Emplacing the Research Encounter: Exploring Farm Life Histories

Abstract

The article is concerned with the placing of, and making place central to, the research interview. Drawing on research on changing agricultural practices in the Peak District, the United Kingdom, the article explores how interviewing “in place,” and making place the central theme of discussion, can have both practical and theoretical advantages for the research encounter. Emplacing the encounter means that often marginalized voices can be brought into a more coconstructed and democratic narrative, while the farm and its associated micropolitics can provide a medium through which new, and often unforeseen, trajectories and narratives can develop. Moving outside, it is seen, may offer a freedom to the research. Such mobile interviewing offers devices, contexts, and instances that support and enhance the interview process, and also open up an appreciation of other forms of knowledge and narration.