Getting more out of interviews. Understanding interviewees’ accounts in relation to their frames of orientation

This paper contributes to an ongoing debate about the validity of interview data and the ways in which they are interpreted in the ‘interview society’. We understand the need for an extensive reliance on interviews and, at the same time, recognise the serious limitations that exist regarding access to the interviewee’s worldview, their motivations and orientations. A crucial problem in this regard and the main concern of our paper is how to interpret subjective accounts, such as arguments or everyday theories, interviewees hold about themselves. While ethnomethodologists suggest that the complete authorship for meaning depends on the interview setting, we argue that the interviewee’s practices of generating interview content are quite stable across various sequences that allows for a reconstruction of their agency dispositions based on interview transcripts. Taking Mannheim’s and Bourdieu’s idea of a formative or generative principle as a point of departure, we introduce the most recent variant of the documentary method of interpretation (DMI) that aims at the reconstruction of this principle’s manifestation (as an individual’s frame of orientation) and helps us then to understand everyday theories, subjective explanations and justifications presented by interviewees

Getting more out of interviews. Understanding interviewees’ accounts in relation to their frames of orientation

This paper contributes to an ongoing debate about the validity of interview data and the ways in which they are interpreted in the ‘interview society’. We understand the need for an extensive reliance on interviews and, at the same time, recognise the serious limitations that exist regarding access to the interviewee’s worldview, their motivations and orientations. A crucial problem in this regard and the main concern of our paper is how to interpret subjective accounts, such as arguments or everyday theories, interviewees hold about themselves. While ethnomethodologists suggest that the complete authorship for meaning depends on the interview setting, we argue that the interviewee’s practices of generating interview content are quite stable across various sequences that allows for a reconstruction of their agency dispositions based on interview transcripts. Taking Mannheim’s and Bourdieu’s idea of a formative or generative principle as a point of departure, we introduce the most recent variant of the documentary method of interpretation (DMI) that aims at the reconstruction of this principle’s manifestation (as an individual’s frame of orientation) and helps us then to understand everyday theories, subjective explanations and justifications presented by interviewees

Russlands Mittelschichten im Umbruch

Mittelschichten, die etwa ein 20 Prozent der Gesamtbevölkerung des postsozialistischen Russlands ausmachen, sind zwar eine beachtliche aber bei weitem keine dominante gesellschaftliche Gruppe. Ihre sozioökonomische Charakteristik weicht deutlich von den Mittelschichten kapitalistischer Marktgesellschaften ab. Sie bilden zwar das "Rückgrat der Putin-Mehrheit" und erweisen sich somit als ein "sozialer Stabilisator". Aber sie erfüllen nicht unbedingt die Demokratisierungshoffnungen, welche viele Publizisten und die Politik-Soziologen mit dieser Stratifikationsgruppe zu verbinden pflegen

Der Ausbruch „geschlossener Gemeinschaften“ aus „geschlossenen Gesellschaften“

Die Grundverfasstheit der staatssozialistischen Länder Osteuropas wurde von Viktor Zaslavsky auf den Begriff der „geschlossenen Gesellschaft“ gebracht. Zentral für diese Konzeptualisierung war der vom parteistaatlichen Machtapparat getragene, allumfassende Regulierungsanspruch, der offiziell keine institutionalisierte Autonomie sozialer Akteure zuließ und jedem von ihnen einen festen Platz sowie festgelegte Pfade sozialer Mobilität in der verwaltungshierarchischen Gesamtanordnung zuwies. Zaslavsky machte aber darauf aufmerksam, dass dieser Regulierungsanspruch nie vollends verwirklicht wurde, obwohl er die soziale Wirklichkeit nachhaltig, wenn auch oft in einer dialektischen Weise, prägte.Der Beitrag verbindet empirische Befunde aus sozialhistorischen Analysen der professionellen Selbstverwaltung in Polen und UdSSR/Russland mit theoretischen Überlegungen zur Funktions- und Zerfallslogik der staatssozialistischen Gesellschaftsordnung. Ferner werden die unterschiedlichen Entwicklungspfade der juristischen Professionen in der Phase der postsozialistischen Systemtransformationen nachzeichnen, um der Dialektik der professionellen „Schließung“ und „Öffnung“ im breiteren Kontext politischer Pluralisierung sowie ökonomischer Deregulierung nach 1989 auf die Spur zu kommen.Für ein deutschsprachiges soziologisches Publikum kann der Blick auf die Professionalisierungsprozesse im staatssozialistischen und postsozialistischen Osten Europas zum einen als ein empirisch-theoretischer Kontrapunkt wirken. Zum anderen wurde die Entwicklung von Professionen in Ostdeutschland sowohl vom staatssozialistischen Gesellschaftsmodell als auch von seiner Zerfallsdynamik mitgeprägt

To Cloud or not to Cloud: A Qualitative Study on Self-Hosters’ Motivation, Operation, and Security Mindset

Despite readily available cloud services, some people decide to self-host internal or external services for themselves or their organization. In doing so, a broad spectrum of commercial, institutional, and private self-hosters take responsibility for their data, security, and reliability of their operations. Currently, little is known about what motivates these self- hosters, how they operate and secure their services, and which challenges they face. To improve the understanding of self-hosters’ security mindsets and practices, we conducted a largescale survey (NS=994) with users of a popular self-hosting suite and in-depth follow-up interviews with selected commercial, non-profit, and private users (NI =41). We found exemplary behavior in all user groups; however, we also found a significant part of self-hosters who approach security in an unstructured way, regardless of social or organizational embeddedness. Vague catch-all concepts such as firewalls and backups dominate the landscape, without proper reflection on the threats they help mitigate. At times, self-hosters engage in creative tactics to compensate for a potential lack of expertise or experience

Działalność prawnicza w okresie przemian: transformacje postsocjalistyczne w narracjach autobiograficznych polskich i rosyjskich prawników

This paper presents preliminary findings on memories from the period of post-socialist transformation and on related narrative constructs of agency in autobiographical interviews with practicing lawyers from Poland and Russia. The study is based on 25 interviews with individuals born in the late-1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Six different types of narrative accounts about the period of post-socialist transformations are identified and described: (i) trailblazer narratives; (ii) follower narratives; (iii) narratives of volatility; (iv) narratives of continuity; (v) latecomer narratives and (vi) narratives of social decay.Niniejszy tekst przedstawia pierwsze wyniki badań na temat doświadczeń z okresu transformacji postsocjalistycznej i narratywnego konstruowania podmiotowości w wywiadach autobiograficznych z poskimi i rosyjskimi prawnikami. Praca oparta jest na 25 wywiadach z osobami urodzonymi w późnych latach 30., 40. i 50. Opisuje ona sześć różnych typów narracji: (i) narracje przecierających szlaki (trailblazer narratives); (ii) narracje podążających nowymi drogami (follower narratives); (iii) narracje rozchwiane (narratives of volatility); (iv) narracje ciągłości (narratives of continuity); (v) narracje spóźnionych (latecomer narratives); (vi) narracje rozkładu społecznego (narratives of social decay)

Self-Regulation of Legal Professions in State-Socialism

The paper analyzes how the self-regulatory institutions of two legal professions – attorneys-at-law and in-house lawyers – developed in Poland and Russia from the second half of the 19th century until the collapse of state socialism at the beginning of the 1990s. These two countries constitute the most contrasting cases of socialist transformation in the region in terms of legal traditions and of the broader socio-political context. To adequately grasp the case differences it is necessary to include the formative period of the modern legal profession in the region. The comparative analysis uses the conceptual framework of the sociology of professions. It shows that (1) attorneys-at-law were able to preserve a certain degree of collective autonomy and self-regulation during most of the time; (2) institutional path dependencies reaching back into the pre-socialist past determine the degree of autonomy and self-regulation; (3) the discrepancy between both countries is particularly pronounced in the case of the occupational group of in-house lawyers; (4) the state-socialist regimes were, therefore, not as unifying and homogenizing as it is sometimes assumed

Getting more out of interviews: Understanding interviewees’ accounts in relation to their frames of orientation

This paper contributes to an ongoing debate about the validity of interview data and the ways in which they are interpreted in the ‘interview society’. We understand the need for an extensive reliance on interviews and, at the same time, recognise the serious limitations that exist regarding access to the interviewee’s worldview, their motivations and orientations. A crucial problem in this regard and the main concern of our paper is how to interpret subjective accounts, such as arguments or everyday theories, interviewees hold about themselves. While ethnomethodologists suggest that the complete authorship for meaning depends on the interview setting, we argue that the interviewee’s practices of generating interview content are quite stable across various sequences that allows for a reconstruction of their agency dispositions based on interview transcripts. Taking Mannheim’s and Bourdieu’s idea of a formative or generative principle as a point of departure, we introduce the most recent variant of the documentary method of interpretation (DMI) that aims at the reconstruction of this principle’s manifestation (as an individual’s frame of orientation) and helps us then to understand everyday theories, subjective explanations and justifications presented by interviewees

Poster: From Hashes to Ashes – A Comparison of Transcription Services

In recent years, semi-structured interviews gained more and more importance in cyber-security research. Transcribing audio recordings of such interviews is a crucial step in qualitative data analysis, but it is also a work-intensive and time-consuming task. While outsourcing presents a common option, maintaining research quality requires precise transcriptions – a task further compounded by technical jargon and established expressions in the research field. In this study, we compare different transcription services and evaluate their outcome quality within the context of cybersecurity. Our findings provide insights for researchers navigating the complex landscape of transcription services, offering informed choices to enhance the accuracy and validity of qualitative data analysis