Disciplining qualitative research¹

1. This chapter draws on and reworks Denzin and Lincoln (2005); Denzin (2006); Denzin and Giardina (2006).

Abstract

Qualitative research exists in a time of global uncertainty. Around the world, governments are attempting to regulate scientific inquiry by defining what counts as ‘good’ science. These regulatory activities raise fundamental, philosophical epistemological, political and pedagogical issues for scholarship and freedom of speech in the academy. This essay contests this methodological fundamentalism, and interrogates the politics of re‐emergent scientism, the place of qualitative research in mixed‐methods experimentalism, and the pragmatic criticisms of anti‐foundationalism. Furthermore, it outlines three models of scientifically based research (SBR), and discusses how each is operative within the current historical conjuncture. In the process, it advocates for a qualitative research paradigm that is committed to social justice and the promise of radical, progressive democracy.

Notes

1. This chapter draws on and reworks Denzin and Lincoln (2005); Denzin (2006); Denzin and Giardina (2006).

2. For a concise overview of Campbell and Cochrane models, see Mosteller and Boruch (2002).

3. Clearly, the tensions and contradictions that characterize the field do not exist within a unified arena. The issues and concerns of qualitative researchers in nursing and healthcare, for example, are decidedly different from those of researchers in cultural anthropology, where statistical and evidence‐based models of inquiry are of less importance. The questions that indigenous scholars deal with are often different from those of interest to critical theorists in educational research. Nor do the international disciplinary networks of qualitative researchers necessarily cross one another, speak to one another, read one another.

4. House (2006) argues that methodological fundamentalists are motivated by similar concerns to those of religious fundamentalists. This observation is particularly striking given the extent to which the Bush administration has aligned itself with the Christian right on issues related to abstinence education, stem‐cell research, intelligent design, same‐sex marriage. In so doing, the administration has appointing unqualified persons to scientific advisory committees; fired whistle‐blowing scientists; erased large national data files that contradict official White House policy; and hired fake journalists to promote its educational policies (Kaplan, 2004; Rich, 2006). For more on this alliance, see especially Michelle Goldberg’s (2006) Kingdom coming: the rise of Christian nationalism; Esther Kaplan’s (2004) With God on their side: George W. Bush and the Christian right; and Chris Mooney’s (2005) The Republican war on science.

5. For more, see most especially the collection of essays in Denzin and Giardina (2006).

6. This is what the newly formed International Association of Qualitative Inquiry is all about. For more on this association, see http://iaqi.org. See also http://qi2007.org for information on the 3rd International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, which is currently organized in concert with the Association.