Ethnographic Interviews

Observing and talking to people is another way to understand cultural structures (Alexander 2003; Pugh 2013).  In-depth or ethnographic interviews allow scholars to hear how real people talk and think about certain issues to gain a better understanding of the cultural structures that lead them to say, think, and feel in the ways that they do. Often, however, these cultural structures operate in subtle and contradictory ways that individuals are not necessarily aware or conscious of. The job of the analyst is to listen for evidence of this subtle influence; often this means listening for "emotional signposts," (Pugh 2013) and what the participants don’t say, assessing when and why they contradict themselves, or decoding the proxy language they use. 

References

Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2003.The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Pugh, Alison J. 2013. "What Good are Interviews for Thinking about Culture? Demystifying Interpretive Analysis." American Journal of Cultural Sociology 1:42-68.

Methodological Exemplars

Blair-Loy, Mary. 2003. Competing Devotions: Career and Family among Women Executives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.  

Hays, Sharon. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Kusserow, Adrie. 2004. American Individualisms: Child Rearing and Social Class in Three Neighborhoods. Palgrave Macmillan.

Lareau, Annette. 2003. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.