning the case, and accompanying the case is a relative reduction of their own subjectivity, while appreciating, revealing, and establishing the other person's subjectivity - that the other person is the true master of their own life. This concept, in an ontological sense, reflects the anthropological interview process as a revolutionary force that rebels against discourse and relativist stance, highlighting the essential differences and ideological presuppositions between fieldwork methods and quantitative research. An effective grasp of the concept of "empowerment" can guide us to enter the interview process in a more humble and patient way, thus changing the dynamic structure of the interview. In the research paradigm driven by enlightenment, researchers carry truth, monopolize discourse, manipulate power, and possess knowledge. Their closeness to the countryside is a kind of saving favor, and field experience provides tiny bricks and tiles for the grand theoretical construction. The process of entering the field is actually already enveloped with the value presuppositions and research assumptions of high and low, right and wrong, civilization and barbarism, progress and backwardness. The field is regarded as a territory that needs to be transformed and rebuilt by modern knowledge. However, within the dynamic structure of empowerment research, the research is aimed at enabling the true masters of life to have the power to expound their life processes, express their likes and dislikes, and clarify their consciousness judgments. This process is one of doubting and criticizing knowledge - knowledge dominated by modernity - and a process of constructing the logic of equal dialogue. It is a process of seeking knowledge that temporarily suspends value judgments. Qualitative research driven by "empowerment" emphasizes "curiosity" rather than "judgment", and stresses that researchers should strive to show sympathetic understanding to interviewees. Only by redefining the interview methods in the ontological and methodological dimensions through the three concepts of structure, concept and empowerment can our interview process obtain theoretical support and practical basis with a high degree of principle.

 

 

The original text was published in Volume 20, Issue 2 of "Law and Social Sciences". Thanks to the wechat official account "Law and Social Sciences" for authorizing the reprinting.

  

Assistant Editor: Chen Yixuan

Responsible Editor: Tan Baijun

Read by Ji Weidong