On Social Emergence: A Non-Dichotomous Approach to Qualitative Tool Design

Abstract

The narrative biographical interview is a research tool that has been successfully used to study the reproductions of the overall constellations of social life that occur within an individual life. The entire methodological proposal as well as the issue of reproduction are based on a dichotomous epistemology. In the presented article, we analyse this issue of reproduction as it appears in Fritz Schütze’s work. Next, we describe a proposal for an alternative narrative interview – interview about the present based on a non-dichotomous epistemology. In our opinion, this epistemological perspective addresses the issue of reproduction in a completely different way. And, more importantly it introduces in the field of sociology an issue of emergence. To illustrate this non-dichotomous logics, we are using the material from one of the interviews from the research data collection.

Keywords

• reproduction
• emergence
• inflections
• biographical narrative interview
• interview about the present