The active interview

"The Active Interview" takes a constructionist perspective on the interviewing process and interview products [in ethnographic research]. To Holstein and Gubrium, interviews are social productions. With this orientation, respondents are better seen as narrators or storytellers, and ethnographers are cast as participants in the process. Working together, the interviewer and narrator actively construct a story and its meaning. Interviewing, then, is inherently collaborative and problematic. —PP [This volume] provides a vocabulary that helps us to think about . . . the interactive aspects of interviews.