Extraordinary Encounters

<p> Given the anthropological focus on ethnography as a kind of deep immersion the interview poses theoretical and methodological challenges for the discipline. This volume explores those challenges and argues that the interview should be seen as a special productive site of ethnographic encounter a site of a very particular and important kind of knowing. In a range of social contexts and cultural settings contributors show how the interview is experienced and imagined as a kind of space within which personal biographic and social cues and norms can be explored and interrogated. The interview possesses its own authenticity therefore-true to the persons involved and true to their moment of interaction-whilst at the same time providing information on human capacities and proclivities that is generalizable beyond particular social and cultural contexts.</p>