On White Researchers and Black Respondents

In this paper I will argue that a psychoanalytic approach to sociological interview methodology necessarily involves a process of listening to, learning from, and interpreting experience. Within the context of this process I will address one of the central concerns of sociological research, the idea of interviewer “matching”: that we should use black researchers to interview black respondents, and women to interview women. I will highlight what I believe to be serious concerns about this premise and set them within the context of a research project that I have undertaken into the experience of black and Asian students in a British higher education institute.

I have previously outlined how I think a psychoanalytic approach to fieldwork can benefit sociological analysis. Hunt suggests that subjectivity and self understanding are critical to well executed fieldwork. A psychoanalytic perspective offers us an understanding of how sociological data is both structured and constructed. There are two main areas in which psychoanalytic fieldwork differs from conventional sociological method. First there is the notion that the unconscious plays a role in the construction of our reality and the way in which we perceive others. Second, the unconscious plays a significant part in both the generation of research data and the construction of the research environment. Thus we have a number of areas where unconscious forces affect research: the choice of research subject and setting, as Hunt notes, may reflect an “inner dynamic.” For example, a deep interest in racism may reflect certain incidents or events in a researcher's past that become disguised as curiosity or professional interest. Once the research is under way, unconscious forces mediate encounters between researcher and researched. The interview is an arena of conscious and unconscious interplay between researcher and respondent (see Sherwood).

In a recent research proj