Qualitative Research current issue

Persona non grata: dilemmas of being an outsider researching immigration reform activism

Armitage, J. S. — 2008-04-15

Sociologists may encounter myriad obstacles in the research process that affect the research design and outcomes. There is, for example, a certain measure of resistance and hostility experienced in sociological research on distasteful social movements that is seldom acknowledged or included in published findings. The present analysis explores the emotional conflicts between the research program and the 'gatekeeping' activities of research respondents and the professional academic community in the USA. Politically sensitive, even volatile subjects such as the US immigration reform movement may rest on the classic affective/cognitive dichotomy found in sociology. I suggest that moralistic or politically positioned emotional resistance complicated the research process in two ways: 1) academic associates and mentors likened involvement with the immigration reform movement to scholarly complicity that marginalized the study's validity; and, 2) activists were inherently distrustful of the research and its goals given what they claimed to be a history of misinterpretation and scholarly 'bad press.'

Cross-cultural researching: Maori and Pakeha in Te Whakapakari

Carpenter, V. M., McMurchy-Pilkington, C. — 2008-04-15

This paper focuses on evolving Maori centred qualitative research methods, and the cross-cultural relationship between two researchers who identify respectively as Maori and Pakeha New Zealanders. The researchers discuss methodology issues which surrounded the school based Te Whakapakari research project. The project's aim was to raise the academic achievement of Maori (indigenous New Zealanders) mainstreamed children. The writers discuss their theoretical and personal backgrounds, and the accommodations they each made to meet the goals of the project. The writers argue that the face-to-face aspects (he kanohi kitea) of the project were integral to the project's success. The qualitative research based project included action research, and Maori-based professional development. A Freirean approach was integral to professional development. The writers worked alongside six teachers and school leaders.

Fieldnotes in team ethnography: researching complementary schools

Creese, A., Bhatt, A., Bhojani, N., Martin, P. — 2008-04-15

Ethnography has typically been seen as a singular research journey in which the lone researcher engages in the study of a community. However, increasingly within the social sciences, ethnographic research takes place in teams. This article explores the processes of using fieldnotes to develop team ethnography in a study of Gujarati complementary schools in a diverse English city. Complementary schools are also known as supplementary, heritage and community language schools. They are voluntary, usually run by local communities, and outside the state education sector. The article looks at how fieldnotes are used by researchers to constitute a team, contest interpretations and produce nuanced accounts of complementary schools. For the purpose of this article, a set of fieldnotes has been selected and presented as a case study to illustrate the role fieldnotes played in the team. The article explores their iterative use by the four-member team to settle upon particular research themes. We consider the role fieldnotes played in the team's reaching contested but shared accounts of social and linguistic action in one particular complementary school.

Positivity in qualitative research: examples from the organized field of postmodernism/poststructuralism

Koro-Ljungberg, M. — 2008-04-15

This article emphasizes the essential role of positivity, an organized field of knowledge, in qualitative research and how positivity enables and limits qualitative data, design, and research process. First, I describe some possible objects and subjects of knowing in qualitative research and discuss potential conditions of postmodernist/poststructuralist qualitative research. I then illustrate how different systems (such as language and power) within the organized field of postmodernism/poststructuralism regulate approaches to qualitative research and possible methodological functions available to researchers. Throughout the article, I make reference to my own research process focusing on the studies of academic achievement and 'scientific giftedness' to produce an article that blends subjective, empirical, and theoretical ways of knowing.

Motives and social organization: sociological amnesia, psychological description and the analysis of accounts

Housley, W., Fitzgerald, R. — 2008-04-15

During the course of this article we explore the sociological tradition of analysing motives and accounts. In doing so we contrast this with more recent methodological developments that have analysed similar phenomena as part of a strategy of respecifying psychological theories of cognition. Through the use of analytic examples we demonstrate how accounts and the invocation of 'inner' or 'underlying' states must be understood not only in terms of situated action but also in terms of the situated accomplishment of social organization. In this way the theoretical amnesia enveloping the analysis of accounts and motives can be confronted and their status as empirical sociological phenomena sustained within future avenues of qualitative research.

Book review: CALVIN MORRILL, DAVID A. SNOW, and CINDY H. WHITE (eds.), Together Alone: Personal Relationships in Public Places. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005, 320 pp. ISBN 0 520 24522 9 (hbk) $50.00, {pound}32.50; ISBN 0 520 24522 7 (pb) $19.95, {pound}12.95

Ian Borer, M. — 2008-04-15

Book review: PALOMA GAY Y BLASCO and HUON WARDLE, How to Read Ethnography. London: Routledge, 2007, 214 pp. (index included). ISBN 0 415 32866 7 (hbk) {pound}60.00, 0 415 32867 5 (pbk), {pound}18.99, 0 203 39096 2 (ebk)

Atkinson, P. — 2008-04-15

Book review: THOMAS L. CHARLTON, LOIS E. MYERS and REBECCA SHARPLESS (eds.), Handbook of Oral History. Oxford: Altamira Press, 2006, 625 pp. ISBN 0 759 102 295 (hbk) {pound}90.50

Hurdley, R. — 2008-04-15

Book review: GILLIAN ROSE, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (Second edition) London: SAGE, 2007, 287 pp. ISBN: 978 1 4129 2190 9 (hbk) {pound}70.00, 978 1 4129 2191 6 (pbk) {pound}21.99

Hurdley, R. — 2008-04-15

Book review: JOHANNA MOISANDER and ANU VALTONEN, Qualitative Marketing Research: A Cultural Approach. London: SAGE, 2006, 227 pp (including index). ISBN: 1 41290380 7 (hbk): {pound}77.00, 1 41290381 5 (pbk): {pound}24.99

Smallbone, T. — 2008-04-15

Book review: LARRY T. REYNOLDS and NANCY J. HERMAN--KINNEY, Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism. Walnut Tree, CA: Altamira Press, 2003, 1077 pp. ISBN 0 7591 0092 6. $110.00

Housley, W. — 2008-04-15

Book review: SARAH PINK, Doing Visual Ethnography: Images, Media and Representation in Research (Second edition). London, Thousand Oaks, New Dehli: SAGE, 2006, 224 pp. ISBN 10 1 4129 2348 4 (pbk) {pound}21.99

Prosser, J. — 2008-04-15