This has been the first official week of conducting interview with various other urban agriculture organizations around the Detroit area. Naim and I have been discussing various ways in which to conduct an interview and how to debrief afterwards. This has led to very interesting conversations about power dyamics and how certain objects such as notebooks and recording devices can have a way of steering a conversation. Sometimes this can be a good thing, in order to stay on task and such, but other times it ay hinder the conversation from occurring organically and, thus the important questions that you may not think to ask may not even come up.
I was initially quite set on taking notes during the interviews as a way to keep track of details, and help me to keep events in order as well as to be sure to ask all of the questions that I had prepared. However, after talking to Naim about this we decided to experiment with simply having conversations and debriefing about them afterwards. In this manner, I would have to practice attentive listening and make sure that I was actually paying attention to what was being said rather than rushing to write down notes. My first experience with this sort of interview was with Rising Pheasant farms this past Wednesday. It felt a lot more like a informal conversation than an interview, yet I still feel as if I forgot some of my questions and missed some details that may have been important later.
We are still experimenting with these different forms of interviewing, but I have to say that there is definitely some merit to the informal conversation. I felt as if the owner was much more willing to talk to me since he had more agency in the conversation and could steer it as he would like. And I am realizing that sometimes, it’s okay if you forget exact questions because other topics may crop up that are just as important, and wouldn’t have come up otherwise. It has given me a lot to think about, and I am excited to continue conducting interviews and playing around with the format and seeing what works the best for me.
