without becoming absorbed within and over-
whelmed by them. If overwhelmed, the inter-
viewer can move too quickly through difficult
topics, or rush to comfort the interviewees
without allowing them the opportunity to
fully express their thoughts and feelings.
Unstructured interviewing involves a process
of ‘learning to listen’ rather than searching to
confirm pre-existing ideas or theories. Ander-
son writes of her disappointment with the
transcripts from her life history interviews
with rural women, because the transcripts
lacked detail and offered little insight into
these women’s emotional lives. Anderson
closely and very usefully analyses the many
moments in her interviews where she fore-
closed opportunities for women to describe
their lives, and thus subtlety communicated a
double message: ‘Tell me about your experi-
ence, but don’t tell me too much’ (Jack and
Anderson, 1991, p. 15). She recommends that
all researchers review their transcribed inter-
views ‘to listen critically to [their] interviews,
to [their] responses as well as [their] answers.
We need to hear what [the interviewee] im-
plied, suggested, and started to say but
didn’t. We need to interpret their pauses and,
when it happens, their unwillingness or inabil-
ity to respond’ (Jack and Anderson, 1991,
p. 17). As this quote suggests, qualitative
interviews typically require textual rather
than the statistical analyses typical for ques-
tionnaire surveys. The desire to extract the
most meaning from transcripts has led some
researchers to use transcription systems
developed for conversational analysis, in
which attempts are made to signal pauses
and capture some of the emotional content
of the interview within the transcription
(England, 2002).
Domosh (2003) has criticized geographers
for tending to analyse interview transcripts as
if they are authentic expressions of experience.
The need to examine interview data as
discourse and performance rather than
raw experience is nicely demonstrated in
Visweswaran’s (1994) description of her dis-
covery that several of her interviewees had
deceived her. Her analysis shows interviews
to be performances in which the interviewees
display limited and sometimes falsified aspects
of their selves and experiences. Rather than
worrying about the fact of deception, Viswes-
waran tries to understand why she was told
particular things for specific reasons. These
reasons include the fact that interviewees
were unable to express some ideas or criti-
cisms within dominant discourse. It is only
through repeated interviews, supplemented
by ethnographic and archival research, that
she is able to glean this. Nightingale (2003)
approaches the incompleteness of in-depth
interviews from another angle, stressing the
advantage of mixed methods. Given the par-
tial nature of all knowledge, she recommends
that interview material be combined with
other types of data, and that it be treated as
no more authentic or less mediated than quan-
tified forms of data, in the case of her research,
remote sensing maps. Because survey methods
are more appropriate for establishing patterns
over a large population, they can be used
effectively in combination with qualitative
interviews.
There are many excellent methodology text-
books that introduce the basics of interviewing
methodology, including Limb and Dwyer
(2001) and Valentine (2005). gpSuggested reading
Crang (2002); Limb and Dwyer (2001);
Valentine (2005).intifada A popular uprising against military
occupation (seeoccupation, military), de-
rived from the Arabic for a ‘shaking off’. The
term originated in two phases of Palestinian
resistance to Israeli occupation. Israel occupied
Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 and, despite
United Nations Security Council resolutions
and international law, encouraged its civilians
to establish colonies (‘settlements’) there (see
verticality, politics of). The First Intifada
was a spontaneous uprising that began in
December 1987. It involved a disengagement
from systems of Israeli administration and
developed into a vigorous assertion of the
Palestinian right to national self-determination.
After a protracted struggle, the uprising came
to an end in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo
accords, the promise of a phased Israeli with-
drawal and the establishment of the Palestinian
National Authority. The process of Israeli
colonization continued unchecked, however,
and in September 2000 a Second Intifada,
the al-Aqsa Intifada, broke out (Carey, 2001;
Gregory, 2004b). It was rooted in the failure of
the ‘peace process’ and the accelerated dispos-
session of Palestinians, but it spluttered to an
end during 2005. The Second Intifada was
more desperate and more violent than the
first: B’Tselem, the Israeli Center for Human
Rights, estimates that 422 Israelis and 1,551
Palestinians were killed between 1987 and
2000, whereas 468 Israelis and 3,418
Palestinians had been killed from 2000 throughGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_I Final Proof page 394 31.3.2009 7:05pmINTIFADA