The Biographical Illusion: Constructing Meaning in Qualitative Interviews

Abstract

This article deals with qualitative interviews in a research project on alcohol abusers and with some of the negotiations—about the cause and effect, guilt, and responsibility—involved in these interviews. The aim of this article is to show that interviews are sites of knowledge production and that interviewees fashion their stories according to more or less distinct interpretive frameworks. To illustrate the processes of assigning competence to interviewees, three unsuccessful narratives are presented. One thesis of the article is that the assignment of competence to interviewees reflects the degree of correspondence between the narrator’s interpretive framework and the theoretical preunderstanding of the researcher.