Although I’m still inching my way through Geoffrey Bowker’s “Memory practices in the sciences”, I’ve been sneaking peeks into Charles L. Briggs, Learning How to Ask; A Sociolinguistic Appraisal of the Role of the Interview in Social Science Research (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). This little statement stood out loud and clear:

Interview techniques smuggle outmoded preconceptions out of the realm of conscious theory and into that of methodology.

I keep suspecting that interviewing leaders or members of communities of practice is useful but is also very problematic. Making friends over a much longer term might be more reliable, although it takes much more time and brings up lots of other questions about who learns what from whom.