Practice Theoretically Inspired Focus Groups: Socially Recognizable Performativity?

Professor Bente Halkier has written the chapter 'Practice Theoretically Inspired Focus Groups: Socially Recognizable Performativity?' in the international anthology 'A new era in focus group research. Challenges, innovation and practice', edited by Rosaline S. Barbour og David L. Morgan.

Bente Halkier investigates focus group interview and the type of data that comes from it. The focus group data are produced via social interaction and conversation in groups. The chapter discusses the analytical implications of this importance of social interaction for the character of focus group data. Does it make focus group patterns culturally and socially recognizable with regard to participants’ everyday contexts, or are these patterns situational and, therefore, unique to the focus group setting itself. In the chapter, it is argued that it is possible to work with a middle position regarding focus group data: focus group data can be seen as producing knowledge about socially recognizable patterns of everyday activities across contexts, as well as furnishing knowledge about situational negotiations of these patterns in their concrete making and re-making. This argument is based on a practice theoretical perspective on focus groups, and in the chapter, three methodological strategies are outlined for helping to produce social recognizability in focus groups: Network groups, food as input, and media representations as input.

Bente Halkier, Practice Theoretically Inspired Focus Groups: Socially Recognizable Performativity? in 'A new era in focus group research. Challenges, innovation and practice', edited by Rosaline S. Barbour og David L. Morgan, published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.