Interviewing respondents with a similar social status

Power, positionality, poetics

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3214482
AutoresTimo Koren (0000-0002-6553-8798, University of Amsterdam, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Data de publicação2025-09-17
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoQualitative Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1468-7941 • E-ISSN: 1741-3109
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/14687941251377286
OpenAlexW4414285858
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas51

Most of the literature on power and positionality in qualitative, semi-structured interviews discusses research on either precarious, disenfranchised populations or influential elites. This paper focuses on interviewing social groups who have a similar societal status as academic researchers. By combining methodological literature on insider status and whiteness, the article interrogates how sameness unfolds in the research process. Based on two research projects with literary professionals and nightclub promoters respectively, the focus lies not on the fluid and context-dependent presence of symbolic power in the interview setting (for example, through discomfort), but rather reflects on casual research settings where power is experienced as absent (for example, through comfort). The paper proposes methodological strategies to attend to challenges brought about by sameness in advance , before the fieldwork starts: by utilising informality in gaining access (but doing so reflexively), by sampling outside of the somatic norm and by formulating specific forms of 'how-questions

Casual · Fieldnotes · Insider · Interview · Poetics · Reflexivity · Social research · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · Social and Cultural Dynamics