%0 Journal Article
%T Truth or story or true story? The self in the interview situation
%A Iulia Gheorghiu
%J Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology
%D 2011
%I University of Bucharest
%X This study is a methodological inquiry into how individuals present themselves and picture their identity in the life-story interview situation and which are the settings which have a say in this presentation. In order to achieve my goal, I resort to life story interviews that I conducted with students coming from different parts of Romania to study in Bucharest. I pay close attention to how they order the events in their lives, what are the most common themes that appear in their discourse. I am particularly interested in scripts they employ and how the content of their narratives is a matter of co-authorship between the person telling the story and the one listening to it ¨C interaction based on mutually understood knowledge of what the student experience means. In the light of the popularity narrative methods have in the social sciences, I address the problem of what kind of account social scientists actually obtain when conducting research based on narrative methods. I argue that this knowledge is situational and constructed in the interaction between narrator and interviewer.
%K Life story
%K narrative research
%K social scripts
%K co-authorship
%K biographical illusion
%U http://compaso.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Compaso2011-22-Gheorghiu.pdf