Two good interview questions: Mobilizing the ‘good farmer’ and the ‘good day’ concepts to enable more‐than‐representational research

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, I assess the utility of two targeted qualitative interview questions: descriptions of a ‘good farmer’ and a ‘good day’, for eliciting rich textual data. Studies where farmers have been asked to describe or define a good farmer have been utilized across a growing range of international contexts in order to identify farmers’ cultural scripts, symbolic capital and social norms. The constitution of a ‘good day’ is new to rural studies but has been employed academically to assess perceptions of well‐being and job satisfaction. I employ document analysis to analyse the multiple uses of the ‘good farmer’ question in the rural studies literature and introduce a contrasting empirical application the ‘good day’ question in a rural case study in the United Kingdom. Findings demonstrate that both interview questions can generate rich textual descriptions of embodied performances. ‘Good farmer’ definitions may also include a moral judgement, whereas the ‘good day’ question specifically yields descriptions of affect. Farmers are reluctant to identify ‘bad farmers’, but asking about a ‘bad day’ can open up discussion of the vulnerabilities of farming life. Both questions are thus suited to more‐than‐representational research, gaining utility from their congruence between common parlance and academic conceptualization.