New Perspectives From Unstructured Interviews

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite

doi:10.1177/2158244016679474

Abstract

In the early 1980s, Ray Pahl, a sociologist at the University of Kent, and PhD student Claire Wallace conducted interviews examining young people’s experiences of growing up, work, and unemployment on the Isle of Sheppey; these interviews are now deposited at the University of Essex, and this article examines how historians and others might reuse them to interrogate other subjects. The article examines one working-class young woman’s ideas about gender and sexuality in the early 1980s, using the Listening Guide method developed by psychologist Carol Gilligan to probe the individual subjectivity and emotion, as well as the cultural discourses at play in this interview. The interviewee was a young woman who was involved in a culture of casual sex with men “on the ships,” and the article focuses on how she saw the exchanges of money, drink, and gifts between them and herself, and how she avoided seeing her actions as “prostitution.” The analysis shows how in a particular locality in the early 1980s, a particular subculture could allow some young women to sidestep the dominant codes governing young, working-class women’s sexuality and go “on the ships” without seeing this as marking them as “prostitutes”’ or any related category. Thus, the article troubles the ontology of “prostitution” as a category. It also suggests how we can use a single individual’s narrative to offer a broader account of cultures or subcultures, by starting with the individual and examining how one subjectivity navigated and interacted with broader cultural discourses. Finally, this article also offers suggestions about some of the methodological and ethical issues with reusing archived sociological data but argues that it holds rich possibilities.

Highlights

In the early 1980s, Ray Pahl, a sociologist at the University of Kent, and PhD student Claire Wallace conducted interviews examining young people’s experiences of work and unemployment on the Isle of Sheppey; these interviews are deposited at the University of Essex
I examine one working-class young woman’s ideas about gender and sexuality in the early 1980s, and use the Listening Guide method developed by psychologist Carol Gilligan to probe the psychological forces at work, as well as the cultural context around this interview
I suggest how historians can use a single individual’s narrative to offer a broader account of British culture and of subcultures, by starting with the individual and examining how they subjectively interacted with broader cultural discourses. The interviewee in this case was a young woman who was involved in a culture of casual sex with men “on the ships” that docked on the island, and other men who were on the island for a short period of time

Summary

Introduction

In the early 1980s, Ray Pahl, a sociologist at the University of Kent, and PhD student Claire Wallace conducted interviews examining young people’s experiences of work and unemployment on the Isle of Sheppey; these interviews are deposited at the University of Essex. I suggest how historians can use a single individual’s narrative to offer a broader account of British culture and of subcultures, by starting with the individual and examining how they subjectively interacted with broader cultural discourses. The interviewee in this case was a young woman who was involved in a culture of casual sex with men “on the ships” that docked on the island, and other men who were on the island for a short period of time. Archived contextual data, reading published outputs and work that informed the original project, comparative work in the same archive and different archives, and, where possible, interviews with those involved in the original project, all help to build up a sense of the method of production for the source

Methods

Conclusion