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The Problem Centred Interview Principles and Practice
Andreas Witzel Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Andreas Witzel; Herwig Reiter
ISBN(s): 9781849201001, 1849201005
Edition: Paperback
File Details: PDF, 3.82 MB
Year: 2012
Language: english
 Introduction
In: The Problem-Centred Interview: Principles and Practice

By: Andreas Witzel & Herwig Reiter

Pub. Date: 2013
Access Date: December 25, 2018
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: London
Print ISBN: 9781849201001
Online ISBN: 9781446288030
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446288030
Print pages: 1-11
© 2012 SAGE Publications Ltd All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the pagination of the
online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
SAGE SAGE Research Methods
2012 SAGE Publications, Ltd

Introduction

People tend to gain and communicate much of their knowledge by means of language. For instance, if we
want to know something about the latest play at our favourite theatre, we may hear about it on local TV or
radio, we can read about it in local newspapers, or we can ask friends that have been there and they may
give us their opinion. The fact that asking somebody else is a common way of obtaining knowledge about
something is the reason for the unbroken relevance of ‘interviewing’. As Brinkmann (2008: 471) writes: ‘We
can presuppose that humans have interviewed each other in some form or other for as long as they have
mastered the use of language.’ In other words, qualitative research interviewing makes use of the ancient
human habit of asking and answering questions. It is a well-tried and reliable way of finding out about things
and about each other in conversations.

Yet there are different ways of doing it. Since the first half of the twentieth century, when interviewing entered
the more systematic discussion about social research methods, as Platt (2001) shows in her historical review
of the status of interviewing in social research in the USA, many different techniques of interviewing have
been developed. They all make specific suggestions about how to collect and construct knowledge. For
instance, going back to the scenario about the play, it makes a difference whether we simply invite our friends
to tell us how it was, or whether we confront them instead with a list of specific questions regarding the
length of the interpretation, the number of people who left during the first break, the availability of beer, or the
temperature in the theatre. While such specific questions may be important for us to decide whether we want
to attend the performance, they may not help us find out what our friends actually thought about the play.

Kvale and Brinkmann (2009: 48–50) introduce two metaphors for describing and contrasting these two ways
of obtaining knowledge. They distinguish between the interviewer as a miner and a traveller. The miner-
interviewer has a targeted and well-defined interest in specific informations she considers valuable: she
knows what to look for and turns this (re)search into a collection of pure ‘nuggets of knowledge’ (ibid.: 48).
Afterwards she will decide what it is actually worth. Alternatively, the traveller-interviewer is openly curious.
She ‘wanders through the landscape’ (ibid.) of the area under investigation, involves herself in conversations,
and encourages people to tell her about their experiences. With each conversation she may discover new
aspects, and develop and modify her opinion. Together with the respondents encountered, she interactively
co-constructs the knowledge that she will take home.

Both approaches produce useful knowledge but also involve certain disadvantages. On the one hand,
chances are low that the miner, who corresponds to a systematic collector of scientific knowledge according
to pre-defined standards, will be open to changing her assessment criteria and reflect upon the concept of
what (using the mining metaphor) ‘precious metal’ is. On the other hand, it may be difficult for the traveller to
come to the end of her journey; she may be overwhelmed by the many new impressions and perspectives
she has encountered, and may even forget about her original interest.

Metaphors are a useful way of imagining interview research (Alvesson, 2011). This book is about a third

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way of collecting knowledge - by involving people more actively into a process of knowledge constitution. In
the context of the problem-centred interview (PCI), interviewers take the role and attitude of a well-informed
traveller: they have certain priorities and expectations and start the journey on the basis of background
information obtained beforehand. Yet the trip they will finally make, and the story they will tell about it
afterwards, depend on the people they meet on the road and on their insider knowledge. By talking to them
they are able to refine their assessment of the major sights mentioned in the travel guide. Their guidebook
only helped them to outline a preliminary roadmap and frame of reference that remains open to modification
and revision on the basis of conversations with the locals. It is through these conversations that they get a
better idea about what is relevant and worth seeing. Box 1.1 illustrates this interaction.

Box 1.1: A Short Story About Well-Informed Travelling

Imagine the following scenario. You travel to a small mediaeval town in the south of France
that is highly recommended in your travel guide. You get up early and visit a small local
café for breakfast. One of the locals, a retired teacher, notices you studying a travel guide
of his home town and involves you in a conversation. You tell him that you are here to get
an impression of how town life may have been organised a few hundred years ago, and
what is still left of it. You refer to your travel guide and other preparations you made in
advance, and explain that you want to start your exploration at the main square in front of
the church. From there, you would march along the bank of the river and then along the
remains of the city wall to the old market square and the city hall.

The teacher is surprised about your plans and offers to take you on an alternative tour
that starts at an old tree outside the former city wall where the main gate used to be.
You find out that the story of the old tree and the Roman grave that its shadow covers
is crucial for how the town's main roads were organised towards the old market square
in a way that they crossed the river where it was narrowest. The old tree also used to
be the place where, over hundreds of years, many convicted criminals and ‘witches’ were
executed - it is in walking distance to the church, whose crypt served as dungeons. Even
today, the significance of the old tree can still be seen. For instance, every festival begins
with a small parade starting at the old tree and proceeding to the market square where it
is welcomed by the mayor from the balcony of the city hall; agreements with neighbouring
towns are symbolically signed under the old tree; and it is popular among local youths who
carve hearts and oaths of love into its trunk, although this has long been forbidden by the
authorities. With an apologetic smile and putting his arm around the tree like an old friend,
the teacher confesses to having done his fair share of carving on the tree. And sometimes
he even visits the place with his wife or his grandchildren to talk about the old times and to

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search for fading traces of his very own marks.

After three intensive hours of talking to the former teacher, asking him about details
and being guided through the town, you understand that the church, river banks, city
walls, market square and city hall are all relevant sights and worthwhile exploring, just
as your travel guide suggested (it does not mention the multi-purpose function of the
crypt though). Yet the way they are arranged can only be understood in the historical
perspective represented by the old tree and reproduced in contemporary local habits. With
its much broader orientation towards relevant sights, the travel guide does not mention the
old tree and its importance in the arrangement of these sights. For that, local knowledge is
necessary.

As a way of research, well-informed travelling is not about drifting through a (social) space of knowledge
and meaning. On the contrary, it requires a lot of preparation in terms of both substance and behaviour.
Think about the example above (Box 1.1): local cafés are good places for an ‘explorative’ breakfast as they
are usually places where locals hang out; the opportunity to talk to a teacher is gladly taken as teachers
are famously knowledgeable and ready to communicate their knowledge; the hunch that the arrangement
of significant buildings usually follows certain standards is taken from the travel guide and academic books
about urban planning in the middle ages; and a guided tour by a local insider is the perfect way of investigating
the contemporary significance of mediaeval urban planning and its practical implications. The search process
for this research was purposefully designed and at least the substantive preparation and some of the initial
steps were also done on purpose.

The technique of the PCI that translates this idea of well-informed travelling into a methodological and
practical programme of research could be a good approach for you if:

• you identified interviewing as the appropriate way of collecting information regarding a certain issue;
• the issue refers to a research question regarding the what, how and why of actions, appraisals and
opinions;
• you have an idea about people who could provide you with first-hand insights into this topic; and
• your interview partners are willing to allow you to collect their extensive knowledge in order to
understand their perspective in as much detail as possible.

In terms of a preliminary definition, the PCI can be described as a qualitative, discursive-dialogic method of
reconstructing knowledge about relevant problems. This definition involves a few peculiarities. The discursive-
dialogic character is outlined above in the idea of well-informed travelling and the involvement of interviewers
and their knowledge in a dialogue with respondents and their perspectives. The discussion of this dialogue as
an epistemological challenge (a task of obtaining knowledge about something) is done in Chapter 2 together
with a reflection of the specificity of social (scientific) knowledge. Suggesting a particular way of reconstructing
the meaningfulness of this knowledge through interviews, which is the purpose of the whole book, defines
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the PCI as a method: it is a ‘stylized way of conducting research that comprise(s) routine and accepted
procedures for doing the rigorous side of science’ (see Abbott, 2004: 13). Like other methods of qualitative
research, the PCI involves an ‘exchange between real people’ in their own ‘social, cultural, and physical
context’. It focuses on meanings and behaviour, which the researcher tries to understand ‘through the eyes
and lived experience of the people’ (Schensul, 2008: 521–2).

But What Are the ‘Problems’ in Problem-Centred Interviews?

First of all, PCIs do not necessarily deal with issues that are ‘problematic’. That would be a misunderstanding
of the term. The French notion of problématique or the German term Problemstellung refers to a specific
research question – this would be a more appropriate meaning for the ‘problem’ in problem-centred
interviews. Let us consider the original research puzzle that led to the development and design of the PCI as
a distinct technique of qualitative interviewing. When the first author wrote his PhD thesis (Witzel, 1982) in
the 1970s he was involved in a research project about occupational socialization of young people (Heinz et
al., 1979). The purpose of the study was the investigation of the perspectives of graduates from a (logwer)
secondary modern school and their parents regarding the ‘problem’ of finding an occupation. The study
wanted to explore these perspectives as authentically as possible and without theoretical preconceptions.
The PCI was the genuine method developed for this very purpose on the basis of a review of methodological
and methodical discussions available at that time (see below).

As research is usually not initiated by people themselves, the first step in addressing the research question
of this study in terms of problem centring was taken by researchers. Thus, the starting point here was
the identification of asocietal problem with immediate relevance for individuals: the conditions and patterns
of transitions of graduates from lower secondary education into the world of work in relation to their
familial socialization and other influencing factors. The assumption was that, in the process of occupational
orientation (of the child), the researcher would be able to address issues of socialization within families, simply
because these issues were relevant to family members. The main challenge and task of the PCI was then
to take the perspective of the teenager and his or her parents seriously and to trace their own criteria of
assessing and making sense of the problem in this period of their lives, within this rough thematic frame of
reference.

This first reason for naming the interviewing method according to its orientation towards socially relevant
problems is immediately associated with a key precondition of conducting PCIs: the research question
has to correspond to an everyday problem in the perspective of practical knowledge that the respondent
can articulate and also has an interest in dealing with. This is an important step towards realising the
PCI's endeavour of learning about the real motivations behind actions. In order to bridge the scientific and
the practical knowledge without corrupting the respondent's perspective on the problem, the researcher's
perspective needs to be systematised and disclosed. In this way, the term ‘problem-centred’ underlines the
method's programmatic opposition to naive empiricism that promotes radical openness and assumes that
meaning will emerge only if interviewers restrain themselves (for a critique, see Kelle, 2005). The term also

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refers to the practical aspects of the method (see section 2.3). All strategies and activities – ranging from
access to the field to forms of communication – are oriented systematically, but flexibly, towards the research
problem, i.e. the object, as well as to the most effective way of disclosing and understanding the respondent's
perspective on the problem. Throughout this book we describe the consequences of the PCI's original dialogic
perspective on problems on the basis of three examples (cf. Box 1.2 and Table 6.1). They are taken from very
different studies that employed PCIs and should explicate the dependence of the choice and implementation
of the method on the research object (see the principle of object orientation in section 2.3).
Table 6.1 Three exemplary studies using PCIs

Finally, the aspect of ‘centring’ the problem has caused some confusion in the reception of the technique.
It was sometimes interpreted in the sense of a limitation of the topic – it was associated with legitimising
strategies of interviewers to bring respondents back on track in case they strayed off topic.

Instead, problem centring means that the respondent is encouraged and supported in reconstructing research
problems by means of reconstructing practical problems. In the process of a dialogue characterised by mutual
trust, the respondent should gradually remember more and more and unfold the overall problem in narrative
accounts. This entails the establishment of a focus of the reconstruction of meaning on all crucial aspects

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of the problem involving the breadth and depth that are appropriate for the topic. And there is no reason to
expect respondents to stray off topic here.

Box 1.2: Studying Problems: Three Examples

Throughout the book we refer to three examples from our own experience in conducting
PCIs. They are mainly taken from three very different research contexts introduced below.
As we were (leading) researchers in these projects, we can inform about every aspect
without reservation and generalise our reflections about particular challenges, pitfalls and
mistakes involved. These studies differ in terms of scope, duration, funding and human
resources, etc. and are thus able to illustrate the wide range of challenges when using this
method (see Table 6.1 for a comparative overview).

In the first, STUDY A, PCIs were used in the frame of a longitudinal, mixed-methods
study. It investigated the job entry of young adults after completing vocational education
in the German apprenticeship system and their successive careers regarding gender
and class differences. In the second, STUDY B, PCIs were used for expert interviews
in the frame of a short, commissioned and applied investigation of rising costs after the
reform of custodianship of adults in the German federal state of Lower Saxony. In a
peer research approach, judges were trained to interview judges. STUDY C was a PhD
thesis and used PCIs in the frame of investigating meanings of unemployment in the post-
communist context of Lithuania in the perspective of young people in transition to the
world of work. The research puzzle and societal problem consisted here in the fact that the
transformation from state socialism to market economy brought an end to decades of full
employment and introduced mass unemployment as a new problem for both society and
individuals. STUDIES A and C had a common interest in the issue of youth transitions,
which originally motivated the development of the technique of the PCI.

Examples are integrated throughout the book and the reader will learn more and more
details about these studies as she moves through the text. The general chapters of the
book (3 to 5) include mostly examples from STUDIES A and C. They help to illustrate the
basic methodical aspects of the PCI. Chapter 6 complements this general perspective and
is dedicated to extensive discussions of examples from STUDIES A and B, which also
serve as the basis for the discussion of typical interviewing errors and pitfalls.

Background and Use of the PCI

The development of the PCI has its origin in the German tradition of qualitative research and the methods

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discourse of the 1970s and 1980s (Mey and Mruck, 2007). In its very first version, the PCI was introduced
as a comprehensive mixed-methods approach combining interviewing with case analyses, group discussions
and biographical elements (Witzel, 1982). In this book, we will only discuss the interviewing part and refer to
it as PCI. The PCI originated in the context of the 1970s revival and re-development of qualitative methods
associated with the reception of the interpretive paradigm that Goldthorpe (1973: 449) called a ‘revolutionary
“paradigm shift”’.

Its development is also a response to the then tenacious status paradox of qualitative interviewing. Open
interviewing was also recognised at the time, in influential standard textbooks of social research, as fulfilling
several criteria that are taken for granted in empirical research, for instance, the consideration of individual
experiences as well as the context of a certain case (e.g. Friedrichs, 1973). Yet, at the same time, the
systematic development of qualitative methods of interviewing was largely neglected; they were generally
considered as unsophisticated and pre-scientific methods that could not replace the conventional, more
formalised techniques. Typically, the qualitative interview continued to have the status of a method applied
in the frame of ‘unstructured’ or less structured pre-tests and pilot studies exploring a field of research for
the purpose of preparing a ‘proper’, i.e. quantitative-representative, investigation. Alternatively, the material
produced with qualitative interviews was used for little more than to enrich and illustrate quantitative analyses
with ‘juicy quotes’ that should bring flesh to the bones and colour to the phenomenon under investigation, as
Adorno (1961: 8) once put it. After all, as Kohli (1978: 23) maintained, in an influential German publication
of the late 1970s, open interviewing was, despite its merits, regarded as too time-and resource-consuming.
Somewhat ironically he claims that this also resulted in an arbitrariness of findings that was ‘at least hidden
behind an impressive technical apparatus’ in the traditional approach of ‘closed’ methods. The research
policy and economy of this period were characterised by hegemonic criteria of generalisation on the basis
of representativeness and inference, and by a breadth-before-depth approach. Against this background, the
status of qualitative interviewing was, at best, that of a complementary and auxiliary method filling the by-
then obvious knowledge gaps that the standardised empirical research (re-)produced. Consequently, the
refinement of qualitative methods was until then hardly facilitated.

The original design of the PCI, embedded within this methods discourse, tried to establish a distinct qualitative
interview technique as a stand-alone method for research that responds to some of this criticism. As indicated
in Chapter 2, the principles of object orientation and problem centring constitute alternative perspectives to
the instrument-orientation of traditional approaches. The research-economic argument at any rate needs to
be rebutted on academic grounds alone at least with regard to the collection and consolidation of qualitative
data that is both valuable and valid.

Importantly, the PCI is the product of a twofold critique of the social research culture of that time. On the
one hand, it criticised the artificial interviewing style suggested by the then hegemonic quantitative paradigm
for its fallacy of non-reactivity. Reactivity, meaning the fact that ‘the act of doing the research changes the
behaviour of participants’ (McKechnie, 2008: 729), is inevitable as soon as it involves people interacting in
face-to-face encounters. While it is commonly understood that ‘people are not machines’, the ‘importance of

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interviewing uniformity’ is nevertheless maintained in this approach (Moser and Kalton, 1971: 276). On the
other hand, the critique of the PCI addressed radical alternatives from qualitative research, like the narrative
interview (Schütze, 1983) for its fallacy of non-intervention. Inherent demands of narrations (Zugzwänge) –
i.e. the tendency and capacity of people to unfold, complete and elaborate a story by themselves (and without
supposedly ‘contaminating’ contributions of the interviewer) once they began to tell it – are important but
rely heavily on quite a few communicative requirements. The rule of not intervening or interrupting accounts
is at risk of creating an equally artificial situation that may demand too much of the respondents. As a
consequence of this criticism, the PCI instead suggests that interviewers take the role of an agent of active
listening including the stimulation of narrations and thoughts. They dissolve some of the asymmetry inherent
in the interview situation by involving the respondent in a process of active understanding that provides the
possibility to clarify and deepen meaning and knowledge during the interview.

Over the years, the PCI (Witzel, 1982, 1989, 1996) has become recognised as one of the more elaborate
approaches within the range of methods for collecting verbal data (e.g. Flick, 2006; Helfferich, 2009: 35–6;
Lamnek, 2010: 332–7; Mayring, 2002: 67–72; Reinders, 2005: 116–25). And it has been widely used: the
PCI is ‘probably one of the most frequently used types of qualitative interviewing and analysis used in the
German social sciences’, as Scheibelhofer (2005: 20) writes. The method is suitable to investigate actions
and experiences, their justification and evaluation, as well as individual opinions. It is directed towards topics,
objects and their interrelations, which are little explored. Its underlying image of humanity (Menschenbild)
considers people as self-reflective and capable of acting and communicating.

Overall, the PCI is more of a skill and craft than a (specialised) technique or tool because its appropriateness
depends on the concrete object and question of research. The PCI's ‘solution’ of common problems of
qualitative interviewing proved to be useful in many research contexts. PCIs were used in a variety of
contexts, countries and across many disciplines of the human and social sciences including, for instance:
demography (Von der Lippe and Fuhrer, 2004), pedagogics (Szczyrba, 2003), psychology (Kühn, 2004; Mey,
1999; Nentwich, 2008), psychiatry (Roick et al., 2006; Stiglmayr, 2008), sociology (Bolder and Hendrich,
2000; Fritsch, 2006; Reiter, 2003), cross-cultural management (Hajro and Pudelko, 2010), political science
(Pregernig, 2007), social work (Schmidt-Grunert, 1999), cultural sciences (Filep, 2009), marketing research
(Kurz et al., 2007), medicine (Hasseler et al., 2011), environmental sciences (Medilanski et al., 2006; Stoll-
Kleemann, 2001), criminology (Strobl, 1998), and food study (Riefer and Hamm, 2011). The PCI can be at
the core of interdisciplinary research as it was in the case of the Collaborative Research Centre 186 ‘Status
Passages and Risks in the Life Course’ that was carried out at the University of Bremen from 1988 to 2001
(Kluge and Kelle, 2001). More recently, the overall approach of the PCI also constitutes the basis of advances
in the method of ‘problem-centred group discussion’ (Kühn and Koschel, 2011).

And, as Mey (1999: 148) notes, it has been applied and re-labelled by several scholars for the purpose of
their specialised research needs. For instance, Diezinger (1995: 273) calls it a ‘combination of open narrative
questions and more precise follow-up questions’; in this way, they try to combine the advantages of an open
and non-directive approach with specific stimulation through targeted questions. Lenz (1991: 57) describes

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it for his purpose as ‘narratively enlightened guided interview’; and Bock (1991: 161) calls it ‘semi-structured
guide-oriented in-depth interview’.

Yet apart from a brief introductory text in English (Witzel, 2000), which is available worldwide through
the authoritative and recognized online journal ‘Forum: Qualitative Social Research’ (http://www.qualitative-
research.net/index.php/fqs), the technique is so far hardly accessible to the wider international audience. The
present book fills this gap by providing an authoritative yet concise and applied introduction to the background
and history, scope, technique and application of the method.

Purpose of the Book and Preview of Chapters

This book is a comprehensive introduction to the methodology, technique and application of the specific
interviewing technique of the PCI (Witzel, 1982, 1989, 1996). It is not a general introduction to qualitative
interviewing, and does not intend to replace introductory literature (e.g. Gillham, 2005; King and Horrocks,
2010; Kvale, 2007; Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009; Roulston, 2010; Rubin and Rubin, 2004; Schostak, 2006;
Seidman, 2006; Wengraf, 2001). Due to the hands-on character of this textbook we need to neglect relevant
specialised discourses regarding methodology and methods that were relevant in the development of the
PCI. For instance, the debate about the apparent opposition between qualitative and quantitative approaches
as well as their different criteria for research quality is ongoing in the German context although constructive
contributions to overcoming it were available 30 years ago (Steinke, 1999; Wilson, 1982/86). We also need
to neglect here the discussion of the many approaches of qualitative data analysis that could be applied to
interviews collected with PCIs. We can only offer a few practical examples of how it can be done.

Chapter 2, following, starts with an outline of the methodological and epistemological approach of the PCI
and indicates how it is distinguished from other established techniques of interviewing. We consider some
of the features of interpretive knowledge constitution and explicate the epistemological background of the
well-informed traveller as metaphor for the particular role and attitude of problem-centred interviewers.
As a method of interpretive social research, problem-centred interviewing consists essentially in the
epistemological challenge of reconstructing problems in a dialogue between interviewers (well-informed
travellers equipped with certain forms of prior knowledge) on the one side, and respondents with their
practical knowledge from everyday life on the other (see Figure 2.1). They are partners in a temporary and
interactive relationship, the quality of which is crucial for the final quality of the interview. After discussing the
method's three main principles of problem centring, process orientation and object orientation, we discuss
differences of the PCI in relation to other methods of interviewing that share certain similarities.

Chapters 3 to 5 are dedicated to the discussion of the practical steps that usually characterize the process
of problem-centred interviewing. These parts constitute a general but dense roadmap for the implementation
of PCIs consisting of three steps: preparing, doing and processing PCIs. The flowchart in Figure 3.1 can be
taken as the table of contents for these parts.

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Figure 3.1 Flowchart of the PCI

Chapter 3, about preparing PCIs’, describes the typical steps before the fieldwork starts. The consolidation
of a research interest and its translation into questions go hand-in-hand with the development of a qualitative
research design. Then we discuss the crucial status of prior knowledge in PCI research. We distinguish
between everyday, contextual and research knowledge and suggest using them in a sensitising way by
integrating them into a preliminary framework of research. The development and use of an interview or
topical guide is one of the tools that bridge the sensitising framework and the concrete interview situation.
Ideally, PCIs are carried out by the principal researcher who is usually better able to handle pre-interpretations
developed during the interview. However, this is not always feasible and we therefore also discuss the training

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of interviewers. We conclude this section with some remarks concerning sampling and field access.

The main steps of doing PCIs are described in Chapter 4. After some suggestions about the choice of the
interview setting, we discuss important aspects regarding the very beginning of the conversation. We then
explicate and illustrate the interplay of opening question, opening account and follow-up questions. They
constitute the heart of the PCI and form a complex unity of strategies of interaction and communication with
the purpose of facilitating a process of discursive-dialogic knowledge production. The collection of information
related to the background of the respondent, the optional use of a short questionnaire, and the important
moment of debriefing and bringing the conversation and the encounter to a close conclude the discussion in
this chapter.

Chapter 5, about processing PCIs’ is dedicated to the typical steps that usually follow the actual interview. The
postscript is a self-debriefing tool that helps to capture important information about the conversation and its
context which has not been registered otherwise. Transcription and analysis of PCIs do not follow particular
rules; they depend on the research design and the research interest. The question of qualitative analysis
cannot be discussed exhaustively in this book with its focus on PCI-based data collection. Thus, we restrict
ourselves here to providing a general outline of how the principle of problem centring can be considered
also in the analysis and interpretation of the interviews. We suggest a series of general steps of a dialogic
and problem-centred process of constructing and arriving at ‘findings’. Examples from STUDIES A and C are
integrated. Finally, we briefly address a few points associated with the planning of resources for PCI research.

Short interviewing examples are integrated into the whole book. Yet in order to do justice to the textbook
character of this introduction to problem-centred interviewing, Chapter 6 is exclusively dedicated to providing
an in-depth look at practical aspects of the method. We introduce two studies, describe selected aspects of
problem-centred interviewing, and provide extensive examples of producing, interpreting and reflecting typical
interview passages and how the production of knowledge is contingent upon the interaction of interviewer and
respondent. Integrated in this part are exemplary discussions of common interviewing mistakes and pitfalls,
which are described and explained with regard to their systematic relation to the basic principles of problem-
centred interviewing.

Instead of a conclusion, Chapter 7 provides a systematic discussion of interviewing errors. This should not
discourage students and researchers from using the PCI but should instead help them to understand the
basic principles of the PCI from the negative angle of discussing common interviewing mistakes and pitfalls.
Flawless interviews are rare. Neither of us has ever come across a PCI without mistakes, or has ever done
one. We think that the idea of being ‘in control’ of the immediacy of interview communication is an illusion.
However, the development of the skill of problem-centred interviewing is greatly improved when we are willing
to learn from these mistakes. This is what the final chapter wants to facilitate.

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 The Programme of the PCI
In: The Problem-Centred Interview: Principles and Practice

By: Andreas Witzel & Herwig Reiter

Pub. Date: 2013
Access Date: December 25, 2018
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: London
Print ISBN: 9781849201001
Online ISBN: 9781446288030
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446288030
Print pages: 12-34
© 2012 SAGE Publications Ltd All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the pagination of the
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The Programme of the PCI

As indicated in the introduction, one of the motivations for the development of the PCI during the second
half of the 1970s and its particular design was the attempt to firmly establish qualitative interviewing as a
recognised alternative within the range of social research methods. A second motivation was the design of
a method of interviewing that was more reflected and appropriate for the collection of ‘qualitative’ knowledge
about the social world than the ‘semi-structured interview’, which is hardly more than a ‘query tool without
theoretical foundation’ (Mey and Mruck, 2010: 423). This chapter introduces some of the characteristics
of interpretive knowledge of the social world and discusses its consequences for the overall approach of
problem-centred interviewing. In the context of this textbook it introduces a kind of minimal epistemology of
interpretive social research (see section 2.1) and how it is translated into the particular challenge of problem-
centred interviewing (see section 2.2). Even now, the knowledge issue remains at the core of qualitative
research development and reaches into the more recent debate about improving our understanding of
social realities by mixing, combining and integrating methods and methodologies of various traditions (e.g.
Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998). The reflection of some of these issues in more detail here, and exploring the
way in which they were fundamental for the epistemological and methodological orientation of the specific
method of the PCI, are also a reminder of the general principles of qualitative interviewing. On the basis of
this discussion, the key features of the original epistemological and methodological concept of the PCI are
introduced (section 2.3). Finally, in section 2.4, the PCI is distinguished from selected alternative methods of
interviewing.

2.1 What Is Specific About Interpretive Knowledge of the Social World,

and How Can We Improve It?

The challenge of social research boils down to the following questions which guide the discussion in this
chapter:

1 What can we, as researchers, know about the social world?

2 And how can we design our practices of social scientific knowledge collection and
production accordingly without:
a neglecting available social scientific knowledge;
b inhibiting subjective perspectives; or
c corrupting the chance to discover novel aspects of certain problems?

The answers to these questions by various research traditions determine how the epistemological problem
of knowledge (1) is translated into the challenge of establishing a systematic and reflected methodological
programme for the development of an appropriate set of methods, tools and practices of social inquiry (2).
There is no single answer to these questions that would be recognised by the different schools in the social

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sciences (see Box 2.1). For the purpose of introducing and explicating the programme of the PCI, we want
to discuss some relevant aspects related to these questions. In the following we want to unfold our answer
(which is necessarily brief here); its essence could be summarised as follows:

Box 2.1: Epistemology, Methodology, Methods - Some Basic Distinctions

Like all specialised scientific efforts, qualitative research is characterised by competing

paradigms like positivism or constructivism. Each promotes certain world-views and basic
assumptions about life and the possibilities and limits of understanding it (e.g. Della
Porta and Keating, 2008; King and Horrocks, 2010: Chapter 2; Outhwaite and Turner,
2007). Guba and Lincoln (1994) suggest differentiating research paradigms on the basis
of three fundamental and intertwined questions. The ontological question asks for the
form and nature of reality. This is the biggest question of the three, and it cannot nearly
be addressed here. Suffice it to say that, following the basic understanding of qualitative
research, within our common, natural context, social realities are essentially constructed
- i.e. their meanings and relevances are products of social interactions. For instance, the
importance of money results from the value attributed to it, and not from the material
value of the paper or the metal. The epistemological question determines the nature of
the relationship between the knower and what can be known. Epistemology is the branch
of philosophy that deals with the nature, scope and limits of knowledge. With regard to
social research it asks what can be known about social reality and reflects the relationship
between researchers and their specific knowledge interest. The methodological question
explores how researchers can find out whatever they believe can be known. Methodology
is about ‘ways of knowing’ (Moses and Knutsen, 2007). It is a branch of the philosophy
of science reflecting the foundations and workings of scientific practices producing
knowledge; it is the science of methods. Thus, the fourth question of methods needs
to be added. Methods are the actual tools and techniques of social researchers used
to obtain knowledge. Typically they correspond - although not exclusively - to certain
methodological approaches and help researchers put research interests into practice.

Let us come back to our example of finding out about the contemporary relevance
of mediaeval urban planning through well-informed travelling (see Box 1.1). The
epistemological perspective would suggest that we cannot know how it really used to be
a few hundred years ago. We inhabit a different time-space and are culturally different
people from those living in the past: we went through a ‘modern’ education system and
had our experiences in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Yet there are many other
details we can find out about the transformation of the city over the centuries and try

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to approximate how city life used to be. For instance, we might be interested in facts
regarding the exact outline of the former city and how it determined the transformation of
the city-scape. Or, we might want to know how the organisation of life around the city's
hardware of buildings and structures changed over the centuries, and how their utilisation
was adapted to the requirements of time like the moods of changing sovereigns, or the
needs of the people.

In methodological terms the search for answers to these alternative knowledge interests
requires different research strategies and methods. In the first case we could excavate
the remains of original buildings and the city wall after having traced them with infrared
technology. Then we could recreate how they were integrated into the architecture that
was built on top of it later on. We could also simulate and measure the erosion of parts
of the city wall made of sandstone in order to understand the contribution of natural
decay, linking their exposure to sun and rainfall with the speed of its disappearance. In
the second case we would rather need to reconstruct the social history of the place. We
would spend much more time in archives, studying documents describing everyday life,
and we would, in order to find out about the current situation, eventually consider living in
the city for some time. Then, our understanding could greatly benefit from the guided tour
with knowledgeable insiders like the retired teacher whose stories about his parents and
grandparents would cover the last century or so. In addition, we could do interviews with
experts such as local city historians who might be able to answer the many questions and
ideas we developed on the basis of our research.

The PCI is a methodical suggestion to reconstruct the interactively constituted knowledge in the social world
in an interactive process between interviewer and respondent. It is designed so that the researcher's prior
knowledge defining and structuring the research interest in a preliminary way enters into a discursive dialogue
with the respondent's practical everyday knowledge about a relevant issue. The inductive moment of fully
considering subjective perspectives complements the deductive moment of building upon available prior
knowledge from research in a way that allows novel data to question and revise previous knowledge. The
specific management and temporary suspension of prior knowledge should also allow surprising findings by
way of abductive inference (Box 2.4). Our metaphor of the well-informed traveller (Box 1.1) describes the
associated research attitude.

Let us begin with some reflections on the specificity of interpretive knowledge. One aspect that is critical in
all qualitative-interpretive approaches is the role and status that is attributed to the researcher's (academic)
prior knowledge vis-à-vis that of the practical everyday knowledge of the participants in a certain social setting
under investigation. Social scientific paradigms tend to be distinguishable according to the relevance and
priority they grant to these two types of knowledge – the first accumulated, systematic, scientific and external,
the other emergent, rather spontaneous, practical and internal – in the process of research. Their relationship

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needs to be clarified especially for the purpose of doing qualitative interviews, where these two knowledge
perspectives are directly confronted and represented in the interaction.

Interpretive social science, and with it qualitative research, emerged out of a critique of the then dominant
normative position that essentially tries to explain social action on the basis of a deductive reasoning
adopted from natural sciences. Following Wilson (1970), two ideal types can be distinguished with regard
to the sociological interest in regularities and change in behaviour and action: deductive explanations and
interpretive descriptions. Approaches prioritising academic knowledge in the way natural sciences apply
it in order to investigate, for instance, the behaviour of non-speaking inhabitants of the animal kingdom,
operate mostly in a deductive way on the basis of theories, variables, hypotheses, operationalisation,
measurement and testing. Deduction is a form of reasoning that moves from the general (i.e. knowledge, rules
or assumptions and hypotheses) to the particular observation, trying to subsume it. Deductive explanations
associated with the normative research paradigm try to explain facts by showing that they fit the rule which
is known in advance. For instance, a natural scientist investigating animals in a new environment will test
all sorts of hypotheses derived from ethology by observation and experiment. The basis consists of strong
assumptions about animal behaviour regarding the use of space in relation to other animals or the distribution
of food within. The researcher alone has to determine what is relevant because ‘there is nothing at all
“meaningful” about nature in the sense of meaningfulness that organises human action’ (Dux, 2011: 19). And
in case of doubt, the researcher will probably not try to clarify it by involving animals in social interaction by
interviewing, say, a chicken.

Such a normative approach that ‘works’ in the natural sciences has also long dominated social research.
Social research, however, has to start from completely different presuppositions about the ‘nature’ of the
social world and its participants. First of all, the social world is meaningful. The meaning of human action
and behaviour is constituted in the interpretive process of social interaction and changes over the course of
this interaction. It can only be grasped by means of interpretive description and following the principles of a
process called the documentary method of interpretation, which is described in more detail below (section
2.2). The specific ‘nature’ of social realities and their constitution, perception and representation requires
an adequate way of investigating them with the appropriate tools and methods. After all, human research
subjects, it must be assumed, make sense of the social world and their action in a way that is similar to that of
the researchers themselves. What is more, unlike animals, people have the capacity to directly communicate
their knowledge and their ways of making sense, a fact that deserves consideration in conceptualising and
doing social research. In an inductive process, interpretive descriptions reconstruct meaning according to the
subjective relevance of actors and provide the basis for arriving at preliminary knowledge about the social
world. For instance, a social scientist investigating human behaviour in social contexts will try to uncover the
patterns underlying the observed behaviour by investigating individuals and their social interaction. In case
the researcher wants to explore the meaning of their behaviour on the level of their shared common-sense
understanding, he has to put his social scientific knowledge aside. In order to approximate this common-
sense understanding he will benefit from talking to them even if he may already have some good ideas about
it from previous research.

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2.2 the Epistemological Challenge of the PCI

The process of arriving as close as possible to the people's common-sense understanding is rather complex
and requires a change of perspective on the side of the researcher. The readiness to involve oneself with
the respondent's perspective is crucial for producing and consolidating knowledge in the interaction between
researcher and respondent in the PCI. The following quotation from Alfred Schutz, who was one of the
founding epistemologists of the interpretive paradigm, gets to the heart of the task. It begins with a reflection
of the fundamental difference between natural and social sciences discussed previously.

The world of nature, as explored by the natural scientist, does not ‘mean’ anything to the molecules,
atoms, and electrons therein. The observational field of the social scientist, however, namely the
social reality, has a specific meaning and relevance structure for the human beings living, acting,
and thinking therein. By a series of common-sense constructs they have pre-selected and pre-
interpreted this world which they experience as the reality of their daily lives. It is these thought
objects of theirs which determine their behaviour by motivating it. The thought objects constructed
by the social scientist, in order to grasp this social reality, have to be founded upon the thought
objects constructed by the common-sense thinking of men, living their daily life within their social
world. Thus, the constructs of the social sciences are, so to speak, constructs of the second degree,
namely constructs of the constructs made by the actors on the social scene, whose behaviour the
social scientist has to observe and to explain in accordance with the procedural rules of his science.
(Schutz, 1954: 266–7)

The epistemological challenge for social research – i.e. the challenge of obtaining knowledge about an
issue – consists in getting access to the interactively constituted meanings and therefore in collecting
and consolidating social scientific knowledge about the issue. The social scientific knowledge is always
characterised by remoteness. Unlike first-hand, everyday knowledge (‘common-sense constructs’), research
knowledge of the social world consists of categories that are scientific constructs or ‘constructs of the second-
degree’ – social science operates on the basis of ‘constructs of the constructs made by the actors on the
social scene’. Even if we take this interactive-inductive approach, the knowledge and experience of the
respondent is never fully accessible. As researchers we can only approximate what individuals think about
certain issues, i.e. the subjective meaning they have for them.

At some point in our example of exploring the small mediaeval city through the eyes of the retired teacher,
we get the impression that the old tree also has a very personal meaning for him. He selects and offers this
information of his own accord because it is a relevant aspect for him. We try to make sense of what he says.
Having had our own experiences carving hearts, we can guess from his hints that the old tree served as
a witness to some of his love stories. A question that was never asked could have specifically asked, but
would have again provided pre-selected information. For us this glimpse of privacy is a relevant example of
how public urban space is meaningfully appropriated and ‘privatised’ by locals. The fact that he takes his

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grandchildren there even turns the tree into a medium of inter-generational knowledge transfer.

The concepts ‘appropriating public space’ and ‘inter-generational knowledge transfer’ are part of our
knowledge as social scientists. We brought this knowledge to the research situation together with, for
instance, our own experience in carving hearts. Yet while the appropriation of public space was one aspect
that we wanted to explore from the beginning, the issue of inter-generational transfer and the usefulness
of certain memories from our youth came as a surprise. In conceptual terms, these knowledge dimensions
are part of our prior knowledge (Meinefeld, 2004), which helps us to ask questions and understand what the
teacher emphasises as relevant in his perspective of practical knowledge. The treatment of prior knowledge in
qualitative research is a contested issue because it is crucial for the question of whether and how we discover
something ‘new’ (see the principle of problem centring in section 2.3 below). The positions range from the
complete suspension of prior knowledge in favour of openness, to its full disclosure; even its use in the sense
of specific ex ante hypotheses is discussed. The first position wants to avoid the categories of the researcher
being imposed on the observations. The second position maintains that it is an ‘epistemological requirement
to include prior knowledge in methodological control’ (ibid.: 156).

According to the programme of the PCI, prior knowledge is a valuable and indispensable resource that
needs to be used in a way which ensures that the principles of qualitative research are not undermined. The
particular design of the PCI is an attempt to offer a methodical approach that should help to enhance our
interpretive knowledge of the social world by reducing the distance between the researcher's prior knowledge,
on the one hand, and the relevance and the practical everyday knowledge of the research subjects on the
other. The types of prior knowledge in problem-centred interviewing are discussed in section 3.2, where we
suggest ways in which it should be used in the practical context of preparing research. At this point we want
to look at how the PCI solves this problem in conceptual terms.

In short, the PCI invites respondents to co-construct and reconstruct problems together with interviewers
in an interactive and interpretive process of data collection (see Figure 2.1). In a discursive dialogue
the researchers’ priorknowledge meets the respondents’ practical knowledge. This exchange provides the
chance to develop and refine the researchers’ social scientific constructs (of the second degree) in a dialogue
with the respondents’ common-sense constructs (of the first degree). The researchers’ prior knowledge is
organised within a sensitising framework in order not to jeopardise the requirement of openness in qualitative
research (see below). The function and practical establishment of a sensitising framework for problem-
centred research is introduced in section 3.2.

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Figure 2.1 The epistemological challenge of the PCI

The problem-centred dialogue involves inductive and deductive moments for the sake of improving our
understanding of how and why certain meanings (what) are established with regard to a societal ‘problem’
(see Chapter 1). In this process, the researcher qua well-informed traveller will necessarily ‘operate between
two worlds’ and negotiate everyday and scientific conceptions of reality (Denzin, 2009: 9). The feature ‘well-
informed’ that specifies the metaphor of travelling is borrowed from Alfred Schutz's (1964) figure of the ‘well-
informed citizen’ – ‘To be well informed means to him to arrive at reasonably founded opinions’ (ibid.: 122;
original emphasis). ‘Well-informed’ refers to a practice that, in order to understand the background of certain
issues, appropriates and unfolds relevant knowledge in the perspective of one's interest. This interest serves
as the first determination of relevance within ‘an infinite number of possible frames of reference’ (ibid.: 130).
In this sense, problem-centred interviewers are reasonably well-prepared and have a solid basis of prior
knowledge; their priorities and interests are established, and they keep them in mind when they enter into a
nevertheless open dialogue with respondents. Their preliminary roadmap and frame of reference is open to
modification and revision on the basis of conversations with the locals about what they consider relevant and
worth seeing/noticing.

The epistemological programme of the PCI – i.e. the effort to enhance the reconstruction and comprehension
of a certain problem in the social world; at the intersection of practical and social scientific prior knowledge;
and through dialogic interaction of respondent and researcher – builds upon a range of arguments and

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principles developed in the frame of the establishment of the interpretive paradigm and some of its more
distinct approaches like ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism. With the general approach of the PCI
in mind they are now briefly introduced.

Basic Requirements of Interpretive Research

(a) A first requirement of interpretive research, which came out as one of the consequences of the criticism of
the normative-deductive paradigm, is the pervasive consideration of the perspective of the actors. According
to the principle of openness, interpretive researchers refrain from formulating explicit hypotheses in advance
in order not to mark the boundaries of possible discoveries (Blumer, 1969; Glaser and Strauss, 1967).
Instead, the research process is centred on subjective perspectives of the problem on the basis of relatively
open theoretical concepts specifying the research question. In other words, it is essential to ‘listen’ to the data
and to analyse them in an impartial way by condensing preliminary findings and classifications step by step
into more comprehensive concepts. The generation of theory is oriented primarily to the dense everyday lives
of individuals and what is relevant to them, as well as to the decoding of the meaning they attribute to their
patterns of action and interpretation. Thus, causal explanatory models are rejected.

(b) Another feature of the paradigmatic shift is the emphasis on the communicative character of data
collection that follows the assumptions of symbolic interactionism regarding the interpretive character of
human interaction oriented towards meaning (see Box 2.2). The researcher as a non-disruptive factor in
the process of observation and data collection is the ideal in natural sciences - when this was transferred
into social research, it was widely criticised: face-to-face interviewing is not a non-reactive method. The
introduction of the natural science ideal of non-reactivity can be seen as an attempt to neutralise the influence
of interviewers by training them to indifferently ask questions and register answers in an uncommon way
that invites a variety of equally uncommon attitudes and responses (Berger, 1974; Cicourel, 1964). Yet the
interviewer's influence in face-to-face situations can never be erased, but instead needs to be organised in
a way that the research interaction becomes a confiding collaboration providing access to the respondents’
‘stubborn world’ (Blumer, 1954: 8).

Box 2.2: Symbolic Interactionism and Problem-Centred Interviewing

Symbolic interactionism was developed in US social sciences at the beginning of the

twentieth century and has become one of the theoretical pillars of interpretive research.
According to its ‘root assumptions’, summarised by Herbert Blumer (1969), individuals act
toward things on the basis of meanings that these things have for them; these meanings
result from a process of social interaction, where they are interpreted (i.e. symbolic),
revised and modified (see Denzin, 2004: 82). The fact that people constitute meaning in

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a process of interactive negotiations and mutual role-taking, and thus create the social
world as their world, has to be considered in social research. According to Blumer (1969)
it results in a research programme that enters into a ‘direct examination of the actual
empirical social world‘ (ibid.: 48) and is distinct from ‘elegant logical models’ (ibid.: 24).

Blumer suggests a ‘naturalistic’ approach to the empirical social worlds and demands an
‘investigation that is directed to a given empirical world in its natural, ongoing character’
(ibid.: 46). The two phases of exploration and inspection are at the core of such an
approach together with sensitising concepts. These concepts are used in the sense of
elastic theoretical concepts, which are developed at the beginning of the research process
and kept open during it (see below sections 2.3 and 3.2).

Blumer's notion of meaning production in social interactions is the basis for emphasising
the necessity of dialogue as an important methodological element of the PCI. This
dialogue is discursive because it reflects a process of learning: interviewers use these
elastic sensitising concepts in order to extend their knowledge and to overcome
preconceptions through an examination of the exploration. According to the symbolic
interactionist concept of meaning as changeable and situational, problem-centred
interviewers also accomplish processes of inference and preliminary conclusion during
the course of the interview. These preliminary conclusions (termed pre-interpretations in
the terminology of the PCI) constitute a crucial precondition for the fruitfulness of the
later analysis and interpretation. The scientific reconstruction of meaning of action and
orientation has to consider that meaning can result not only from a real social interaction
but also from a dialogue with oneself in the sense of ‘self-interaction’ or as an ‘internalised
social process’ (Blumer, 1969: 5). In either case, this generative process of dialogic
meaning production may remain hidden in the results of everyday practice. It needs to be
reconstructed and disclosed through the process of interaction between interviewer and
respondent. This interaction should facilitate memory, create trust and provide the chance
to unfold details, and allow statements to be revised and corrected in the course of the
conversation.

(c) Finally, it is especially the work of ethnomethodologists like Harold Garfinkel (1967/2011) that reminds
us of the context dependence of the meaning of articulations, be it single phenomena, or observed action.
Situations, actions or statements are not isolated phenomena, but refer to certain backgrounds - i.e. they
are documents of underlying patterns. This indexicality, as ethnomethodologists call the referential power
of observed phenomena and the ‘mutual determination of appearances and underlying patterns’ (Wilson,
1970: 701), has to be considered in interpretive social research. One way of doing this, as suggested by
ethnomethodology, consists of applying the documentary method of interpretation. In a nutshell, Garfinkel
describes this method in the following way:

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The method consists of treating an actual appearance as ‘the document of’, as ‘pointing to’, as
‘standing on behalf of’ a presupposed underlying pattern. Not only is the underlying pattern derived
from its individual documentary evidences, but the individual documentary evidences, in their turn,
are interpreted on the basis of ‘what is known’ about the underlying pattern. Each is used to
elaborate the other. (Garfinkel, 1967/2011: 78)

The documentary method of interpretation is a universal (hermeneutic) mode of understanding and meaning-
making; it is used in everyday life as well as by researchers. Once again, just think of the retired teacher
admitting to carving into the old tree while embracing it with a smile. His few words, and the gestures
accompanying them, point to stories from his youth that are not further divulged but are nevertheless basically
understood. The principles of this universal mechanism of understanding are relevant for the programme of
the PCI (see Box 2.3).

Box 2.3: Ethnomethodology and Problem-Centred Interviewing

Ethnomethodology is a specialist sociological approach dedicated to the investigation of

the micro foundations of social order as established by members of a social group. Its
goal is to ‘determine the principles and mechanisms by means of which actors, in their
action, produce the meaningful structure and ordering of what is happening around them
and what they express and do in social interaction with others’ (Bergmann, 2004: 72).
Ethnomethodology is not so much interested in the contents of the interaction but in the
question of how the process of mutual understanding between individuals in everyday life
is possible and practically organised. One basic problem consists in the above-described
indexicality of articulations, actions and events. Language is a key factor in this context:
each articulation is special in an indexical sense and refers to a certain meaning that can
be grasped only by considering the context of its occurrence. The meaning of what is said
depends on when it is said.

Individuals understand the meaning of expressions through the documentary method

of interpretation. It is a universal method of understanding that is equally relevant in
everyday as in purposive communication like interviews (see also section 4.6). In order
to understand the respondents’ subjective meanings, interviewers need to recognise this
method as the precondition of any form of social scientific activity in general and of the
technique of questioning in particular. In order to understand the separate articulations of
respondents, interviewers try to decode the underlying pattern - the actual meaning. But in
turn they also apply interpretive patterns, attribute meaning to expressions, and perceive
them as supporting their interpretation. At the same time, they keep these interpretations
open in the process of communication: later statements of respondents may, for instance,

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force them to revise interpretations because they do not fit the established pattern. This
may force them to also reinterpret earlier statements. If no pattern emerges, they have to
collect additional statements in order to develop interpretations.

The openness towards a range of interpretations, as well as to their retrospective

correction and prospective anticipation, corresponds to the way in which actors in
interactions produce and reproduce patterns of reality as a matter of routine. This
openness is, on the one hand, transferable to the overall constitution of a research
process: it asks for the abolishment of strict rules of conduct and research implementation
(see the criterion of process orientation below). On the other hand, it requires giving up
the conventional question-answer pattern in interview research (see also sections 3.3 and
4.6).

The programme of the PCI is one of the methodological and practical solutions that try to facilitate the
step from ‘pre-understanding’ to understanding (Gummesson, 1991: 51–72) and that correspond to these
principles of interpretive research. The consequences of the positions of ethnomethodology and symbolic
interactionism for the design of the PCI are especially relevant. On the one hand, qualitative interviews
need to consider the relevance of the context of articulations in the process of both data collection and
interpretation. On the other hand, it is necessary to conceptualise the interview as an interaction process
in which interviewers permanently interpret meaning that is constituted as ‘situated, self-organizing and
reflexive interaction between the organization of memory, practical reasoning, and talk’ (Cicourel, 1974b:
100). The notion of pre-interpretation (during the interview), which was introduced with the PCI to the methods
discourse, is distinct from systematic interpretation in the phase of analysis. It addresses a completely
neglected aspect of interview communication and emphasises the achievement of the researcher as
interviewer: during the conversation he keeps interpretations open, assesses prospective projects of
meaning, and allows for retrospective revision of them, even provoking it. In so doing, interviewers assume a
double role that corresponds to the rules of the documentary method of interpretation: they ‘wait’, in a state
of relaxed attentiveness, and they listen, becoming actively involved in understanding and following up. This
method reflects everyday activities, and there is nothing mysterious about it (apart from, perhaps, Garfinkel's
label for it). Thus, it is easily added to the skill set of interviewers, underlining the closeness of the PCI to
everyday life.

In the following we explain how the PCI deals with issues of theoretical and conceptual biases, the
communicative nature of social research, and the contextuality/indexicality of the meaning of linguistic
expressions. For this purpose, the principles of problem centring, process orientation and object orientation
are introduced. The capacity of this approach to address the requirements of the object under investigation
(and also in multi-methods frameworks) is explicated, as well as its specific profile in comparison to alternative
methods of interviewing which are briefly illustrated. Practical issues of the PCI are then discussed in the
succeeding chapters.

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2.3 Principles of the PCI

The Principle of Problem Centring

The principle of problem centring is at the core of the methodological programme of the PCI. Its distinct
function and importance have not always been fully understood (e.g. Flick, 2006: 161–4). The main purpose
of problem centring is the facilitation of a conversation structure that helps to uncover the actual perspectives
of individuals on a particular problem in a systematic and dialogical way. In methodological terms, problem
centring specifically addresses the non-negligible influence of the researcher at all stages of the investigation;
it is directed against both the empiricist bias of normative approaches and the radical openness of its critics.

The notion of problem centring refers at first to the starting point of research, i.e. to a socially relevant problem
that was identified by the researcher (see Chapter 1). This curiosity of the researcher for a certain issue, and
not a different one, constitutes a rather explicit interest that needs to be reflected in the overall process. First
of all, the knowledge background of this interest – the researcher's prior knowledge – needs to be disclosed
and explicated. This is done by means of a critical discussion and appropriation of relevant theories, concepts,
empirical studies and other sources regarding the issue; it can also include first explorations in the field as well
as the consideration of expert knowledge and experience. Furthermore, the basic conditions and structural
features of the lives of the prospective respondents of the interview study need to be investigated and
documented. This is necessary in order to better understand the circumstances on which their behaviour and
action depends, and in order to improve the interpretation of their orientations, purposes and intentions. The
anticipated attention to crucial (objective) contextual aspects of the respondents benefits the comprehension
of the assimilation of societal realities as well as the practical interviewing task of asking follow-up questions
and probing.

The alternative strategy of locating the entire construction of societal problems within the realm of the
subjective constitution of individuals represents an epistemological fallacy: it is misleading to conceive of the
researcher as a tabula rasa that quasi-unreservedly absorbs the expressions of individuals. The researcher,
in approaching the empirical reality, may succeed in putting aside the conceptual framework he may have in
advance. Yet at least when it comes to the practical implementation of the study, the introduction of analytic
categories reflecting the second nature of the researcher as theorist seems unavoidable. Metaphorically
speaking, the pollution of the field by the researcher's prior knowledge is, after all, inevitable. Not making
use of this prior knowledge would essentially deprive us of the learning process and the chance to discover
something novel.

We suggest calling the dilemma, which can result from this problem in case it is not resolved, ‘Dr Jekyll–Mr
Hyde syndrome’ (Witzel, 1982: 69). It refers to situations where the researcher is torn between impartiality
claims on the one hand, and claims to utilise accumulated scientific knowledge on the other. The implicated
double nature burdens the research performance at various stages: during the process of data collection the

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researcher is expected to empathically assume the perspective of the respondent; the screening and analysis
of the collected material, however, should strongly draw on available concepts and theories. Contradictions
of what is essentially a ‘double operationalisation’ of the phenomenon may arise.

As indicated in Box 2.2, the discussion of this dilemma and suggestions for resolving it are not new. More than
50 years ago, Herbert Blumer proposed the utilisation of ‘sensitising concepts’ for social research (Blumer,
1954). Unlike a rigorous theoretical framework that is established in advance, these concepts are elastic
and open to revision because of their general, empirically not contentful nature (e.g. ‘culture’, ‘institutions’,
‘structure’, ‘roles’) (see Kelle, 2005). Practically, the research starts with a preliminary conceptual account of
the problem in question that should sensitise and prepare the perception of the researcher. However, this
selective preconception, and the associated prior knowledge that any research needs in order to be focused,
are kept open towards the empirical observation: the scientific attitude with its specific system of relevances
is ‘temporarily dropped in order to be resumed again’, as Schutz (1953: 31) expresses it. In other words, the
empirical knowledge assumes a moment of ‘control’ over the theoretical and conceptual knowledge that is
revised and consolidated as the process of research evolves. This integration of available and newly identified
knowledge also characterises the phases of interpretation and communication as ongoing processes of
inquiry of meaning by means of the documentary method of interpretation. The fact that the interviewer
already has prior knowledge that is sensitising also increases the chances of abductive insights (see Box 2.4).
The practical aspects of regarding and using prior knowledge as sensitising knowledge in PCIs are specified
in section 3.2.

Box 2.4: The Sensitising Attitude of Problem-Centred Interviewers and the

Chance of Abductive Insight

The general attitude of regarding one's prior knowledge, whether from research or other
experiences, as sensitising knowledge also increases the chances of arriving at abductive
inferences. In contrast to conclusion by induction (i.e. generalisation) or deduction (i.e.
subsumption), abductions represent discoveries of new relationships in the data. As
Hansen (2008: 457) writes: ‘Abduction results in a tentative and subjective interpretive
synthesis among our sensitizing concepts’. Abductive insights are like surprises; they
are not accessible through our habitualised routines of analysis and interpretation if we
stick to our apparently consolidated knowledge. We have to challenge our knowledge and
suspend our certainty about its validity in order for new insights to ‘break through’ and
finally improve our understanding.

Following Kelle (2007: 127) one can describe the process of ‘learning by failure’ as a
practical example of abduction in the context of life-course transitions. For instance, if

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the transition to employment fails and biographical expectations are not realised despite
supposedly doing everything ‘right’, the actor is forced to search for an alternative solution.
The actor could change his goals and try again in a different way. A young chef finding
himself unemployed after completing his apprenticeship training could try to get a job on
a cruise ship instead of a restaurant. This would require only a change in the definition
of his goals. Alternatively, he can stick to his goals (i.e. to work in a restaurant) and
his definition of the situation (i.e. unemployment) and modify his responses. He could,
for instance, become self-employed and start his own restaurant. Social innovations
like patchwork families, which increasingly are replacing traditional families, are other
examples of abductive responses, in this case, to the diversification of relationships. In
both cases, the stubborn clinging to traditional solutions (and knowledge) is given up in
favour of novel ways of handling the situation. Yet the actors will only afterwards and in
retrospect establish whether it (i.e. their abductive response) ‘worked’.

The sensitizing attitude of the problem-centred researcher has a similar function. It should
keep conclusions and knowledge open to the transformative influence of the empirical data
and evidence from the interviews. In qualitative and problem-centred research, knowledge
is kept preliminary. As Reichertz (2004b: 163) puts it: ‘Abductive inferencing is, rather, an
attitude towards data and towards one's own knowledge: data are to be taken seriously,
and the validity of previously developed knowledge is to be queried.’

Against this background the connotation of the principle of problem centring is now twofold. First, it refers
to a relevant societal problematic and its theoretical formulation in terms of elastic prior knowledge of the
researcher that is part of a sensitising framework of research. It is for this reason that, ideally, the researcher
also does the interviews - as a researcher/interviewer. He may need specific training for problem-centred
research but he should at least be supported by a kind of supervision. For practical or ethical reasons this
is impossible in many research projects; alternatives may even be preferable, as illustrated with one of
the examples introduced below (i.e. STUDY B). In these cases, interviewers need to be carefully trained,
prepared and involved in the research process in a comprehensive way in order to understand the research
questions and become fully competent and independent co-researchers. Only then does the interview provide
the chance that prior knowledge, where it exists, can be replaced with discovery (see the principle of process
orientation below).

Second, the principle of problem centring aims at research strategies that are able to optimise the
respondents’ possibilities to explicate themselves. Their points of view regarding the specific problem must
have the chance to be brought to bear even if they are opposed to the original interpretations of the
researcher or any assumptions possibly underlying the interview or single questions. This point is particularly
important considering the fact that many respondents reflect upon their lives and their contexts for the first
time in a more systematic way. The principle of problem centring thus triggers an interactive reflection of

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both the self and its relationship to circumstances: as the interview unfolds, respondents link aspects of their
own lives to other people and institutions relevant to the problem (i.e. relational self-reflection). Thus, through
problem centring, respondents can establish a network of meaningful interrelationships between relevant
aspects according to their own criteria and priorities. Importantly, this avoids the unreflecting analysis of
isolated ‘variables’ on the basis of (questionable) assumptions concerning causality relationships between
independent and dependent clusters of variables; this would be typical of scientific reasoning.

The Principle of Process Orientation

The idea of operating on the basis of previously introduced sensitising concepts points to another basic
principle of the PCI – the principle of process orientation. This calls for the stepwise and flexible production
and analysis of data. The qualities of single aspects of the problem as well as their interrelationships emerge
slowly and in permanent reflection of their relation to the methods used. The principle of process orientation
applies to the overall course of research as well as to the development of the communicative exchange
between interviewer and respondent that is part of the process of reconstruction and comprehension. Finally,
the controlled consolidation and extension of interpretation in the scientific context is also a process.

This principle closely follows the research programme of the Grounded Theory approach as it is described, for
instance, in Strauss and Corbin (1990). The use of qualitative methods is here suggested in order to generate
theories in the course of a process of data collection and analysis, rather than to presuppose theories. Yet,
as the above discussion of prior knowledge indicates, research can hardly be free of preconceptions of some
kind. The research process, thus, always accommodates deductive moments that need to be dealt with in a
systematic way. Following the Grounded Theory approach these deductive moments need to be channelled
into a procedure of discovery that allows overcoming possible biases from prior knowledge.

The basic idea is to conceive of the research process as an iteration of inductive and deductive steps. First,
the collection, organisation and interpretation of data lead to categories and theoretical concepts. This is
followed by the selective use of these core categories/generated theories in organising a more structured
search for new ideas and relations in the data. In this way, deduction and induction enrich each other mutually.
Deductive qualitative research is closely linked to theoretical sampling. Unlike statistical sampling, which may
consider possible combinations of properties of certain variables in the process of selecting single cases
randomly, theoretical sampling operates on the basis of purposefully defined comparison groups. The criteria
and rules for defining groups and subgroups included in the process of data collection are thereby established
on the basis of the development of theoretical knowledge about the problem; they are modified and adapted
as the research progresses. Theoretical sampling is an integral part of theory generation in the sense of a
parallel process of data collection, coding and analysis. In this way, following the Grounded Theory approach,
the emerging theory produces its own logic of selectivity, defining both direction and depth of its development.

With regard to the interview as a particular event between interviewer and respondent, process orientation
aims at constituting a chance to produce and revise pre-interpretations at the moment of data collection.

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Pre-interpretations represent the subjective level of knowledge and understanding of individual researchers/
interviewers as it evolves during the conversation. They are interpretations that are developed and revised
in the process of interviewing; they are further refined, systematised and controlled in the process of
analysis and interpretation after the interview. If the communication process is focused well enough on the
reconstruction of relevant orientations and actions, the respondents react with trust and open up. This trust
relationship promotes their capability to remember, and it motivates self-reflection. As respondents continue
to explain their view of a problem openly and in cooperation with interviewers, new perspectives on the
issues are produced again and again in the course of the conversation. This may also lead to alternative
interpretations of the same topic as well as to a revision of earlier statements or to redundancies and
contradictions; both are welcome in PCIs. Redundancies are valuable as they reformulate perspectives and
facilitate interpretation. Contradictions express individual ambivalences and indicate indecision that should
be addressed; they may be the result of misunderstandings on the part of interviewers or an error or lack
of memory among respondents. Contradictions can and should be clarified in the process of interviewing
through follow-up questions, probing and confrontations (see Box 4.5). Taking a more interactive approach
to the PCI means that the interviewer is able to overcome communicative barriers or poor articulation which
may hamper the exchange. The specific communication strategies of the PCI producing both interview
material and comprehension are devised to facilitate this process of iterative knowledge consolidation; they
are introduced in more detail in section 4.6. In particular, the more narrative-oriented approaches in problem-
centred interviewing allow the reconstruction of the historical relevance of a certain topic to a respondent. The
typically ahistorical character of structured interviews is thus overcome and replaced by (micro-) historical
accounts.

The Principle of Object Orientation

A third criterion of problem-centred interviewing concerns the appropriateness of methodical and practical
approaches to the research issue as well as to the research subjects; it originates from the discourse
about and the criticism of conventional, normative-deductive approaches. They are characterised by being
‘method oriented’, i.e. having a clear preference for certain methods independently of the research topic.
And normative approaches tend to investigate social phenomena by atomising theoretical assumptions into
measurable variables, a process that contributes little to the clarification of the way in which individuals
actually perceive their realities. The principle of object orientation is directed against the automatic application
of somehow recognised and established methods (for instance, in textbooks) without reflecting their
appropriateness. This applies also to possible preferences for qualitative techniques: for particular research
questions standardised methods can be the better choice. In the meantime, related issues are also discussed
under the label of the ‘principle of appropriateness’ (Steinke, 1999: 38–40).

The design of PCIs for a specific research purpose and the emphasis on certain practical aspects always
need to consider the best way of establishing access to the investigation of the individuals’ behaviour and
reflections. In short, the practical realisation of the PCI entirely depends on the peculiarities of the object of
research. For instance, the analysis of life courses requires an emphasis on biographical aspects and needs
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to give priority to narrative elements over the involvement of interviewers in structuring the conversation.
However, the analysis of interpretive patterns with regard to a societal and biographical problem (e.g. coping
with the requirements of working life) rather asks for a more dialogical way of interviewing. Here, the
possibilities for detailed follow-up questions are more important. In both of these examples the practical
design and the process of doing the PCI need to be adapted.

The principle of object orientation should not be mistaken for a plea against quantitative methods. In fact, it is
rather an invitation to overcome the opposition between methodical approaches for the sake of improving the
potential of social research. The identification of large-scale regularities will continue to need numbers-based
generalisations as much as the substantiation of frequencies in terms of lived experience cannot do without
qualitative analyses of people acting, interacting and interpreting the social world.

2.4 the PCI and Other Interviewing Techniques

The PCI is one of many distinct techniques within the landscape of qualitative interviewing (see Flick, 2006
for a comparative overview). Especially in Germany, the invention and labelling of specialised interviewing
techniques can be quite confusing (see Mey, 2005 for a discussion). The PCI is an integrated suggestion
to overcoming the apparent contradiction of deductive and inductive aspects of qualitative research. It
systematically deals with the tension between prior knowledge and empirical material in the research process
without trying to get rid of it. The method produces a dialogue between research (i.e. conceptual and
theoretical interest in and knowledge about a certain issue) and social reality (i.e. knowledge of individuals,
experts in the field).

The explicit interest of interviewers in certain topics and their aspects alongside issues emerging as relevant
for respondents constitutes an important commonality of the PCI with the active interview (Holstein and
Gubrium, 1995). The PCI, like the active interview, acknowledges and reflects the interviewers’ active
involvement in the process of meaning production. Yet in addition to the how (process) and the what
(substance) of meaning-making that the active interview emphasises, the PCI has an explicit interest in
why (reasons) there is the prevalence of certain meanings, actions and opinions. For the PCI, the subject
and knowledge behind the interviewer is as important as the ‘subject behind the respondent’ (ibid.). This is
the reason why the PCI suggests applying and explicating both research interest and prior knowledge of
interviewers in terms of ‘sensitising concepts’. They facilitate pre-interpretations that are specified, modified
and substantiated interactively during the interview. The how of the interactive constitution of meaning (what)
could then be reconstructed by various types of sequential analysis of the material.

In our introductory remarks we mentioned that this discursive-dialogic approach of the PCI distinguishes it
from methodical alternatives that were more strongly in opposition to the quantitative paradigm and its fallacy
of non-reactivity. For instance, the radical tabula rasa attitude of the narrative interview designed by Schütze
(1983; Jovchelovitch and Bauer, 2000) idealises the subjective perspective with paradox consequences: the
exaggeration of the principles of openness and non-intervention, and the bracketing out of prior knowledge,

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reintroduce features of the artificially distanced and ‘neutral’ observer. While techniques like the narrative
interview or the life story interview (Atkinson, 1998) have a nearly exclusive focus on first-person narratives
and their extensive reconstruction, the PCI considers narrative elements alongside other sorts of text. In
particular, the narrative with its strong foundation in narrative theory follows a strict choreography. The initial
opening question is followed by an uninterrupted main narration. When the latter is concluded, ‘immanent’
follow-up questions carefully deepen certain issues. Further so-called ‘exmanent’ questions introducing
additional topics can complement the interaction but are strictly separated from the rest of the interview
(Jovchelovitch and Bauer, 2000: 62).

The narrative interview heavily relies on the ‘power’ of narratives and the ‘inherent demands of the narration’
(Zugzwänge) (Jovchelovitch and Bauer, 2000: 60) to produce a detailed, complete and ‘uncontaminated’
account of what is relevant to the respondent. In order for narratives to ‘work’ they have to assume (and
realise in practice) an extremely asymmetrical situation: at least in the first and most important part of the
narrative interview, the burden of maintaining the interview by providing an extensive narration is mainly on
the shoulders of the respondent; interviewers are required to abstain from more far-reaching interventions
and interruptions. Problem-centred interviewers are much more flexible in becoming actively involved in the
production and clarification of meaning than narrative interviewers. This dialogical process also underlines
the flexibility of the method to meet the communicative capacity of the respondent. In other words, narrative
competence of the respondent is not a methodological precondition of the PCI; and its application is thus less
restricted. Furthermore, as we will show, ad-hoc questions and forms of specific probing, even confrontations,
can be used in order to fully explore the phenomenon of interest more directly.

The PCI uses narratives differently (see Mey, 1999: 138–50; 2000). In a methodologically reflected way, the
PCI encourages and utilises narratives as prime sources for further exploring the given ‘problem’ in a dialogic
way. Sometimes this is done on the basis of an interview guide but the specification of the dimensions of
the problem unfolds essentially from within the perspective of the respondent. The appropriateness of using
more symmetrical-dialogic or more asymmetrical-narrative forms of communication depends first of all on
the development of the interview interaction. Unlike the narrative interview, the PCI does not suggest a strict
adherence to certain stages where one or the other is ‘applied’ (see also Box 4.4). Also the separation of
narrative and argumentative passages in the sense of experienced versus reflected knowledge – which, for
instance – Nohl (2009: 22–3) in the perspective of the German school of documentary method demands is not
compatible with the problem-centred approach. Nohl (ibid.: 22) claims that one cannot assume that, beyond
solving certain action problems, ‘respondents know what they know, that they can thus simply explicate their
knowledge’. He maintains that respondents are not able to establish a cognitive distance to their thoughts
and to reflect them. The assumption is that especial knowledge that instructs action is knowledge ‘that has to
be explicated first by the researchers’ (ibid.: 23). Thus respondents should not be ‘urged’ into argumentative
statements during the interview where they would establish the difference between implicit and explicit
knowledge themselves.

The PCI does not establish such strong assumptions. The separation between narration and argumentation

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certainly is analytically relevant. Yet in the reality and practice of accounts, these two aspects of knowledge
are not separated – there is no need to urge respondents to change from the level of telling about experiences
to the level of reflecting on them. First of all, people are perfectly able and used to reflecting the preconditions
and anticipating the results of their action against the background of preferences, expectations and projects.
What else is the establishment of meaning in everyday life? In the logic of symbolic interactionism, an
actor can, as Blumer (1969: 5) notes, even establish meaning ‘in a process of communication with himself’.
Meaning is not just there; actors have to work for it: ‘The actor selects, checks, suspends, regroups, and
transforms the meanings in the light of the situation in which he is placed and the direction of his action’ (ibid.).
It is exactly a process that involves a ‘reflexive interaction between the organisation of memory, practical
reasoning, and talk’ (Cicourel, 1974b: 100; emphasis added).

The establishment of meaningful knowledge about one's action can be done in interaction with others or in a
silent dialogue with oneself. The PCI takes this capability of the actor seriously and translates it into the design
of an interview interaction that invites the respondent into a joint process of reconstructing his knowledge. It
is the interview's double role to stimulate and support this process of sorting thoughts and talking about it. In
this way both become part of an iterative process of understanding. In the end, the interviewer's contributions,
and especially the follow-up questions, can help to explicate the respondent's implicit knowledge and make
it more systematic for later self-reflection. During the interview, respondents are as much involved in the
interpretive work of meaning-making as interviewers. For the PCI, the argumentative reflection of experiences
is not the privilege of the researcher. After the interview, and according to the respective approaches of data
analysis, researchers can of course continue the process of interpretation and explication without the direct
participation of the respondent.

Like many other types of interviewing, the PCI also makes use of the tool of an interview guide. Yet this does
not make a conventional semi-structured or guided interview. The interview or topical guide does not have
the purpose of establishing a question–answer scheme for working off a list of issues with open questions.
Instead, in the sense of a road map, the interview guide should establish a thematic frame supporting
the researcher/interviewer qua well-informed traveller in his purpose of problem centring (see section 3.3).
In the PCI, the question–answer pattern is replaced with dialogic interaction emphasising the quality of
the encounter as a (temporary) social relationship. The PCI is also not simply a combination of different
techniques or interviewing styles, e.g. the narrative and the guided one. It is, as we want to show in this
monograph, an original and integrated method of interviewing.

By emphasising different aspects, it should become clear that all of these interview techniques offer
alternative solutions to some of the problems of interpretive knowledge constitution. They all have features
that may make them preferable methods for certain research questions; yet none can provide all-inclusive
solutions to the challenge of qualitative collection of verbal data. Finally, as distinct methods, they can still be
applied for various research purposes. For instance, all of these techniques provide alternative ways of doing
expert interviews; and they can equally be used for ethnographic research. In any case: the technical aspects
and the practical design require adaptation to the specific research purpose; while sharing commonalities of

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the interpretive approach, the texture of findings produced by them can vary; and their application will likely
yield different possibilities and limits for generalisation.

The PCI as Expert Interview

Due to its flexibility and its object orientation, the PCI can be used for a variety of purposes including
interviewing in the context of biographical and life-course research. Furthermore, the PCI is a suitable
way of doing expert interviews in accordance with their main functions of exploring, systematising or
generating theoretical and insider knowledge about certain issues (Bogner and Menz, 2009). According to
the more traditional understanding, expert interviewing is mainly concerned with the exclusive knowledge
that officials represent owing to their position, thereby neglecting the person ‘behind’ his role. This attitude
has changed, and more recent contributions to expert interviewing promote an alternative view which instead
considers interpretation as a necessary second layer of knowledge. This approach emphasises the problem
of separating technical knowledge and factual information from interpretive knowledge associated with
personal appraisals and interests.

In this alternative perspective, the personal experience of experts and the resulting specific opinions and
aspirations are taken into account; they are recognised as being part of the experts’ process of meaning-
making in which knowledge is always embedded. The point is, like other participants inside social contexts,
experts make use of leeway or circumvent and evade rules or guidelines that may be considered, from the
outside, as static and constitutive of organisations. Also expert knowledge has a subjective and pragmatic
dimension that can be reconstructed in addition to the substantive aspect (see Box 3.1).

Correspondingly, for Bogner and Menz (2009: 54) experts are ‘people who, on the basis of specific knowledge
that is derived from practice or experience and which relates to a clearly demarcated range of problems, have
created a situation where it is possible for their interpretations to structure the concrete field of action in a way
that is meaningful and guides action’. An expert interview is first of all defined by its particular respondents in
the above definition; it does not constitute a distinct method as such (see also Trinczek, 2009). For instance,
the theory-generating expert interview is ‘a qualitative interview with a particular social group’ (Bogner and
Menz, 2009: 55). However, after having characterised the specificity of expert knowledge and its constitution,
Meuser and Nagel (2009) suggest that the appropriate way of collecting it is in an ‘open interview based on
a topic-guide’. It should avoid ‘closed questions and a prefixed guideline’, and ‘narrative passages are not
excluded’ (ibid.: 31–2).

The PCI corresponds perfectly well both with the interest in investigating the interpretive dimension of
expert knowledge (see Box 3.1) and with these altogether rough criteria for carrying it out. Owing to its
epistemological foundation in inductive and deductive logics, the PCI is suitable as long as it considers the
specific role of the respondent in the conversation (Bogner and Menz, 2009: 74). Depending on its purpose,
expert interviews may require a high level of specialised and technical prior knowledge on the side of the
interviewer. In this case, interviewers may act in the role of co-experts. Furthermore, expert interviews may

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force respondents into loyalty conflicts with their organisation that need to be considered. Such conflicts may
result from an inconsistency between individual experiences and interpretations on the one hand, and the
public image put forward by the organisation on the other (see section 6.2, discussing STUDY B, for an
example of using PCIs for expert interviews). Evasive answers during the interview are indicators of conflicts
of loyalty and should be treated carefully. In case of doubt, interviewers should ask respondents to sign a
written agreement for the interview to be used.

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 Preparing PCIs
In: The Problem-Centred Interview: Principles and Practice

By: Andreas Witzel & Herwig Reiter

Pub. Date: 2013
Access Date: December 25, 2018
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: London
Print ISBN: 9781849201001
Online ISBN: 9781446288030
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446288030
Print pages: 35-63
© 2012 SAGE Publications Ltd All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the pagination of the
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Preparing PCIs

After having discussed key epistemological issues informing the design of the PCI, Chapters 3 to 5 explicate
how the related methodological challenges are put into practice. They provide an overview of the main
features and practical elements of the method in the overall process from conceptualising the interview
according to research interest to analysing and interpreting it. These parts constitute a general and rather
dense roadmap for the implementation of PCIs. These chapters should show how some of the stages
in interviewing, which are also common to other techniques, get the specific PCI ‘touch’. The process of
problem-centred interviewing falls roughly into three main stages: the preparation of the overall conceptual
and practical approach; doing the interview; and the processing of the material collected. The flowchart of the
interview in Figure 3.1 provides a schematic overview of the single steps that need to be considered when
organising an interview project. The highlighted part refers to those steps typically involved in doing a single
interview. Depending on the overall design of the study, some of the steps may be recurrent, for instance,
when the analysis of interviews informs further sampling and case selection, the process of preparing an
interview will start again, now on the basis of the findings from the analysis. If the PCI is part of a multi-method
study, the sequence will likely need to be adapted or complemented.

3.1 Research Interest, Questions and Design

What do I want to know, and why? And how can I find out about it?

This is one of the key questions at the beginning of any research project, even though sometimes the driving
force towards systematic knowledge production may not even materialise in the form of concrete questions.
However vague, some kind of interest (why?) in a real life puzzle (what?) will have motivated the researcher
to engage in the discussion and investigation of a problem and in the search for a way to investigate it
(how?). For instance, Maxwell (2005: Chapter 2) distinguishes between personal, practical and intellectual
goals; all three can be legitimate aspects of research. Making yourself aware of precisely what inspired
the involvement and what you want to find out is important for many reasons. For instance, the design of
a study depends upon it as well as the decisions of other people to support your efforts or not (e.g. your
supervisor, funding institutions, the ‘field’, your partner, etc.); interests need to correspond to the personal
capability and resources in order to actually realise certain ideas. PCIs as part of dissertations and theses on
various academic levels draw on different resources than, say, commercial research or multi-method projects,
longitudinal studies or cross-country comparisons. Especially when an academic career is among the goals of
the enterprise, much of your prospects depend on how you are able to explain why a certain research interest
and question is worth pursuing and how it fits into the academic programmes of departments or faculties.
Finally, during the darker moments of writing a thesis, when the initial enthusiasm slackens off, recalling the
original, perhaps personal, driving forces may well be the last resort of keeping oneself going. We know of
many students who have reached this point, and believe it is worthwhile anticipating and preparing for it.

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For some, the idea of designing, organising and structuring qualitative research is often misunderstood as
contradicting the principle of openness. Yet like each process driven by human decision, qualitative research
consists of a series of choices which can be anticipated and connected in a meaningful way. ‘Research
designs’, Creswell (2009: 3) writes, ‘are plans and the procedures for research that span the decisions from
broad assumptions to detailed methods of data collection and analysis.’ As plans, research designs make
visible which decisions and steps are necessary and how they are interconnected. They are informed by
experience and, in general, are driven by a pragmatic interest in finding answers to questions in ways that
satisfy standards of scientific inquiry.

Compared to quantitative design, qualitative research design is characterised by more flexibility and an
interaction of the various elements rather than a linear structure. According to Maxwell (2005: 3), qualitative
research design is ‘an ongoing process that involves “tacking” back and forth between the different
components of the design, assessing the implications of goals, theories, research questions, methods, and
validity threats for one another’. Let us take a brief look at these components in respect to PCI research.

The goals of research depend on the specific interest in certain issues and/or their general relevance – ‘Why
is your study worth doing?’ (Maxwell, 2005: 4). The reasons for research can be very diverse and may range
from mere curiosity to the basic necessity to save money; as they influence the research process in many
ways they can and should be identified and explicated. Often enough the goals of research, and whether
they are recognised by others, decide whether research is supported and funded, or not. Also influential is
the worldview and research paradigms to which a researcher subscribes, as well as the selection of certain
professional goals of social research. For instance, Ragin (1994: Chapter 2) distinguishes seven main goals
of social research; each of them is equally legitimate:

1 Identifying general patterns and relationships

2 Testing and refining theories
3 Making predictions
4 Interpreting culturally or historically significant phenomena
5 Exploring diversity
6 Giving voice
7 Advancing new theories.

In order to embed the research project within a broader theoretical or empirical environment a conceptual
framework establishes a preliminary perspective on the issue under investigation. It is informed by theories,
concepts, prior research or other relevant experiences – ‘What do you think is going on with the issues,
settings, or people you plan to study?’ (Maxwell, 2005: 4). As discussed below, PCIs operate on the basis of
forms of prior knowledge that should first of all sensitise the researcher for relevant aspects of the problem.

One of the most important steps in the research process consists in moving from a vague interest and idea at
the beginning to formulating and specifying research questions around a certain issue (e.g. Creswell, 2009;
Flick, 2007: Chapter 2; Maxwell, 2005: Chapter 4). Research questions specify the exact research focus that

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instructs and limits the investigation – ‘What, specifically, do you want to understand by doing this study?’
(Maxwell, 2005: 4). Ideally, one overarching main research question is identified. In addition, it may be useful
to try to find an alternative formulation of the main research question that puts the issue in the most general
way possible. This increases or even establishes the researcher's sensitivity to the broader relevance of the
topic.

Usually, research questions need to be modified and further focused as the study moves on. Yet trying
to formulate them as precisely as possible already at an early stage greatly facilitates the whole process.
Other research aspects, like the choice of appropriate research methods, depend on the research questions.
Methods are tools for collecting and analysing information that, after having been interpreted, helps to provide
answers to research questions – ‘What will you actually do in conducting this study?’ (Maxwell, 2005: 4).
This is the stage at which the PCI needs to be recognised and introduced as an appropriate method for
data collection in comparison with alternative qualitative methods than can be considered (see, for example,
Bryman, 2008; Flick, 2006; Potter and Hepburn, 2005; Silverman, 2006). This is the case when one wants
to investigate actual problems of individuals in a way that develops interpretations and directly clarifies open
questions in the process of data collection, i.e. in dialogue with individual respondents. In other words, the
PCI and its specific advantages of dialogic knowledge production are being identified as an appropriate way
to collect data, either as the only method or as part of a multi- or mixed-methods project.

In order to make sure that the quality of research findings is recognised by others, we need to comply with
common standards of validity – ‘Why should we believe your results?’ (Maxwell, 2005: 4). This question is
typically addressed in qualitative research at different levels and explicated by showing how it is actually done.

Finally, the consideration of resources – in terms of money, time, skills, etc. – is an important aspect that
can restrict and determine many of the other research design choices (Flick, 2007: Chapter 5). Qualitative
research may not be expensive but it is a laborious and time-consuming enterprise, a fact that is often
underestimated in preparing for it. PCIs, in the context of single author dissertations – for instance as MA or
PhD research – need a different design than PCIs which are part of a multi-method project involving several
researchers and teams. Also, PCIs in longitudinal studies or cross-country comparisons, often implicating
the translation of original material for the purpose of exchange, require different amounts of preparation and
different designs (see section 5.4).

In the language of the PCI, at this stage of research, the reasons, knowledge resources and goals for
embarking on a research journey need to be explicated, for they shape the researchers’ problem orientation
(see Chapter 2). However preliminary they may be, interest, motivation and (personal, practical and
intellectual) goals together with concepts, theories and knowledge of relevant research make up the
investigator's research capital. This capital, which is part of prior knowledge and can bias and dilute results,
is confronted and aligned with findings produced in the course of research. Therefore it needs to be reflected
in the course of preparing a study. Once work is in progress, a research diary or the postscript (see section
5.1), a sort of interview protocol and key instrument of the PCI, are important ways of collecting and storing
associations that connect oneself to the topic as well as first interpretations resulting from this connection.
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3.2 Forms of Prior Knowledge and the Use of a Sensitising Framework

What should I know, as a well-informed traveller, before I start interviewing, and how should I
organise this knowledge?

According to a modern myth Native Americans were unable to ‘see’ Columbus's ships because floating
objects of that size and shape were outside their experience. While this is likely to be little more than a legend,
it points to an important problem in research: the way we perceive things, and whether we consider them
as relevant at all, tend to depend on what we already know about them. The kind of information available in
advance (i.e. prior knowledge) often determines the quality of the journey of the traveller, for better or worse.

The role of concepts in knowledge production and the relationship between (pre-)conceptions and objects of
knowledge have been the subject of many methodological debates (e.g. Erzberger, 1998; Kelle, 2007; Moses
and Knutsen, 2007). For instance, Piaget and Inhelder (1971) write in the introduction to their study about the
mental imagery of the child:

Knowledge is an assimilative process – the object can be known only by being conceptualized to
varying degrees. (Piaget and Inhelder, 1971: xix)

What is crucial here for the preparation of interviewing is the fact that any form of (scientific) understanding is
possible only on the basis of prior knowledge and in one's own categories, whether they derive from everyday
or specialised research knowledge. All research, quantitative and qualitative, faces the same fundamental
problem:

We have to accept the fundamental restriction that every observation only takes on meaning in
respect of one's own meaning schemata, and so prior knowledge inevitably gives structure to our
observations and must therefore be seen as the foundation of all research. (Meinefeld, 2004: 156)

As soon as qualitative interviewing by means of the PCI is identified as an appropriate technique for data
collection, the principles of problem centring and object orientation instruct the substantive part of the
preparation of research before the fieldwork can begin. In short, the texture of the problem defines necessary
scope and depth of prior knowledge, while the object of research establishes how and when certain shares of
prior knowledge become relevant during the interview.

At this stage answers need to be found to guiding questions like these:

• What do we already know about the problem in question (from previous research, media,
discussions, everyday experience, etc.)?
• What are the key dimensions of the problem? Which concepts and theories could be used to frame
the issue; which are typically used; and which could provide alternative perspectives?
• What do I want to know in addition to all this; and what do I want to find out in the course of my

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research?

If the research is to follow academic standards, a review of the relevant literature and theories is required in
preparation. Applied research may do without this theoretical preparation and instead rely on other sources
of knowledge.

Prior knowledge of the researcher as a well-informed traveller is stratified. We want to distinguish four types:
everyday, contextual, research and sensitising knowledge. All of them are critical in order for the PCI to
‘work’. They contribute to informing the traveller/researcher before he hits the road: preparation helps him to
get started, to survey the journey, and it may indicate the way in case he gets lost. Yet, prior knowledge is
always ambivalent; it can also easily turn into preconception and constrain the research experience when it is
imposed. Each of these types of prior knowledge entails a particular risk in this respect, and the right balance
needs to be found.

Everyday Knowledge

First of all, any social research builds on everyday knowledge that researchers have about the topic.
For instance, researchers of STUDY A, who once were school graduates and are now perhaps parents
themselves, have certain ideas about the transition to employment in Germany; and the representation
of post-communist unemployment in the media as well as personal observations in the country motivated
STUDY C. Everyday knowledge can and should be explicated and disclosed inasmuch as it motivates
the general research interest and constitutes the research puzzle. Full advantage should be taken of the
superiority of qualitative over quantitative research to recognise the significance of everyday knowledge and
not let it become part of some kind of implicit ‘shadow methodology’ (Kelle, 2007: 103). Everyday knowledge
entails particular risks being imposed on the research process. Due to the fact that it is omnipresent and
usually ‘subtle’ it is often not reflected in its different appearances. For instance, researchers, like everybody
else, are equipped with values, convictions and aversions, etc., which can influence and bias their research
interests as well as their pre-interpretations during the interview. Also, mere interest or the pursuit of certain
research priorities and specialisations, often considered a virtue in the competitive academic world, can bias
the interviewer's attention and approach. For instance, think of a family researcher with a personal history of
multiple divorces, or a social worker with a personal history of poverty. In all these cases, their (valuable!)
everyday knowledge and experience can be a source of bias that needs to be reflected. See Pitfall 3.1 for
an example. In addition to ‘genuine’ everyday knowledge, three forms or levels of ‘synthetic’, processed prior
knowledge can be distinguished and need to be collected to prepare the interviews – contextual knowledge,
research knowledge and sensitising knowledge. The distinction of ‘genuine’ knowledge on the one side and
‘synthetic’ on the other is analytic here; its purpose is similar to the distinction of ‘technical’ and ‘non-technical’
literature introduced by Strauss and Corbin (1990: 4–60). The balance of the knowledge gap between the
researcher and the respondent that results from the accumulation of this additional synthetic knowledge on
the side of the researcher is then the main challenge of doing the PCI itself (see communication strategies,
section 4.6). We discussed the related dilemma of the researcher under the label of Dr Jekyll–Mr Hyde

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Random documents with unrelated
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Psyche's task
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Psyche's task

A discourse concerning the influence of superstition on the
growth of institutions

Author: James George Frazer

Release date: October 30, 2023 [eBook #71985]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1913

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PSYCHE'S

TASK ***
 PSYCHE’S TASK
A DISCOURSE CONCERNING
THE INFLUENCE OF SUPERSTITION ON
THE GROWTH OF INSTITUTIONS

SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED

TO WHICH IS ADDED
THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE

BY
J. G. FRAZER, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
LIVERPOOL

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1913
 [EPIGRAPHS]
Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together
almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and
interwoven with the knowledge of evil and in so many cunning
resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds,
which were imposed on Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out
and sort asunder, were not more intermixt.
Milton, Areopagitica.

Il ne faut pas croire cependant qu’un mauvais principe vicie

radicalement une institution, ni même qu’il y fasse tout le mal qu’il
porte dans son sein. Rien ne fausse plus l’histoire que la logique:
quand l’esprit humain s’est arrêté sur une idée, il en tire toutes les
conséquences possibles, lui fait produire tout ce qu’en effet elle
pourrait produire, et puis se la représente dans l’histoire avec tout ce
cortège. Il n’en arrive point ainsi; les événements ne sont pas aussi
prompts dans leur déductions que l’esprit humain. Il y a dans toutes
choses un mélange de bien et de mal si profond, si invincible que,
quelque part que vous pénétriez, quand vous descendrez dans les
derniers éléments de la société ou de l’âme, vous y trouverez ces
deux ordres de faits coexistant, se développant l’un à côté de l’autre
et se combattant, mais sans s’exterminer. La nature humaine ne va
jamais jusqu’aux dernières limites, ni du mal ni du bien; elle passe
sans cesse de l’un à l’autre, se redressant au moment où elle
semble le plus près de la chute, faiblissant au moment où elle
semble marcher le plus droit.
Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation dans l’Europe, Cinquième
Leçon.
 [DEDICATION]
TO
ALL WHO ARE ENGAGED
IN PSYCHE’S TASK
OF SORTING OUT THE SEEDS OF GOOD
FROM THE SEEDS OF EVIL
I DEDICATE THIS DISCOURSE
 PREFACE
The substance of the following discourse was lately read at an
evening meeting of the Royal Institution in London, and most of it
was afterwards delivered in the form of lectures to my class at
Liverpool. It is now published in the hope that it may call attention to
a neglected side of superstition and stimulate enquiry into the early
history of those great institutions which still form the framework of
modern society. If it should turn out that these institutions have
sometimes been built on rotten foundations, it would be rash to
conclude that they must all come down. Man is a very curious
animal, and the more we know of his habits the more curious does
he appear. He may be the most rational of the beasts, but certainly
he is the most absurd. Even the saturnine wit of Swift, unaided by a
knowledge of savages, fell far short of the reality in his attempt to set
human folly in a strong light. Yet the odd thing is that in spite, or
perhaps by virtue, of his absurdities man moves steadily upwards;
the more we learn of his past history the more groundless does the
old theory of his degeneracy prove to be. From false premises he
often arrives at sound conclusions: from a chimerical theory he
deduces a salutary practice. This discourse will have served a useful
purpose if it illustrates a few of the ways in which folly mysteriously
deviates into wisdom, and good comes out of evil. It is a mere sketch
of a vast subject. Whether I shall ever fill in these bald outlines with
finer strokes and deeper shadows must be left to the future to
determine. The materials for such a picture exist in abundance; and
if the colours are dark, they are yet illuminated, as I have tried in this
essay to point out, by a ray of consolation and hope.
J. G. FRAZER.

Cambridge, February 1909.

 NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
In this edition Psyche’s Task has been enlarged by fresh illustrative
examples and by the discussion of a curious point of savage
etiquette, but the substance and the form of the discourse remain
unchanged. I have added The Scope of Social Anthropology, an
inaugural lecture intended to mark out roughly the boundaries of the
general study of which Psyche’s Task aims at setting forth some
particular results. There is therefore a certain appropriateness in
presenting the two discourses together to the reader.
J. G. F.

Cambridge, 6th June 1913.

 CONTENTS
Preface

PSYCHE’S TASK

I. Introduction

The dark and the bright side of Superstition: a plea for the accused:
four propositions to be proved by the defence 3-5

II. Government

Superstition has been a prop of Government by inculcating a deep

veneration for governors: evidence of this veneration collected
from Melanesia, Polynesia, Africa, the Malay region, and
America: evidence of similar veneration among Aryan peoples
from India to Scotland 6-19

III. Private Property

Superstition has been a prop of Private Property by inculcating a

deep fear of its violation: evidence of this fear collected from
Polynesia, Melanesia, the Malay Archipelago, Europe, Asia,
Africa, and America 20-43

IV. Marriage

Superstition has been a prop of Marriage by inculcating a deep fear

of disregarding the traditionary rules of sexual morality:
evidence of this fear collected from South-Eastern Asia, the
Malay Archipelago, Africa, the Hebrews, the Greeks, the
Romans, and the Irish: extreme severity with which breaches of
 the sexual code have been punished in India, Babylon,
Palestine, Africa, the East Indies, Australia, America, and
Europe: the avoidance of the wife’s mother and of a man’s own
mother, sisters, daughters, and female cousins, based on the
fear of incest: the origin of the fear of incest unknown: belief that
adultery and fornication inflict physical injury not only on the
culprits but on their innocent relations: evidence of the belief
collected from Africa, America, Sumatra, and New Britain 44-
110

V. Respect for Human Life

Superstition has been a prop for the Security of Human Life by

inculcating a deep fear of the ghosts of the murdered dead:
evidence of the fear collected from ancient Greece, modern
Africa, America, India, New Guinea, Celebes, the Bismarck
Archipelago, and Fiji: deep fear of ghosts in general: evidence
collected from America, Africa, India, Burma, the Indian
Archipelago, Australia, New Guinea, and China: influence of the
fear in restraining men from murder 111-153

VI. Conclusion

Summing up for the defence: by serving as a prop for government,

private property, marriage, and human life, Superstition has
rendered a great service to humanity: Superstition at the bar:
sentence of death 154-156

THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Anthropology, or the Science of Man, a new study: Social

Anthropology restricted to the rudimentary phases of human
society: not concerned with the practical application of its
results: all forms of human society either savage or evolved out
of savagery: hence Social Anthropology deals primarily with
savagery and secondarily with those survivals of savagery in
civilization which are commonly known as folklore: importance
of the study of savagery for an understanding of the evolution of
 the human mind: existing savages primitive only in a relative
sense by comparison with civilized peoples: in reality the
savages of the present day probably stand at a high level of
culture compared with their remote predecessors: for example,
the present systems of marriage and consanguinity among
savages appear to have been preceded by a period, not
necessarily primitive, of sexual communism: survivals of
savagery in civilization due to the natural and ineradicable
inequality of men: mankind ultimately led by an intellectual
aristocracy: superstition the creed of the laggards in the march
of intellect: the wide prevalence of superstition under the surface
of society a standing menace to civilization: the lowest forms of
superstition the most tenacious of life: function of the
Comparative Method in reconstructing the early history of
human thought and institutions: its legitimacy based on the
ascertained similarity of the human mind in all races: the need of
studying savages only of late years understood: urgent
importance of the study in consequence of the rapid
disappearance of savagery: the duty of our generation to
preserve a record of it for posterity: the duty of the Universities
and of the State 157-176

INDEX 177-186

ENDNOTES
PSYCHE’S TASK
 I.
INTRODUCTION

We are apt to think of superstition as an

The dark side of unmitigated evil, false in itself and pernicious in its
superstition.
consequences. That it has done much harm in the
world, cannot be denied. It has sacrificed countless lives, wasted
untold treasures, embroiled nations, severed friends, parted
husbands and wives, parents and children, putting swords, and
worse than swords between them: it has filled gaols and madhouses
with its innocent or deluded victims: it has broken many hearts,
embittered the whole of many a life, and not content with persecuting
the living it has pursued the dead into the grave and beyond it,
gloating over the horrors which its foul imagination has conjured up
to appal and torture the survivors. It has done all this and more. Yet
the case of superstition, like that of Mr. Pickwick
The brighter side of after the revelations of poor Mr. Winkle in the
superstition.
witness-box, can perhaps afford to be placed in a
rather better light; and without posing as the Devil’s Advocate or
appearing before you in a blue flame and sulphureous fumes, I do
profess to make out what the charitable might call a plausible plea
for a very dubious client. For I propose to prove, or at least make
probable, by examples that among certain races and at certain
stages of evolution some social institutions which we all, or most of
us, believe to be beneficial have partially rested on a basis of
superstition. The institutions to which I refer are purely secular or
civil. Of religious or ecclesiastical institutions I shall say nothing. It
might perhaps be possible to shew that even religion has not wholly
escaped the taint or dispensed with the support of superstition; but I
prefer for to-night to confine myself to those civil institutions which
people commonly imagine to be bottomed on nothing but hard
common sense and the nature of things. While the institutions with
which I shall deal have all survived into civilized society and can no
doubt be defended by solid and weighty arguments, it is practically
certain that among savages, and even among peoples who have
risen above the level of savagery, these very same institutions have
derived much of their strength from beliefs which nowadays we
should condemn unreservedly as superstitious and absurd. The
institutions in regard to which I shall attempt to prove this are four,
namely, government, private property, marriage, and the respect for
human life. And what I have to say may be
Four propositions to summed up in four propositions as follows:—
be proved.
I. Among certain races and at certain times
superstition has strengthened the respect for government, especially
monarchical government, and has thereby contributed to the
establishment and maintenance of civil order.
II. Among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for private property and has thereby
contributed to the security of its enjoyment.
III. Among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for marriage and has thereby contributed to
a stricter observance of the rules of sexual morality both among the
married and the unmarried.
IV. Among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for human life and has thereby contributed
to the security of its enjoyment.
Before proceeding to deal with these four
Preliminary propositions separately, I wish to make two
remarks.
remarks, which I beg you will bear in mind. First, in
what I have to say I shall confine myself to certain races of men and
to certain ages of history, because neither my time nor my
knowledge permits me to speak of all races of men and all ages of
history. How far the limited conclusions which I shall draw for some
races and for some ages are applicable to others must be left to
future enquiries to determine. That is my first remark. My second is
this. If it can be proved that in certain races and at certain times the
institutions in question have been based partly on superstition, it by
no means follows that even among these races they have never
been based on anything else. On the contrary, as all the institutions
which I shall consider have proved themselves stable and
permanent, there is a strong presumption that they rest mainly on
something much more solid than superstition. No institution founded
wholly on superstition, that is on falsehood, can be permanent. If it
does not answer to some real human need, if its foundations are not
laid broad and deep in the nature of things, it must perish, and the
sooner the better. That is my second remark.
 II.
GOVERNMENT

With these two cautions I address myself to my

Superstition as a first proposition, which is, that among certain races
prop of government.
and at certain times superstition has strengthened
the respect for government, especially monarchical government, and
has thereby contributed to the establishment and maintenance of
civil order.
Among many peoples the task of government
Superstitious has been greatly facilitated by a superstition that
respect for chiefs in
Melanesia. the governors belong to a superior order of beings
and possess certain supernatural or magical
powers to which the governed can make no claim and can offer no
resistance. Thus Dr. Codrington tells us that among the Melanesians
“the power of chiefs has hitherto rested upon the belief in their
supernatural power derived from the spirits or ghosts with which they
had intercourse. As this belief has failed, in the Banks’ Islands for
example some time ago, the position of a chief has tended to
become obscure; and as this belief is now being generally
undermined a new kind of chief must needs arise, unless a time of
anarchy is to begin.”6.1 According to a native Melanesian account,
the authority of chiefs rests entirely on the belief that they hold
communication with mighty ghosts and possess that supernatural
power or mana, as it is called, whereby they are able to bring the
influence of the ghosts to bear on human life. If a chief imposed a
fine, it was paid because the people firmly believed that he could
inflict calamity and sickness upon such as resisted him. As soon as
any considerable number of his subjects began to disbelieve in his
influence with the ghosts, his power to levy fines was shaken.7.1 It is
thus that in Melanesia religious scepticism tends to undermine the
foundations of civil society.
Similarly Mr. Basil Thomson tells us that “the key to the
Melanesian system of government is Ancestor-worship. Just as
 every act in a Fijian’s life was controlled by his fear
Superstitious of Unseen Powers, so was his conception of
respect for chiefs in
Fiji. human authority based upon religion.” The dead
chief was supposed still to watch jealously over his
people and to punish them with dearth, storms, and floods, if they
failed to bring their offerings to his tomb and to propitiate his spirit.
And the person of his descendant, the living chief, was sacred; it was
hedged in by a magic circle of taboo and might not even be touched
without incurring the wrath of the Unseen. “The first blow at the
power of the chiefs was struck unconsciously by the missionaries.
Neither they nor the chiefs themselves realized how closely the
government of the Fijians was bound up with their religion. No
sooner had a missionary gained a foothold in a chief village than the
tabu was doomed, and on the tabu depended half the people’s
reverence for rank. The tabu died hard, as such institutions should
do. The first-fruits were still presented to the chief, but they were no
longer carried from him to the temple, since their excuse—as an
offering to persuade the ancestors to grant abundant increase—had
passed away. No longer supported by the priests, the Sacred Chief
fell upon evil days”; for in Fiji, as in other places, the priest and the
chief, when they were not one and the same person, had played into
each other’s hands, both knowing that neither could stand firm
without the aid of the other.7.2
In Polynesia the state of things was similar.
Superstitious There, too, the power of chiefs depended largely
respect for chiefs in
Polynesia generally on a belief in their supernatural powers, in their
and in New Zealand relation to ancestral spirits, and in the magical
particularly. virtue of taboo, which pervaded their persons and
interposed between them and common folk an
invisible but formidable barrier, to pass which was death. In New
Zealand the Maori chiefs were deemed to be living atuas or gods.
Thus the Rev. Richard Taylor, who was for more than thirty years a
missionary in New Zealand, tells us that in speaking a Maori chief
“assumed a tone not natural to him, as a kind of court language; he
kept himself distinct from his inferiors, eating separately; his person
was sacred, he had the power of holding converse with the gods, in
fact laid claim to being one himself, making the tapu a powerful
adjunct to obtain control over his people and their goods. Every
means were used to acquire this dignity; a large person was thought
to be of the highest importance; to acquire this extra size, the child of
a chief was generally provided with many nurses, each contributing
to his support by robbing their own offspring of their natural
sustenance; thus, whilst they were half-starved, miserable-looking
little creatures, the chief’s child was the contrary, and early became
remarkable by its good appearance. Nor was this feeling confined to
the body; the chief was an atua, but there were powerful and
powerless gods; each naturally sought to make himself one of the
former; the plan therefore adopted, was to incorporate the spirits of
others with their own; thus, when a warrior slew a chief, he
immediately gouged out his eyes and swallowed them, the atua
tonga, or divinity, being supposed to reside in that organ; thus he not
only killed the body, but also possessed himself of the soul of his
enemy, and consequently the more chiefs he slew, the greater did
his divinity become.… Another great sign of a chief was oratory—a
good orator was compared to the korimako, the sweetest singing
bird in New Zealand; to enable the young chief to become one, he
was fed upon that bird, so that he might the better acquire its
qualities, and the successful orator was termed a korimako.”8.1
Again, another writer informs us that the opinions of Maori chiefs
“were held in more estimation than those of others, simply because
they were believed to give utterance to the thoughts of deified men.
No dazzling pageantry hedged them round, but their persons were
sacred.… Many of them believed themselves inspired; thus Te Heu
Heu, the great Taupo chief and priest, shortly before he was
swallowed up by a landslip, said to a European missionary: ‘Think
not that I am a man, that my origin is of the earth. I come from the
heavens; my ancestors are all there; they are gods, and I shall return
to them.’ ”9.1 So sacred was the person of a Maori chief that it was
not lawful to touch him, even to save his life. A chief has been seen
at the point of suffocation and in great agony with a fish bone
sticking in his throat, and yet not one of his people, who were
lamenting around him, dared to touch or even approach him, for it
would have been as much as their own life was worth to do so. A
missionary, who was passing, came to the rescue and saved the
chief’s life by extracting the bone. As soon as the rescued man
recovered the power of speech, which he did not do for half an hour,
the first use he made of it was to demand that the surgical
instruments with which the bone had been extracted should be given
to him as compensation for the injury done him by drawing his
sacred blood and touching his sacred head.9.2
Not only the person of a Maori chief but
Superstitious fear of everything that had come into contact with it was
contact with Maori
chiefs. sacred and would kill, so the Maoris thought, any
sacrilegious person who dared to meddle with it.
Cases have been known of Maoris dying of sheer fright on learning
that they had unwittingly eaten the remains of a chief’s dinner or
handled something that belonged to him. For example, a woman,
having partaken of some fine peaches from a basket, was told that
they had come from a tabooed place. Immediately the basket
dropped from her hands and she cried out in agony that the atua or
godhead of the chief, whose divinity had been thus profaned, would
kill her. That happened in the afternoon, and next day by twelve
o’clock she was dead.9.3 Similarly a chief’s tinder-box has proved
fatal to several men; for having found it and lighted their pipes with it
they actually expired of terror on learning to whom it belonged.10.1
Hence a considerate chief would throw away where it could not be
found any garment or mat for which he had no further use, lest one
of his subjects should find it and be struck dead by the shock of its
inherent divinity. For the same reason he would never blow a fire
with his mouth; for his sacred breath would communicate its sanctity
to the fire, and the fire would pass it on to the meat that might be
cooked on it, and the meat would carry it into the stomach of the
eater, and he would die.10.2 Thus the divinity which hedged a Maori
chief was a devouring flame which shrivelled up and consumed
whatever it touched. No wonder that such men were implicitly
obeyed.
In the rest of Polynesia the state of things was
Superstitious similar. For example, the natives of Tonga in like
respect for chiefs
and kings in Tonga manner believed that if any one fed himself with
and Tahiti. his own hands after touching the sacred person of
a superior chief, he would swell up and die; the
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