structure or the political or communal role of the person being interviewed,
more than the physical space itself, although it can also refer to the choices
of interview settings. For example, is this person likely to be more
comfortable talking with me if we meet away from her workplace or his
regular “hang-out”? For documentary research, space would refer more to
the location and choice of archives, in terms of availability of certain
materials, access to particular files, and lack of access to others. In either
event, providing the rationale for choices made can help a reader evaluate
the trustworthiness of the subsequent analysis.
Exposure. Textbooks often note that “prolonged exposure” over time is one
of the hallmarks of interpretive research. What is missing is the
understanding that prolonged exposure refers to space as well. Time and
space interact in interesting ways in interpretive research.
Again, to begin with field-based research of a participant observer-
ethnographer kind, the reader wants to know that you have “mapped” your
territory. In an organizational setting, this can mean covering all the
(research-relevant) occupational bases; all the possible perspectives in a
department; all the departments in an organization or a horizontal slice or
regional arm of one; or both vertical and horizontal swathes through it,
much as an archaeologist might cut trenches in various locations within a
single site. In a community or policy study, one might map one’s territory
Convention