Showing papers in "Qualitative Inquiry in 2006"
TL;DR: The authors examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge, one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development, the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building, case study contains a bias toward verification, and it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies.
Abstract: This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.
8,876 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss common conceptions of interviews as dialogues and the extensive application of qualitative research interviews in a consumer society, highlighting power asymmetries in interview relationships.
Abstract: The article discusses common conceptions of interviews as dialogues and the extensive application of qualitative research interviews in a consumer society. In the first part, an understanding of research interviews as warm, caring, and empowering dialogues is questioned by highlighting power asymmetries in interview relationships. Agonistic interview techniques, which play on contradictions and power differences, are outlined. The second part of the article points to the prevalence of dialogues as exercises of power in politics, management, and education. The third part outlines the interview production of knowledge for consumption in a postmodern society. The article concludes that recognition of power dynamics by the social construction of knowledge in interviews is necessary to ascertain objectivity and ethicality of interview research.
971 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that case studies need not make any claims about the generalizability of their findings but rather, what is crucial is the use others make of them, that they feed into processes of naturalistic generalization.
Abstract: It is an issue of some contestation as to whether generalization is an appropriate requisite to demand of case study research in any case. The author argues that the critique is misdirected, and based on Bent Flyvbjerg’s concept of a “critical case,” ways of generalizing from case studies are indicated (Iran/Iraq War of 1980). In addition, the author illustrates that the case study is idyllic for generalizing using the brand of test that Karl Popper called “falsification.” Conversely, the author exhibits Robert Stake’s ethos that case studies need not make any claims about the generalizability of their findings but rather, what is crucial is the use others make of them—chiefly, that they feed into processes of “naturalistic generalization.”
286 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an ethic of accountability for auto-ethnographic writing is outlined, and the emotional consequences of getting "lost" in the slippage of a former partner's autoethno-graphic writing are discussed.
Abstract: Autoethnographers strive to present truthful accounts, the essence of their experience, rather than the Truth or an objective account. There is mindful slippage between Truth and truthful. The author reflects on the emotional consequences of getting “lost” in the slippage of a former partner’s autoethno-graphic writing and contemplates the ethical questions that should be confronted about slippage when making decisions about what to leave in and/or what to leave out. An ethic of accountability for autoethnographic writing is outlined.
116 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the ways in which problems of concealment emerged in an ethnographic study of a suburban bar and consider how disclosure of the research aims, the recruitment of informants, and elicitation of information was negotiated throughout the fieldwork.
Abstract: This article examines the ways in which problems of concealment emerged in an ethnographic study of a suburban bar and considers how disclosure of the research aims, the recruitment of informants, and elicitation of information was negotiated throughout the fieldwork. The case study demonstrates how the social context and the relationships with specific informants determined overtness or covertness in the research. It is argued that the existing literature on covert research and covert methods provides an inappropriate frame of reference with which to understand concealment in fieldwork. The article illustrates why concealment is sometimes necessary, and often unavoidable, and concludes that the criticisms leveled against covert methods should not stop the fieldworker from engaging in research that involves covertness.
115 citations
TL;DR: The authors present a suite of poems that express distillations and crystallizations of a wide range of writing in contemporary continental philosophy and performance theory, which forms part of a current dissertation inquiry in the form of a curriculum theory of audience in performance and education.
Abstract: Creating found poetry from theoretical literature offers an arts-based approach to literature review in inquiry. Found poetry has a long history of practice in poetry as the imaginative appropriation and reconstruction of already-existing texts. This article presents literature-voiced research found poems that express distillations and crystallizations of a wide range of writing in contemporary continental philosophy and performance theory. The suite of poems forms part of a current dissertation inquiry in the form of a curriculum theory of audience in performance and education.
108 citations
TL;DR: The authors presented an autoethnography of the author as a dysfluent coach, which depicts a typical pregame scenario, explores issues associated with maintaining "face" and others' respect in a context characterized by uncertainty, ambiguity, and power.
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to tell a different, perhaps a “truer,” story about coaches and coaching through presenting an autoethnography of the author as a dysfluent coach. The author’s tale, which depicts a typical pregame scenario, explores issues associated with maintaining “face” and others’ respect in a context characterized by uncertainty, ambiguity, and power. In addition, within the endnotes, the applicability of the storied genre to coaching research is discussed, with Goffman’s works on stigma, interaction, and impression management offered as theoretical signposts to help readers better interpret the author’s account.
99 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an inquiry of discomfort is proposed to identify and promote a beneficial shift from dualistic, categorical, and entrenched subjective positionality to a more ambiguous engagement with social reality.
Abstract: This article argues for conducting emancipatory narrative research with the explicit intent of transforming participants’ lives by opening up new subjective possibilities. Drawing from Megan Boler’s pedagogy of discomfort and Gubrium and Holstein’s active interviewing, a narrative research method called an inquiry of discomfort is proposed. An inquiry of discomfort emphasizes the proactive and transformative potential of research projects for both researcher and participant. The aim of an inquiry of discomfort is to identify and promote a beneficial shift from dualistic, categorical, and entrenched subjective positionality to a more ambiguous engagement with social reality. The argument is considered in light of preliminary empirical findings from a narrative pilot study of masculine heterosexual subjectivity in graduate education, conducted in the fall of 2003. Based on theoretical and empirical evidence, the general features of an inquiry of discomfort within an emancipatory narrative study are presented.
78 citations
TL;DR: The relationship between the author and his father when it comes to golf and gay-related issues is discussed in this article. But the author is also stuck between two canonical stories, one that says he must work...
Abstract: Tension plagues the relationship between the author and his father when it comes to golf- and gay-related issues. The author is also stuck between two canonical stories, one that says he must work ...
75 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the author discusses the knotty methodological and epistemological issues raised while doing research in rural communities in South Africa and explores the tensions between theory and experience, insiders and outsiders, and writing and orality.
Abstract: This article discusses the knotty methodological and epistemological issues raised while doing research in rural communities in South Africa. Using entries from the author's field journal and conversations with rural Black women, this article explores the tensions between theory and experience, insiders and outsiders, and writing and orality. Rather than reconciling these tensions, feminist method resides amid the contradictions, wedged in the methodological and epistemological between spaces that open up the possibility of multiple interpretations and dialogue.
74 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe some of the essential features of a methodological approach to studying individuals' deeper motivations and experiences, which consists of "interviewing for feeling" with "the participant as ally and co-contemplator", "conceptually developed essentialist portraiture, and cross-case discussion, with an epistemology based on C. H. Cooley's principle of "sympathetic introspection".
Abstract: This article describes some of the essential features of a methodological approach to studying individuals’ deeper motivations and experiences. The overall approach consists of “interviewing for feeling” with “the participant as ally and co-contemplator,” “conceptually developed essentialist portraiture,” and cross-case discussion, with an epistemology based on C. H. Cooley’s principle of “sympathetic introspection.” The heart of the article is an example of an analysis of excerpts from an interview with an English as a second language teacher regarding her interest in language. The analysis illustrates how to see and conceptualize the manner in which certain essential aspects in the participant’s consciousness and overall orientation evolve in time. This example is then used to illustrate several concerns of portraiture and the epistemological presuppositions of the approach.
TL;DR: This paper explored the methodological problems encountered as I attempted to locate and recruit 40 male participants for the research I am currently undertaking on the experience of friendship across gender across gender and the life course.
Abstract: This article explores the methodological problems encountered as I attempted to locate and recruit 40 male participants for the research I am currently undertaking on the experience of friendship across gender and the life course. The situation I found myself in was that men were considerably harder to recruit than women. In this article, I describe the various problems I encountered and I propose several reasons that men's reluctance to participate may have occurred. I outline the strategies I employed to counter these recruitment difficulties and reflect on some measures that might have been taken to avoid these problems. This is in no way a conclusive article, but it aims to raise the issue of male reluctance, which I believe requires serious discussion in the wider social research community due to the “interview society” in which we currently find ourselves.
TL;DR: Using personal narrative, the authors examines how masks function to subordinate African American and Latina women in the academy, using Critical Race Theory and more specifically critical race gendered epistemologies, including Black feminist thought and Chicana feminist epistemology.
Abstract: Using personal narrative, this article examines how masks function to subordinate African American and Latina women in the academy The article uses Critical Race Theory and more specifically critical race gendered epistemologies, including Black feminist thought and Chicana feminist epistemology, to understand how females of color resist in the academy Interweaving two narratives, the narrative of an African American woman and her experiences in the White academy with the author's personal narrative about resisting cultural and linguistic domination, this article seeks to understand the process of redefinition leading toward self empowerment Critical in exposing hidden truths, the article unmasks racism in the White academy, challenging the dominant discourse
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the quality of qualitative research reflects the quality developed between the researcher and researched as "knowing subjects", and the implications of a turn to relation as following these themes: the commitment to knowing to care, engendering multiple relations, illusions of closeness, and representation of relational knowing.
Abstract: This article is an analysis of “relation” in qualitative research. The analysis emerges from consideration of feminist philosophies of ethics and epistemologies, including Code's moral epistemology, and exemplars of qualitative research by Duneier and Lather and Smithies. The central argument of the article is that the quality of qualitative research reflects the quality of relation developed between the researcher and researched as “knowing subjects.” The article shows the implications of a turn to relation as following these themes: the commitment to knowing to care, engendering multiple relations, illusions of closeness, and representation of relational knowing.
TL;DR: In this article, two sociologists, one a practitioner, the other a sedentary observer, collaborate to study what attracts students outside Brazil to capoeira, how it is taught to non-Brazilians, and how the classes and social events are enacted and understood.
Abstract: This article is an unusual reflexive text. It has two authors, two voices, two embodied experiences, and two sociological biographies in dialogue. The empirical focus is capoeira, but the ethnographic experience is common to many cultural forms. Capoeira is the Brazilian dance and martial art, done to the music of the berimbau. Classes are offered in many European countries, as well as in North America. Two sociologists, one a practitioner, the other a sedentary observer, collaborate to study what attracts students outside Brazil to capoeira, how it is taught to non-Brazilians, and how the classes and social events are enacted and understood. The dualities of the collaborative and contrastive engagements are explored in this article, which focuses on how to do fieldwork on an embodied skill. Physical activity, musical apprenticeship, and a multilingual environment are all made problematic in their collaborative reflections.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe and critically examine the collaborative research process between an urban university's research center and its community partners, focusing on recruitment and attendance issues, development, language and methods issues, and the university and funding agency-driven push for a product.
Abstract: This article describes and critically examines the collaborative research process between an urban university’s research center and its community partners. The authors link the theoretical framework of collaborative research, participatory action research, and critical pedagogy to their personal experiences involving two collaborative research projects in which they participated. The projects were designed to foster engagement of youth in civic life through social research and to raise awareness of social inequality and injustice. The authors critically examine various phases of research with a particular focus on the following challenges: recruitment and attendance issues, development, language and methods issues, and the university and funding agency-driven push for a “product.” The authors point out the strengths and weaknesses of the collaborative approach and problematize issues not visible in the final research reports. Finally, strategies for enhancing the quality of the collaborative research invo...
TL;DR: In this paper, a performance-oriented "ourstory" that blends academic, personal, biographical, and popular culture discourses is presented, where the author presents four scenes chronicling her own and one research participant's moments from precollege through present day.
Abstract: This autoethnographic text invites readers into identity work at the interstices of growing up working class and becoming an academic. Influenced by mystory scholarship, the author has crafted a performance-oriented "ourstory" that blends academic, personal, biographical, and popular culture discourses. Following an introduction, the author presents four scenes chronicling her own and one research participant's moments from precollege through present day. The text uses a wide-angle lens to view the social dimensions of being a first-generation college student and academic. In proximate existential moments, readers also move inward, being exposed to two vulnerable, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory "selves-in-process." A critical text reflecting the belief that the ethnographic, aesthetic, and political can never be neatly separated, it seeks to provoke us to deconstruct the degrees of separation between private troubles and public issues.
TL;DR: The E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One) narrative as discussed by the authors is a collective narrative of the Black Ph.D. students' experience in predominantly white academic institutions.
Abstract: Written to initiate a dialogue about race in the academy, this narrative focuses on the experience of Black Ph.D. students in predominantly White academic institutions. Experimental in method and representation, this article poses important questions about race in academia. The author utilizes several qualitative opportunities, writing as autoethnography, poetry, and narrative. As a participant and researcher of the experience, the author is given the unique position of telling and listening, observing and explaining, strategizing and editing. The author takes your story (a construction developed to create a bridge between your world and mine) and combines it with her story, (the author’s motivations for writing about this experience), and folds it into their story (compiling the findings of the research based on an interview), to create our story (a collective narrative of the Black Ph.D. experience). Hence, the title, “E Pluribus Unum,” which translates “out of many, one.”
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a failed interview that seemingly provided no usable data, and explore the phenomenon of participant shame and the role of the researcher in expanding conversational space to allow for the expression of shameful storylines, and suggest that participant silence is a collaboratively produced constraint stemming from an unsuccessful subtextual negotiation about the linguistic environment of the interview.
Abstract: In this article, the author presents a “failed” interview that seemingly provided no usable data. The audiotape segments of participant talk were nearly inaudible and most of the interview could not be transcribed. Upon repeated readings of salvageable fragments, however, a pattern of silencing became noticeable. The author suggests that participant silence is a collaboratively produced constraint stemming from an unsuccessful subtextual negotiation about the linguistic environment of the interview. She explores the phenomenon of participant shame and the role of the researcher in expanding conversational space to allow for the expression of shameful storylines. Current notions of what is “sensitive” research unduly limit researcher's understandings of the collaborative and fragile nature of the interview setting. Research on any topic may turn sensitive if the participant's story includes elements that are potentially distressing and necessary to the storyline. Means for recognizing and accommodating par...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the limitations of evidence-based practice (EBP) in dealing with complicated, situated, and practice-based assessment problems, and refram the debate to focus on practicebased evidence(s) (PBE).
Abstract: Using observations of railroad employees and two 17-year-old girls who wanted to board a train without proper identification or parental permission, one of the major themes of the First International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry, which raised challenges to the growing practice of defining “good science” as the result of “evidence-based, biomedical models of inquiry,” is considered. Limitations of evidence-based practice (EBP) in dealing with complicated, situated, and practice-based assessment problems are discussed. The qualitative research community ought not to concede the framing of EBP. It should be reframed to focus on practice-based evidence(s) (PBE). Doing so changes the nature of debate, highlights the practitioner role, recognizes practitioner agency in evaluating evidence, focuses on real-world situations (thus embracing complications), and honors the notion of multiple and competing evidence sources. PBE encourages research designs favored by qualitative researchers that explore contextuall...
TL;DR: In this paper, the author examines the dilemmas that emerged in his role as teacher-researcher in Hip-Hop Lit, a hip-hop-centered literature class within an evening education program.
Abstract: In this article, the author examines the dilemmas that emerged in his role as teacher-researcher in Hip-Hop Lit, a hip-hop-centered literature class within an evening education program. Specifically, the author examines the complex and often competing roles and identities that he performed within the research context, as well as during the process of ethnographic writing. The author details how these roles and identities were mediated by the various allegiances, commitments, and beliefs that prompted the study, as well as those that developed in response to the relationships that were forged with research participants. The article argues for a constant reflection on and response to issues of identity, authority, and power while in the field and “behind the desk.”
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the process of using dance performance as a way of representing feminist research through their own experiences of choreographing and performing a solo contemporary dance piece that embraced feminist agenda of representing a positive feminine identity.
Abstract: This article deals with the process of using dance performance as a way of representing feminist research. It aims to document this process through the author's own experiences of choreographing and performing a solo contemporary dance piece that embraced feminist agenda of representing a positive feminine identity. The article derives from Gilles Deleuze's theoretical concept of Body without Organs in an attempt to disread the dancing body and inhabit an alternative molecular femininity. The article concludes that a dance performance has potential to succeed as a research presentation. However, the researcher needs to proceed cautiously by retaining a close connection to the audience's experiences yet assuming a clear theoretical vision.
TL;DR: This article used a focus group with parents on the topic of state standard education and found that dialogue is a central feature of focus groups and is also a primary component of philosophical hermeneutic theories of understanding.
Abstract: Dialogue is a central feature of focus groups. It is also a primary component of philosophical hermeneutic theories of understanding. Using a focus group with parents on the topic of state standard...
TL;DR: This article used a post-modern lens to examine cognitive emotional reactions of the interviewer to the unexpected, and showed how shocks and "shockwaves" responses to shocks are related to the process of Othering.
Abstract: This article uses a postmodern lens to examine “shocks,” cognitive emotional reactions of the interviewer to the unexpected, and shows how shocks and “shockwaves,” responses to shocks, are related to the process of Othering. The concepts master narrative, coherence, Othering, positionality, and nonunitary subjectivity are used to present the analysis. Using excerpts from research interviews as illustrations, the article describes three types of shocks—those based on a violation of a social taboo, those deriving from professional role reversal, and those that are based on stereotypes. In addition, it explains three types of responses to shock—avoidance, circular strategies, and acceptance and moving on. The article shows how interviewees resist being Othered and, in an attempt to negotiate a more equitable interview situation, administer shocks. Interviewer expectations of master narratives and the process of Othering prevent interviewers from hearing complex, multifaceted, and atypical stories.
TL;DR: The collection of stories in this article reveals the social and cultural contexts of women's lived experiences with pregnancy through a feminist lens and contributes to the dialogue of creative analytic practice and representation fostered by qualitative inquiry and feminist epistemologies.
Abstract: Increasingly, women are subjected to examination throughout pregnancy and childbirth. Historically, pregnancy and childbirth were considered a natural, normal, woman-centered event. Presently, they are conceptualized as a dangerous time when a woman's health and that of her baby are at risk, thus requiring constant medical monitoring and intervention, often under the control of male physicians. As a consequence, women negotiate their experiences with pregnancy in a medicalized and fetocentric ideological context. The collection of stories in this article reveals the social and cultural contexts of women's lived experiences with pregnancy through a feminist lens. Short stories are used to give voice to women's experiences and to assert that women are the experts of their own health and well-being. Moreover, the use of narratives contributes to the dialogue of creative analytic practice and representation fostered by qualitative inquiry and feminist epistemologies.
TL;DR: The authors discusses the implications of an ethnographer's sexuality with regard to his fieldwork, and discusses how his queer identity and the fear of repercussions against his intellectual and physical body affected his field work.
Abstract: This article discusses the implications of an ethnographer’s sexuality with regard to his fieldwork. Adopting a self-reflexive stance, the author discusses how his queer identity and the fear of repercussions against his intellectual and physical body affected his fieldwork. As a native Brazilian, he was still an outsider in the rural community in which he did his fieldwork. But more than his outsider status, his memories of growing up in the closet in Brazil informed some of his research choices and shaped his reactions to the experience of returning to the closet to conduct research in a community where machista attitudes, notions of queerness, and his own internalized homophobia positioned his queer self as an outsider.
TL;DR: The authors traces the concept of reciprocity in historical and contemporary constructions of qualitative research methodology and demonstrates how a particular construct, even if designed to serve a particular purpose, still fails to serve all.
Abstract: This article traces the concept of reciprocity in historical and contemporary constructions of qualitative research methodology. It demonstrates how a particular construct—even if designed to serve...
TL;DR: In this paper, two distinct forms of resymbolization within an arts-informed research process are discussed, in the first instance during the work of the group, and in the second instance, during the author's process of writing about the research.
Abstract: This article discusses two distinct forms of resymbolization within an arts-informed research process. The particular research outlined herein involves the work of a group of women, including the author as participant-researcher, who investigated difficult experiences in teaching through writing, and who responded to one another's stories through the use of various artistic media including paint, crayons, modeling clay, fabric, and blocks. The group's over-arching purpose was to problematize the taken-for-granted ways that they had interpreted such experiences. The two distinct forms of resymbolization outlined in this paper occurred, in the first instance, during the work of the group, and in the second instance, during the author's process of writing about the research. Through this paper, the author also works toward providing a theoretical framework that demonstrates why resymbolization is a crucial component of this arts-informed process. In doing so, the author draws on the work of feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray.
TL;DR: In this paper, the author discusses friendship as a method of qualitative inquiry and how this method informed research on the social construction of masculinity in male-male friendships, focusing on the role of autoethnography in conducting and representing qualitative work on masculinity.
Abstract: In this article, the author discusses friendship as a method of qualitative inquiry and howthis method informed research on the social construction of masculinity in male-male friendships. First, a narrative account of a first meeting with a participant is given. Next, the discursive aspect of fieldwork is considered where the author's ideas about friendship as method and “the reach of dialogue” are outlined. Finally, the article focuses on the role of autoethnography in conducting and representing qualitative work on masculinity.
TL;DR: In this paper, a group of high school drama students, from a rural, mainly Aboriginal community, participated in a Popular Theater project called Life in the Sticks, which was based on their initial claim that their issues were determined by their rural environment.
Abstract: This article discusses several ethical dilemmas with which the author struggled in doing and reflecting on her doctoral research. She engaged a group of high school drama students, from a rural, mainly Aboriginal community, in a Popular Theater project. Titled Life in the Sticks, the project was based on students’ initial claim that their issues were determined by their rural environment. Drawing on traditions in participatory research and performance ethnography, performance helped them reexamine aspects of their lived experiences, including those that deem them “at risk.” The author's ethical entanglements included difficulties in representing and interpreting the resulting participatory research, problems surrounding the label “at risk,” challenges of doing Popular Theater in school, and concerns about the absence of Aboriginal identity/ issues in the students’ performances. The author drew on a feminist ethics of care and performance ethics to make her way through the tangles that emerged.