The Science of Qualitative Research

This updated edition is an examination of qualitative research in the social sciences, exploring its roots to analyze its current state.

Martin J. Packer (Author)

9781108417129, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 November 2017

548 pages, 7 b/w illus. 28 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 3.4 cm, 0.88 kg

This updated and expanded edition is a unique examination of qualitative research in the social sciences, raising and answering the question of why we do this kind of investigation. Rather than providing instructions on how to conduct qualitative research, The Science of Qualitative Research explores the multiple roots of qualitative research - including phenomenology, hermeneutics, and critical theory - in order to diagnose the current state of the field and recommend an alternative. The author argues that much qualitative research today uses the mind-world dualism that is typical of traditional experimental investigation, and recommends that instead we focus on constitution: the relationship of mutual formation between a form of life and its members. Michel Foucault's program for 'a history ontology of ourselves' provides the basis for this fresh approach. The new edition features updated chapters, and a brand new chapter which offers a discussion on how to put into practice Foucault's concept.

Part I. The Objective Study of Subjectivity: 1. What is science?
2. The qualitative research interview
3. The analysis of qualitative interviews
4. Hermeneutics and the project for a human science
5. Qualitative analysis reconsidered
Part II. Ethnographic Fieldwork – the Focus on Constitution: 6. Calls for interpretive social science
7. Dualism and constitution: the social construction of reality
8. Constitution as ontological
9. The crisis in ethnography
10. Studying ontological work
Part III. Inquiry with an Emancipatory Interest: 11. Qualitative research as critical inquiry
12. Emancipatory inquiry as rational reconstruction
13. Social science as participant objectification
14. Archaeology, genealogy, ethics
15. A historical ontology of ourselves
16. The concrete investigation of constitution.

Subject Areas: Psychology [JM], Crime & criminology [JKV], Social services & welfare, criminology [JK], Sociology [JHB], Research methods: general [GPS]