Interviewing—An “unnatural situation”?

Abstract This paper seeks to explore what feminist concerns may mean in the minutiae of the personal relations that develop within interviews, for example, notions of reciprocity, friendship, and collaboration. While the paper draws on the author's current experiences of qualitative interviews with various family members, especially mothers, it also considers how some of the issues are intrinsic to the research interview per se, of whatever style. The actual relations within the interview have to be considered against wider frameworks and assumptions. Interviews are a particular type of social encounter. All interviews, and interview “data,” are socially constructed. The researcher will inevitably have some power over the research process, and she must take responsibility for this power in the context of her own purposes in the interview. We may have to accept that research relationships are in some senses public, which creates inescapable tensions if we seek to regard them as purely private ones.