Interviewing as an “I-Thou” Relationship

In a section of his book that is elegant even in translation, Schutz (1967) explains that one person’s intersubjective understanding of another depends upon creating an “I-Thou” relationship, a concept bearing both similarities to and significant differences from the philosopher Martin Buber’s use of the phrase. “Thou” is someone close to the interviewer, still separate, but a fellow person. We recognize “Thou,” according to Schutz, as another “alive and conscious human being” (p. 164). Implicit in such an “I-Thou” relationship is a shift from the interviewer’s seeing the participant as an object or a type, which he or she would normally describe syntactically in the third person. Schutz goes on to say that a re­lationship in which each person is “Thou” oriented—that is, in which the sense of “Thou-ness” is mutual—becomes a “We” relationship.

The interviewer’s goal is to transform his or her relationship with the participant into an “I-Thou” relationship that verges on a “We” relation­ship. In the approach to interviewing I have been discussing, the inter­viewer does not strive for a full “We” relationship. In such a case the in­terviewer would become an equal participant, and the resulting discourse would be a conversation, not an interview. In an “I-Thou” relationship, however, the interviewer keeps enough distance to allow the participant to fashion his or her responses as independently as possible.

In some approaches to participatory research, however, the interview­ers do attempt to create a full “We” relationship (Griffin, 1989; Reason, 1994). Oakley (1981) argues that not doing so is manipulative and reflects a male, hierarchical model of research. (See de Laine, 2000, pp. 108-116; Stacey, 1988, for respectful but critical discussions of the feminist position Oakley’s perspective represents.) I try to strike a balance, saying enough about myself to be alive and responsive but little enough to preserve the autonomy of the participant’s words and to keep the focus of attention on his or her experience rather than mine.

Source: Seidman Irving (2006), Interviewing As Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education And the Social Sciences, Teachers College Press; 3rd edition.