My interests are in sociology and history and my focus
is on developing
social research methodology in a way which attends to
both 
psycho-dynamics
and societal-dynamics at the same time. With others,
I'm developing the
concept of a multiple 'psycho-societal' methodology.
My personal
specialisation is in biographic-narrative interviewing
as one component 
of
such a method.

I'm quite ambivalent about 'performance' but very
committed to finding 
ways
in which the insights developed through group and
individual 
interpretation
work can be conveyed to quite different
'stakeholders'. The processes 
of
'group interpretation' that I am most experienced in
are 'BNIM panels' 
in
which the small group interprets a chunk of data (for
example, a 
segment of
an interview transcript), hypothesises about its
significance making
hypotheses about what might come next in the interview
sequence if this 
or
that hypothesis were to be right, and then digests the
next chunk, 
doing the
same. This chunk-by-chunk future blind interpretive
process is detailed 
in
my (free) 'Short Guide to BNIM' that I could send to
anyone who would 
like a
copy. (requests to <[log in to unmask]> please, not to
the whole 
PERFORM
list) 

In a way this method of interpretation is one in which
the flow of the
interview as it happened is 're-performed' for the
panel in a 
freeze-frame
way putting the panel into a position to develop a
collective 
chunk-by-chunk
discussion of what is going on.

Our post-panel presentation of findings has so far
tended to be rather
conventional. However, there is an exception. Prue and
Donovan 
Chamberlayne
have used two BNIM-style interviews with a homeless
person and a hostel
manager as the basis for a short
discussion-and-training video in which
critical incidents were 'worked up' into video form.
This film 
'Connecting
Lives' -- together with notes for guidance and other
documentation -- 
is
available from Pavilion Films at <www.pavpub.com>. The
'Notes for 
Guidance'
for those using the video for training, sensitisation
and 
issue-focus-group
discussion have very good ideas about 'performing the
video' which may 
also
be of interest to those using this listserve.

Having said this, I think it is always necessary to
consider the
personal-ethical dimension of 'working up and
performing' (would the
interviewee feel happy about this?, to take but one
example) and the
scientific-ethical dimension (are we staying true to,
or playing
fast-and-loose-with, the facts of the case)? At a
certain point, 
performing
can become a 'fact-based fictional creation' which
shows its integrity 
by
acknowledging that it is not just a re-representation
of the 'facts' 
which
helped to inspire it. The notion of 'docu-tainment'
suggests the strain 
and
tensions inherent in re-representation sliding into
(unavowed, and 
therefore
scientifically un-ethical) mis-representation.

Best wishes

Tom

<[log in to unmask]>


		
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