The informative and the performative in semi-structured interviews: The example of a study of territorial capital in Serbia

The paper reexamines the semi-structured interview method on the basis of data collected in a study of medium-sized Serbian towns. The analysis of transcripts shows that the analytic quality of data varied depending on the interviewee’s position in the local institutional structure, so that in interviews with 1 ispasic@f.bg.ac.rs 2 Rad je deo projekta Instituta za sociološka istraživanja Filozofskog fakulteta u Beogradu Izazovi nove društvene integracije u Srbiji – koncepti i akteri, pod pokroviteljstvom MPNTR RS, br. 179035. 84 SOCIOLOGIJA, Vol. LXII (2020), N° 1 representatives of political and social institutions role playing (the performative) prevailed over providing information on social reality and attitudes (the informative). This finding is situated in the context of current debates within qualitative methodology which, while illuminating the complex intertwining of different dimensions of the interview (as source of data and interaction situation), fail to recognize fully the problem of performativity and provide solutions. In the final section some undesired epistemological and political implications are discussed of an uncritical application of the semi-structured interview if conceived in an overly antipositivistic fashion and disregarding the institutional and broader social framework within which the research takes place.