Perception and Articulation of own Cultural Otherness in Elite Interview Situations: Challenge or Repertoire?

Increasingly, researchers are conducting studies within a diversity of cultural contexts This paper discusses whether and how the researcher’s own cultural otherness plays a role in academic interview situations. The argument is based on Goffman’s theory of interaction under conditions of otherness and the empirical data from 118 interviews and notes during the years 2007 and 2010 and between 2013 and 2014. The empirical data presented in this paper illustrate how a lack of education, socialisation, and cultivation within the fieldwork context—one’s own cultural otherness—assumes ceremonial and substantial meaning in academic interview situations and merits being the subject of methodological considerations