Exploring or exporting? Qualitative methods in times of globalisation

Abstract

Europeanism, westernism and methodological imperialism all refer to the classic criticism of Western research in non-Western contexts. Though I welcome the debate, I find arguments based on simple binary oppositions and descriptions problematic. This debate is better positioned as one about the quality of qualitative research. With reference to the criticism I ask if contemporary qualitative research is stuck in old problems. Based on my ethnographic data from East Africa I show that the pitfalls of Western research that are pointed to in classic criticisms are the outcome of old models and poor analytic work. I also show that contemporary ‘Western’ qualitative research offers analytic alternatives that better allow us to capture local non-Western contexts. Nonetheless, I welcome new epistemologies emerging from non-Western philosophies and practices not yet known in the hegemonic West.

Keywords:

• Europeanism
• indigenous research
• non-Western contexts
• decolonising methodology
• methodological imperialism
• qualitative research

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dell Harnish and Robert E. Stake for valuable comments to a former version of this article. Also thanks to the journal editors for comments to improve the article further.

Notes

1. Four hundred years under Denmark and handed over to Sweden as part of the peace treaty after Napoleon’s defeat. Denmark and Sweden sided with opposite European Great Powers.

2. Both the movies Bwana Devil (1952) and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) are based on Patterson’s story.

3. This resulted in EUROQUAL (2006–2010), a European Science Foundation programme on qualitative research in Europe, http://www.esf.org/index.php?id=241.

4. More than two-thirds of all academics in the 14 SADC countries in the Southern African region are regularly engaged in consultancy.