The Two Lives of Rebecca Levenstone: Symbolic Interaction in the Generation of the Life History

Abstract

One of the author's life history informants produced a second published autobiographical account in response to another interviewer. This paper emphasizes the formal differences in the two tellings of the same story, rather than the inconsistencies of content. It does so in order to demonstrate the value of analyzing the dynamics of interview and the symbolic aspects of the interactive setting of the interview as prerequisites for interpreting the data of the life history text.