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Purpose – This chapter reflects on selected issues raised by the emotions involved in the social relations of qualitative research. We use experiences from two separate studies to explore the role of emotion and affect in the embodied, face-to-face encounter of the interview; the ‘translation’ of interpretations of emotional responses from one cultural context into another; the reflexivity of the researcher and the researched and the ethical implications of this form of research.

Methodology – The studies, one doctoral research and one funded by a Leverhulme grant, took a qualitative approach, employing individual semi-structured interviews with young people in Zambia and women in their fifties in Swindon, UK.

Findings – The chapter argues that emotions within the interview are bound up with the potential meanings and outcomes of the interview to both the researcher and the interviewee. Emotions affect what is said and unsaid in the interview; what is communicated and hidden and how the material is interpreted.

Originality/Value – The chapter brings together experiences from conducting highly emotive research in majority and minority world contexts. It focuses on similarities in the dilemmas posed to researchers by the emotions involved in the social relations of research, regardless of location.

Through an analysis of texts and interviews with sanctuary providers from sanctuary incidents in Canada, this paper first details how sanctuary is made possible by pastoral and non-state sovereign powers. It then argues at least three stories of law are instantiated in sanctuary discourse. Law is at times arbitrary and unpredictable. In other instances, a ‘higher’ law authorizes sanctuary. Law is also a broader game in which lawyers are relied upon and sanctuary becomes a tactic to ‘win’. These legal narratives work together to constitute sanctuary and are instantiations of pastoral and sovereign powers at the level of the subject.

In this book the terms ‘clean language’ and ‘clean language interviewing’ are written using lower case, according to the convention of the American Psychological Association (sixth edition). ‘Clean language interviewing’ is sometimes abbreviated to CLI.

Much qualitative research is interview based, and this paper provides an outline of qualitative interview techniques. This paper explains the rationale for using interviewing as a qualitative technique. Various types of qualitative interviews, seven stages of interviewing, preparations needed for conducting interview as well as the skills of interviewers are discussed.

Focusing on an interview conducted with a Bedouin respondent on the subject on genetic counseling, this paper offers a symbolic interactionist framework for juxtaposing theory and practice, research and implementation, observation as well as intervention. The analysis exposes the interview as an arena for negotiation using constructs such as performance, impression management, micro-politics, weak and strong languages, and cultural difference.

Traditional interviewing techniques often fail to fully assess the “soft skills” required for a potential hire to succeed in a particular organizational culture. This case study presents an alternate framework for evaluating candidates to determine their ability to effectively collaborate with existing team members. The authors report the process used in hiring two faculty librarians in 2011 and the ways the process was revised to fill two newly created positions in 2013. A review of management literature on interview techniques supports using practical exercises and strategically designed questions to assess a candidate’s fit within a given organizational culture. The experiences reported in this case study bear that out. The process of strategically designing the interview structure enabled the department to gain a better vision of its priorities and values, while the interviews enabled the team to select additional members who work well in a collaborative environment with the personalities already in place. Readers can use this to redesign their interview procedures to more effectively select candidates who will contribute to the vision and positive culture of their workplace. This model was successful in this instance and readers can modify these procedures to adapt to their own workplace cultures in any type of library. Building on strategies used in various industries, this chapter translates the use of practical exercises and strategically designed questions into an academic library context.

To demonstrate how generational as well as gendered identities impacted on researcher-researched relationships built during the interview process, engendering specific insights about contemporary British grandfathering.

An ‘ad-hoc’ reflection of interview transcripts and researcher field notes generated from 31 qualitative interviews with men who are grandfathers, to reflexively interrogate how various identity markers operated within my encounters with them, as a young female researcher.

Men positioned me within a grandparent-grandchild relationship during the interviews, which afforded specific insights into contemporary grandfatherhood, including the socio-historical context in which grandfathering takes place. Whilst perceptions and assumptions about gender influence how participants perceive researchers, focusing too rigidly on gender is problematic. It risks re-enforcing potentially stereotypical assumptions about men and women, thus downplaying the contradictions and paradoxes inherent in men’s constructions and performances of their diverse later life identities, as well as obscuring the complex intersectionalities and power relations that operate in the field.

To argue that the concept of ‘betweenness’ aids in developing a more robust understanding of the complex and knowable negotiations of similarity and difference within research encounters.

Cross-boundary cooperation with shared goals and values involving the poor has been argued as an indispensable means for inclusive business (IB) success. Cooperation may become dynamic, especially when exploratory and creative attempts with effective cooperative learning among partners can be realized. Even so, not many companies have reported successful in building the cooperation. One case, providing clean, affordable drinking water to the poor in Tanzanian rural villages, suggests that a delegated and grassroots-based approach in cooperation with a highly trustworthy local partner can successfully promote cooperative learning and transfer know-how in both operations and management. This approach also stimulates local and self-initiated activities for expanding water facilities and generating local businesses in an area where employment is scarce. Deviation from mainstream-institution-based operations and management is one example of institutional interconnections that enable the rural poor to self-manage projects and stimulate self-initiated business activities, consequently contributing to rural development and sustainable development goals.

This chapter describes the work-life balance project, which was the first to investigate the potential of clean language as an academic research interview methodology (Lawley, Meyer, Meese, Sullivan, & Tosey, 2010). It resulted in the publication of an article in the British Journal of Management (Tosey, Lawley, & Meese, 2014) that has since been cited in several academic papers, including Langley and Meziani's (2020) review of interview methodologies in the field of organisational change. This chapter describes the project's methodology and findings and highlights six lessons learnt that have helped to inform the further development of clean language interviewing.

Networking, gatekeeper access, understanding of “localized talks,” and jargon are revealed to be influential factors on the quality and richness of case study research (CSR) data. Rapport between the researcher and the interviewee not only affect the depth of the data collected but also the credibility and completeness of the final research output. This chapter discusses these features of CSR by employing two different CSR studies. The chapter provides practical insights to promote the interviewee's confidence in revealing sensitive data, through a three-step procedure.