Extraordinary Encounters

Katherine Smith is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in the north of England on the subjects of fairness and equality, social policy, social class, political correctness and humour. She is author of Fairness, Class and Belonging in Contemporary England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

• Introduction: The Interview as Analytical CategoryJames Staples and Katherine SmithChapter 1. The Transcendent Subject? Biography as a Medium for Writing ‘Life and Times’Pat CaplanChapter 2. Using and Refusing Antiretroviral Drugs in South Africa: Towards a Biographical ApproachIsak NiehausChapter 3. An ‘Up and Down Life’: Understanding Leprosy through BiographyJames StaplesChapter 4. Finding My Wit: Explaining Banter and Making the Effortless Appear in the Unstructured InterviewKatherine SmithChapter 5. ‘Different Times’ and Other ‘Altermodern’ Possibilities: Filming Interviews with Children as Ethnographic ‘Wanderings’Angels Trias i VallsChapter 6. Dialogues with Anthropologists: Where Interviews Become RelevantJudith OkleyChapter 7. Talking and Acting for Our Rights: The Interview in an Action-research SettingAna LopesEpilogue: Extraordinary Encounter? The Interview as an Ironical MomentNigel RapportNotes on Contributors

“…a diverse group of scholars who have a broad range of experience as ethnographers and whose work with interviews, life stories and biography highlight the extraordinariness of social encounters.” · Tamara Kohn, University of Melbourne“Each chapter is well written and has something interesting . . . to say about interviewing. . . All in all, a genuinely absorbing read which has prompted me to think about interviewing in new ways.” · Peter Collins, Durham University