scholarly journals The Changing Face of Qualitative Inquiry

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 160940692090993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice Morse

When examining the changes in society and the concomitant changes in research methods in the last century, unquestionably qualitative inquiry has been superseded by quantitative methods and had to work to find its niche in the social sciences. Here, I explore the push factors that have made space for the establishment and legitimization of qualitative inquiry. I discuss what we are doing well in qualitative methods, then examine the status quo—present worries, concerns, and future trends. I present three major problems that need attention, critique, and resolution in qualitative methods to further strengthen our foothold as we move forward. Methodological development is one of the primary purposes of the International Institute of Qualitative Methods (IIQM). In closing, I examine the role of the IIQM in the global development of qualitative methods.

Author(s):  
Manfredi Valeriani ◽  
Vicki L. Plano Clark

This chapter examines mixed-methods research, which is an approach that involves the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods at one or more stages of a research study. The central idea behind mixed-methods research is that the intentional combination of numeric-based methods with narrative-based methods can best provide answers to some research questions. The ongoing attempts to construct a simple and common conceptualization of mixed-methods provide a good indicator of the status of mixed-methods itself. mixed-methods research has emerged as a formalized methodology well suited to addressing complex problems, and is currently applied throughout the social sciences and beyond. Nowadays, researchers interested in combining quantitative and qualitative methods can benefit from the growing knowledge about the epistemological foundations, essential considerations, and rigorous designs that have been advanced for mixed-methods research.


Organization ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian P. O’Doherty

The appearance of ‘Olly the cat’ on the doorsteps of a major UK international airport provides occasion to reconsider the role of the animal in organization and offers suggestive insight into how we might have to learn new ways of being within extended multi-species or interspecies ontologies. Olly is found to lead multiple lives that cannot be reduced to the status of object or media of human intentionality. Her increasing political involvement in the management and organization of the airport challenges orthodox understanding of agency and organizational action. As the ethnography becomes progressively more implicated in the entanglements between human and animal, the concept of ‘feline politics’ is proposed and deployed. This allows research to retain focus on actions and behaviour and modes of thinking that would ordinarily be occluded by conventional modes of organizational representation. In these ways the ethnography moves beyond the interpretative and symbolic treatment of organization analysis and finds resource in the recent ‘ontological turn’ in the social sciences. Embracing what is the inevitable participation of the social sciences in the reflexive and recursive enactment of its phenomena, the ethnography discovers new potentialities and new capacities for action as emergent properties of ‘the human’ and ‘the animal’ were mutually learnt, exchanged and acquired. This article adds to what we know about the limits of management as it confronts a radical undecidability characterized by the co-existence of multiple and interacting ontological becomings.


Dialogue ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-326
Author(s):  
Stéphane Courtois

AbstractThe general aim of this paper is to question the idea that hermeneutic and critical social sciences have to be conceived as specific embodiments of the scientific enterprise. This idea is rather implicit in Habermas's work, but has its grounds in his thesis about the argumentative unity of all sciences, upheld for the first time in 1973. Such a point of view turns out to be untenable for two reasons. First, the indiscriminating inclusion of the hermeneutic and critical social sciences in scientific enterprise raises problems of consistency with regard to the systematic guidelines of The Theory of Communicative Action. Moreover, the thesis of argumentative unity of the sciences itself is incompatible with Habermas's methodological conception of the role of Verstehen in the social sciences developed in section 1.4 of the book. Finally, the author argues that this conception calls for another understanding of the status and role of the hermeneutic and critical disciplines, which is outlined in some detail.


2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
Michael Mumisa

The 20th century has been witness to great developments in theology, philosophy of language and the social sciences. Postmodernism has emerged as an influential philosophical thought. All of these 20th century phenomena have influenced how people approach sacred texts and how they comprehend and interpret them. Muslims have not been immune to these developments, and accordingly there has been a realisation among Muslim theorists that the existing interpretations of the Qur'an and Sunnah (imitado Muhammadi) may be limited and not able to suffice the needs of a changing world. The Islamic world has also been rapidly expanding to incorporate races, cultures and environments of various kinds. Consequently, racial and cultural problems have emerged causing a great need among progressive Muslims, particularly the youth, women, people of colour, and other concerned Muslims for a re-reading of the sacred texts so that they become existentially meaningful in the here and now. Such a reading will have to take into consideration differences of perspective and social location. Although this article proposes an African Qur'anic hermeneutics within the liberative discourse, it is not necessarily proposing an African Muslim perspective of liberation since there can be no such a thing as an ‘African perspective’, ‘feminist perspective’ or even ‘Christian perspective’ of liberation. By confirming the ‘us’ versus ‘them’, or dominant versus ‘other’ in the liberation process, it serves to confirm the status quo which we seek to change.


1974 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Lalive d'Epinay ◽  
Jacques Zylberberg

The multiple forms of the religious phenomenon and its cosmologies have often been pointed out. The social role of a religion can never be defined once and for all. The role played by religion as an agent for social protest and awareness or as a factor of the status quo must be made explicit for each historical period and specific social group. How are the religions in Chili situated between these functions of alienation and awareness ? The authors of this article examine the positions of Indian animism, Catholicism and Protestantism and outline the complex relationships exist ing between the nation, classes, social groups, and religious behavior in Chili.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 205979911988427
Author(s):  
Aliraza Javaid

Other writers, notably police researchers, infrequently discuss the problems and difficulties that they encounter in and outside of fieldwork when doing research on the police. In this article, I piece together some critical and personal reflections of researching the police to provide nuanced information that can help other writers to learn from my own experiences of researching the police and also help them to navigate their own experiences of working with the police for research purposes. These reflections of mine emanate from fieldwork notes and my research diary. I use Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness as a lens to theorise and make sense of such experiences, understanding how my presence gets in the way of the happiness of others because of my affiliation to sexual violence work. By naming a problem, rape as a problem, I became the problem. The article outlines some of the chief ethical, personal and pragmatic issues that can surface when researching the police. For example, I frequently encountered interrogative questions whereby officers questioned my sexuality, asking ‘are you gay?’ I became a nuisance for the police, a problem by highlighting the issue of male rape as a problem given that it challenges the status quo of normative heterosexuality. I argue that, doing research on the police, which can involve sensitive and challenging work that affects one emotionally, socially and physically, impacts not only the officers being interviewed, but also the researchers themselves. The latter group should be identified much more readily than seems to be the case in the social sciences.


2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 448-480
Author(s):  
Hermes Moreira Jr.

A concepção de uma disciplina acadêmica sistematizada para o estudo das relações internacionais se deu atrelada à necessidade de criação de um arcabouço teórico para a compreensão da dinâmica do sistema internacional e das possibilidades de mudança ou estabilidade da ordem política nesse sistema. Nesse sentido, o objetivo deste texto é demonstrar em que medida as teorias do chamado mainstream acadêmico, tradicionais na análise da política internacional, ao naturalizar a conformação da ordem política internacional e minimizar o papel das disputas entre as forças sociais na constituição das relações internacionais, exercem um papel favorável à manutenção da ordem hegemônica e conservação do status quo. Não obstante, perspectivas contestatórias reconheceram e evidenciaram os limites das teorias do mainstream e preencheram a lacuna político-acadêmica contida nas teorias tradicionais de Relações Internacionais ao longo do desenvolvimento de seu campo acadêmico e institucional. Abstract: The design of an academic discipline for the systematic study of international relations occurred tied to the need to establish a theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics of the international system and the possibilities for change or stability of the political order in this system. Accordingly, this paper aims to demonstrate the extent to which the so-called mainstream academic theories, traditional analysis of international politics, to naturalize the conformation of the international political order and minimize the role of the disputes between the social forces in the constitution of international relations, play a role in favor of maintaining the hegemonic order and preserving the status quo. Nevertheless, prospects contesting recognized and showed the limits of the mainstream theories and filled the political and academic gap contained in traditional theories of international relations during the development of their academic and institutional concepts. 


2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni A. Travaglino

This research uses the social banditry framework to propose that voiceless individuals in an unjust context may express their grievances vicariously. Specifically, it holds that individuals who perceive the system as unjust but lack political efficacy, express their anger against the system as support for actors whose behavior disrupts the system’s functioning. These actors are situated outside conventional societal and political structures of power and institutions. To test the social banditry framework, two studies investigate attitudes toward Anonymous, a group of hackers who challenge the status quo using online tactics such as trolling. Study 1 ( N = 304) demonstrates that appraising the system as more unjust and perceiving lower political efficacy are positively linked to anger against the system, which in turn predicts more positive attitudes toward Anonymous. In contrast, stronger injustice-fueled anger and stronger political efficacy predict intentions to engage in direct forms of political action, such as protesting or voting. Study 2 ( N = 410) replicates these findings, and theorizes and tests the role of individualistic and collectivistic values in predicting vicarious and direct expressions of dissent. Study 2 demonstrates that endorsement of horizontal individualism predicts positive attitudes towards Anonymous, whereas horizontal collectivism predicts engagement in direct political action. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 253-274

The article centers on the rhetoric of Thorstein Veblen, who combined economic, sociological and anthropological approaches in an organic way. The paper emphasizes the importance and heuristic significance of Veblen’s use of the trope of irony. An ironic stance buttresses his critique of the status quo and promotes an understanding of the socio-economic structure as complex, controversial and sometimes absurd. The article highlights the examples and themes that Veblen described with recourse to irony. Irony accompanies his criticism of the status quo, and it appears in his account of such phenomena as the leisure class, business culture, higher education, modern Western civilization as epitomized by America, and in his exposure of the postulates and hidden ideologies of mainstream economics.The author shows that Veblen’s followers took his irony as an idiosyncrasy typical for someone descended from Norwegian farmers, while the tropes themselves were usually unfavorably contrasted with serious research, i.e. that side of his heritage was regarded as a caprice that interfered with later recognition of Veblen’s merit. The article intends to demonstrate exactly the opposite by calling attention to irony in the social sciences and showing its significance for them. Irony as a negative and multifaceted characterization of reality better reflects the phenomena themselves with their inherent paradoxes and complexity. Irony assists us in keeping a proper distance from the intensity of a description and in revealing socio-economic processes with all their dynamics and contradictions. It is the ironic that makes Veblen’s heritage relevant after all.


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