What can we make of our interview data? From interdisciplinary to intra-disciplinary research

Abstract

Introduction. This paper considers materially enriched interview data through practice lenses and explores how performativity in practices is accentuated in the data. Particular emphasis is placed on the kinds of knowledge that are justified by the data. Method and analysis. The paper distinguishes between element-based and post-humanist practice lenses. The distinction is exemplified by an analysis of two interview abstracts from a study on literature searching among interdisciplinary scholars. Results. Depending on the lenses applied, materially enriched interviews produce different epistemic objects, enabling different kinds of research results. The element-based lenses are attuned to practices as ordered products, indicating that interviews re-enact practices. The data justifies knowledge about dynamics inter disciplines or inter scholars. A post-humanist lens views practices as a mode of ordering, where interviews (and the data produced) become a part of an intra-disciplinary becoming through the intra-acting of human and non-human agencies alike. Conclusions. The element-based lenses indicate that interviews inform about performances happening in situ elsewhere, whereas the post-humanist lens views the interviewing researcher as part of practices-in-their-making. This entails a shift from a concern about researcher reflexivity and valid representations, towards an awareness of researchers’ responsibilities in the joint performance of the phenomenon studied.