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With respect to Elvin’s queries
about subjectivity and about criticisms of BNIM, Kip sends the following useful
extracts. Many thanks, Kip. In this email, I’ve put in some comments of
my own on his comments in blue!
From: Kip Jones
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 06 February 2006 11:35
To: Tom Wengraf
Subject: Re: criticisms about BNIM
In response to your message, I evoke the following from my chapter, Jones,
K. (2004). "Minimalist Passive Interviewing Technique and Team Analysis
of Narrative Qualitative Data",
On Subjectivity:
It is the view of Miller (2000, xii) too, that using of a biographical
approach to understanding human concerns makes sense in that its methodology
transcends the barriers of self/society as well as those of past/present/future.
These include ‘barrier s between the individual self and the collective
society as well as those compartmentalising the past, present and future’
(Miller 2000: xii).
The turn to narrative enquiry shifts the very presence of the researcher
from knowledge-privileged investigator to a reflective position of passive
participant/audience member in the storytelling process.
The researcher is aware that any
material being produced by the interviewee has been generated with regard to
both the interviewee’s subjective perception of her/his situation and
history and the interviewee’s perception of the research and the
relationship between the two of them’ (Miller 2000: 131).
‘The value of the panel of analysts and of peer review lies in
part in the capacity of different researchers to have anxieties that are
different form those of each other and from that of the interviewee’
(Wengraf in Chamberlayne et al 2000: 144)
Problem with the
method:
1) The
rigidity of Chamberlayne and Wengraf’s text structure sequentialisation
tool (Wengraf 2001: 239-43) became difficult and unwieldy in producing data
that was workable for the reflecting teams within the time allotted for
analyses.
Tom’s
defensive comment: Kip’s comment assumes that the panel (‘reflecting
team’) has to go through the entire TSS of both subsessions. Actually,
this is not practicable for any ordinary length interview of average
complexity. Recent copies of the ‘Short Guide’ have stressed that
the TFA is kick-started by a 3-hourpanel but that after that the researcher
usually has to continue the work on their own.
The method s eemed to
require an adherence to consistencies within the told narrative, rather than
uncovering links based on spontaneous association (Hollway & Jefferson
2000: 152).
Tom’s
defensive comment: The TFA procedure is as interested in inconsistencies as in
inconsistencies (see Prue’s note on the ‘structure of the case’
recently circulated and now the last appendix in the current Short Guide). It
is true, though, that the chunk-by-chunk ‘free associating’ is
different in its feel from the ‘to the whole text or any bit in any order’
free-associating that is more current.
Concentrating on the
text structure appeared to restrict the reflecting teams’ possibilities
of multiple, intuitive responses to the data.
Tom’s
response: The discipline of chunk-by-chunk free-association about first the
life (BDA) and then the telling of the story (TFA) does mean that holistic
intuitions about the whole case that arise are kept in memos and held over
rather than followed up during the BDA and TFA work. This may or may not be a
bad thing.
In addition, the
configuration of the text structure sequentialisation seemed to be changing and
becoming more complex with each new publication by it’s authors
(Chamberlayne et al 2000; Chamberlayne & King 2000; Wengraf 2000; Wengraf
2001).
In addition, many have
problems with the plethora of anagrams in the main text. Makes the
DaVinci Code easy to follow by comparison!
Tom’s comment: guilty on both counts.
Apologies. However, in quantitative analysis and in literary criticism, and in
most of the natural sciences, and in anthropology, and even in theatre and the
performing arts, there are also a variety of ‘technical terms’ that
– once mastered, but only then – make ideas easier to think with. However,
a disorganizing plethora of them I agree makes one want to bang one’s
head – or the author – against the wall.
Cheers,
Kip
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