Susan Condor

Trying similarity, doing difference: The role of interviewer self-disclosure in interview talk with young people

Advocates of semi-structured interview techniques have often argued that rapport may be built, and power inequalities between interviewer and respondent counteracted, by strategic self-disclosure on the part of the interviewer. Strategies that use self-disclosure to construct similarity between interviewer and respondent rely on the presumption that the respondent will in fact interpret the interviewers behaviour in this way. In this article we examine the role of interviewer self-disclosure using data drawn from three projects involving interviews with young people. We consider how an interviewers attempts to ‘do similarity’ may be interpreted variously as displays of similarity or, ironically, as indicators of difference by the participant, and map the implications that this may have for subsequent interview dialogue. A particular object of concern relates to the ways in which self-disclosing acts may function in the negotiation of category entitlement within interview interactions.

English Identity and Ethnic Diversity in the Context of UK Constitutional Change

At the time of the devolution settlement in the UK, there was widespread concern that the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales would prompt a rise in English identity at the expense of British identity and, in turn, threaten polyethnic constructions of citizenship. Such presumptions typically rested on reified understandings of the category labels British and English, and conflated the construct of national identity with the constructs of territorial belonging, social inclusion and citizenship. Post-devolution survey data do not currently reveal a decline in British identity in England. Measures of attachment to Englishness vary as a function of ethnic origin of respondent, but also as a function of question wording. A qualitative interview study of young adult Pakistani-origin Muslims in Greater Manchester, north-west England, illustrates how Englishness may be understood to pertain variously to an exclusive cultural or racial category, or to an inclusive territorial entity or community of political interest. Ethnic constructions of English identity need not imply exclusive understandings of citizenship, but their meaning depends crucially on the ways in which nationality and identity are in turn understood in relation to matters of polity and civil society. Conversely, inclusive understandings of national identity do not guarantee the existence of effective ethnic integration or substantive ethnic equality.

Nation speaking unto nation? Newspapers and national identity in the devolved UK

There are two problems with the existing account of the relationship between newspapers and national identity in the UK. The first is that although it is widely assumed that the mass media are central to the reproduction and evolution of national identity this has never been empirically demonstrated. The second is that exactly what comprises the relevant ‘national’ context in the UK is unclear. Content analysis of 2,500 sampled articles, together with qualitative comparison of different editions of the same newspaper titles and interviews with editors and journalists are used to show the extent and nature of ‘national’ frames of reference in newspapers in England and Scotland. Paradoxically, devolution may have reduced the spatial diversity of news stories in the press in England and Scotland.

Mediating Which Nation? Citizenship and National Identities in the British Press

This paper examines one particular aspect of the relationship between citizenship and media, namely the way in which newspapers establish, define or reinforce the boundaries of “national” communities (and thus determine who might be a member). The research is conducted against the background of devolution in the United Kingdom, which helped to focus upon and illuminate the diverse conceptions of national identities within multi-national states. We critique the routine application of theories of “banal nationalism” and “imagined community” in settings where different understandings of what may constitute “the national” co-exist. Analysis of newspaper editions distributed in England and Scotland highlight the complex, ambiguous and shifting use of national terminology and markers. Rather than focus on specific “newsworthy” events, the paper investigates everyday reporting of “ordinary” news and reveals the limitations of existing theories and accounts of the links between media and national (and wider social) identities.

Categorising Category Labels in Interview Accounts about the ‘Muslim Minority’ in Greece

In this paper we examine the construction of categorical distinctions and the negotiation of category labels in interview accounts given by a sample of the majority population (Orthodox Christians) in Thrace (Northern Greece) concerning their co-existence with the Muslim minority. Employing a rhetorical approach to categorisation, we argue that category labels constitute argumentative positions which reflect culturally specific assumptions around which Greekness and Otherness are constructed. Analysis points to the ways in which the rhetorical invocation of certain category labels may be treated by social actors as potentially open to the charge of racism. However, what counts as racism or discrimination in relation to various category labels is not unproblematic and straightforward. As the meaning attached to particular categories shifts, the meaning attached to ‘racism’ also changes.

Beyond Prejudice: Rethinking the prejudice problematic: a collaborative cognition approach

As Pawlik and d’Ydewalle (2006) have noted, psychologists generally tend to refer to their research objects in common-language terminology. Consequently, authors of academic texts often start out by providing formal definitions of any key terms in order to establish a clear boundary between their own scientific understanding and the imprecise, inaccurate, forms of conceptualization typical of ‘mere’ common sense (cf. Billig, 1990; Shapin, 2001). Social psychological work on prejudice is, of course, no exception, and most authors offer their readers a definition of the term ‘prejudice’, which they typically distinguish from purportedly less accurate or precise everyday uses of the word. Academic terminology is, of course, subject to change over time. Psychologists originally used the term ‘attitude’ to refer to a physiological condition (Danziger, 1997), and although contemporary social psychologists like to trace their definitions of ‘stereotype’ to Lippmann’s (1922) text Public Opinion, Lippmann’s original use of the termwas actually more akin to the current construct of schema (Newman, 2009). When introducing the construct of ‘prejudice’, social psychologists often point to historical shifts in nonscientific usage of the term (Allport, 1954; Billig, 1988), and suggest that psychological definitions have gradually developed in line with advances in scientific theory and research (e.g. Stagnor, 2009). However, detailed attention to published work in social

Understanding English public reactions to the Scottish parliament

Although elite commentators have regularly predicted an English backlash to the asymmetric devolution settlement, public opinion surveys generally reveal widespread acceptance of the principle of Scottish self-governance. In this article, I explore some of the reasoning behind English responses to UK constitutional change, drawing on a comprehensive programme of conversational interview research initiated in 2000. Analysis suggests that although people in England often endorse sincere and consistent views on various aspects of the devolution process, currently these are not typically salient, central or strongly held, and are rarely rooted in detailed domain-specific information. In the first decade following the devolution settlement, English responses to UK constitutional reform have tended to be based on abstract values of national rights and procedural justice rather than on calculations of comparative national self-interest. However, popular acceptance of the new constitutional arrangements may be contingent upon a particular set of ideological circumstances, and it would be premature to assume that asymmetric devolution necessarily reflects the settled will of the English people.