Intuition, Interviewing, and Relationality

As I noted in class, in phenomenology, we tend to work with an interviewing style that is most honestly and accurately described as “conversational.” We might also, if we like, call it an “unstructured” interview.

I increasingly dislike that term, because it implies that structure to an interview is only achieved through the imposition and agenda of the researcher. Yes, any researcher has a goal or aim in mind in convening an interview—and we must not forget, nor conceal, the primary purpose that brings us together with our participants.

But a conversational interview most definitely has a structure. The structure emerges through inquiry, through genuine desire to hear and understand the story of another. It is, perhaps, an act of witnessing—and it is that open, non-judgmental, and wondering attitude that is the best guarantor of a fruitful interview.

As I was exploring some aspects of Jill’s project last night, I was led to recover some aspects of my own experiences living abroad when I was a teacher for two years in eastern Hungary. I used those experiences to speculate that an interesting interview prompt—at least for me!—would be to ask about a time when you had to ask for help from someone you did not know in the language of the host country.

Perhaps, like a lot of people, I am not very good at asking for help. I want to pretend that I have it all under control. That I know what I’m doing. Who likes to look lost? Like a tourist? Like an “ugly American”?

Not me.

But there were simply times in Hungary when there was no way that I could do it on my own. Observation wasn’t cutting it. I just didn’t know where people were getting their bus tickets, how much they cost, how I would signal to the driver that I wanted to exit the bus, or how I would know where my stop was. I had no choice but to ask.

This is a small example, but there are others. The time—pre-internet—when the hotel my guidebook recommended no longer existed. I was stranded in a snowstorm in Slovakia with no place to sleep (and to compound matters, I slipped on the ice and nearly broke my neck!).

These experiences taught me that the whole world might be my home. That, more often than not, an otherwise unremarkable Hungarian or Slovakian would gladly help me, if I only asked in the best Hungarian I could muster. And not only help me, but talk with me, welcome me, even share with me: some food, a smile, a kind greeting or generous word about the United States.

In short, I lived out hospitality.

Hospitality, as you might guess, shares a root with hospital and host (both in its secular and sacramental forms). Its roots, interestingly, are in terms that indicate “stranger” or “foreigner.”

Hospitality is the welcoming of the stranger into our lives. For me, this was a transformative moment, to see the way in which people around the world continue to practice these ancient forms of human relationality. (And to aspire, in my own small way, to do the same.)

This is something I would want to know more about. While my hunch is no guarantee that my research will go well, it is nonetheless the one firm place from which phenomenology says that we should launch our projects.