Listening for culture: Using interviews to understand identity in context

Abstract

There is an inextricable link between humans and their cultural environments, as each reciprocally creates and is created by the other. This chapter discusses interviewing as a critical methodological tool for understanding culture as intricately intertwined with subjective meaning-making and identity processes. We start from the premise that the stories gathered through research-based interviews serve as repositories of shared cultural knowledge as experienced and interpreted by individuals. After briefly examining the historical position of interviewing in the field of psychology, the chapter will draw on examples from the authors’ own research in the United States and Germany to offer guidance on (1) designing interview protocols that allow for cultural analysis, and (2) conducting analysis to see culture through interview data. Empirically-guided suggestions for fostering researcher reflexivity, acknowledging power, and dismantling hierarchies are provided throughout the chapter, all in service of truly “hearing” culture in the stories participants tell

“Oh, You’re Pretty for a Dark-Skinned Girl”: Black Adolescent Girls’ Identities and Resistance to Colorism

“…Utilizing an intersectional lens in this analysis recognizes the gendered messages Black girls navigate about their blackness and girlness based on their phenotypic proximity-to-whiteness. Even while every analysis or study may not measure multiple dimensions of oppression, anti-racist research designs and interpretation of results ought to be situated within and responsive to the intersectional oppressions that structure society (Rogers & Syed, 2021; Way et al, 2018). In the current paper, the construct of colorism is taken up in the identity development of Black girls, and their engagement with colorism makes evident the gendered realities that are embedded in colorism.…”

Studying Ethnic‐Racial Identity among White Youth: White Supremacy as a Developmental Context

“…In our adaptation of the WRID model to white youth, we aimed to interpret their individual reflection and meaning making in relation to race, racism, and whiteness within a socioculturally situated framework (Rogers, Moffitt, & Jones, 2021). That youth listen to, internalize, and make personal meaning from the messages they hear from parents, teachers, and broader society is well established.…”

“Martin Luther King Fixed It”: Children Making Sense of Racial Identity in a Colorblind Society

“…All of the interviews were conducted by a Black woman, which invariably shaped what was and was not said in the interview context (Gilligan, 2015). Thus, race was focally relevant to the whole of this research; this was not minimized but rather integrated and routinely referenced in the analytic discussions of the data (Fine, 2006; Rogers, Kiang, et al., 2021; Rogers, Moffitt, & Jones, in press).…”

“…Semistructured interviews were conducted using a phenomenological approach to explore meaning‐making of the self and identity experiences (Rogers, Kiang, et al., 2021; Rogers, Moffitt, & Jones, in press). This analysis drew primarily from the race section of the interview.…”

“…Given that the racial hierarchy in the United Statesis built on whiteness, it is necessary to document how White children make sense of race in their own identities in order to disrupt it. Attending only to the ways that racial minority children conceptualize race is a one‐sided view of racial inequality (Rogers, Kiang, et al., 2021; Rogers, Moffitt, & Jones, in press). Multiracial children also represent a growing demographic of diversity in the United States, with racial experiences both unique and similar to other minoritized youth.…”