Navigating the complexity of qualitative research in postmodern contexts: assemblage, critical reflexivity, and communion as guides

Abstract

For graduate students and other emerging qualitative researchers, the ever-evolving and sometimes conflicting perspectives, methodologies, and practices within various post-positivist frameworks (e.g. feminist, critical, Indigenous, participatory) can be overwhelming. Qualitative researchers working within postmodern contexts of multiplicity and ambiguity are tasked with working through challenges – related to methods, interpretation, and representation – throughout the research process. Through examining related literature and incorporating my own experiences, I explore ethical dilemmas that social justice-oriented qualitative researchers may encounter as a result of conflicting multiplicities of difference among researcher(s), participants, and readers. Such dilemmas include incongruent interpretations between participants and researchers, and participants’ and researchers’ conflicting desires about what should be shared, intercultural (mis)interpretations, rapport issues, and conflicts between research life and home life. I consider how combining the practices of attending to assemblages, engaging in critical reflexivity, and centralizing communion may be useful in navigating relationships and ethical dilemmas in qualitative research.

Keywords:

• ethics
• positionality
• assemblage
• critical reflexivity
• communion
• social justice-oriented qualitative research

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Kathleen Edwards, Kathy Hytten, Katherine Jamieson, Leila Villaverde, Dana Stachowiak, and the journal reviewers for their valuable feedback on drafts of this manuscript.

Notes

1. As Glesne (2011) explains, “postpositivism is used by some to refer [to] a less strict form of positivism, and by others to refer to anything other than the early form of positivism. In the latter use of the term, all the paradigms other than early positivism would be forms of postpositivist thought” (p. 7). In this paper, I am using post-positivist in the latter way. Using this intentionally broad term allows readers to determine for themselves whether their research fits within the framework of this manuscript.

2. The information included in this article is grounded in my work as a professor who teaches an introductory qualitative research course for graduate-level education students. I typically explicitly teach the ideas included in this article towards the latter part of the course. By that time, the students and I have raised several questions related to the ideas posed in this piece. We have started to ask questions such as: How do I define my positionality and why does doing so matter? How do I negotiate being an outsider, being an insider? How do I make decisions about how to approach the research and what to prioritize? As these questions start to emerge for readers, the framework outlined in this paper can be used as a guide to discuss how to navigate the complexity of qualitative research.

3. For ease of understanding, in this article, I use the term “readers” to refer to the audience for the research findings given that qualitative research findings are most often represented through written text to readers. I acknowledge, however, that research findings may be represented through other avenues, such as performance ethnography.