[Interpretationandmethods] Article of interest

[Sanford Schram]

Hi Dvora,

Thanks for the interesting article. I agree with what Ed says but would
add that the article struck me as implying a "verification" crisis. In
other words, qualitative methods need to be made more transparent, more
rigorous, more open to being verified, etc. So it is a crisis of method
that the article references. This surely can imply other crises like those
when a congressional committee fails to take your work seriously when you 
testify before them! But it is first and foremost of crisis endemic to the
method that the article addresses.

Yet, for me, this is the wrong issue. This implies that qualitative
research generally is about verifying its ability to capture and represent
objective facts. But as Dvora and other interpretivists have made clear,
interpretive work in political science and elsewhere need not be about
that and is often interested in other more important questions about how
the people being studied make meaning and come to understand themselves
and their relations to others. These meaning-making practices are not like
pre-existing facts that can be verified in that sense. They may be subject
to change even during the research encounter. It is at least as important
to know about the possible forms of meaning and understanding that people
produce as it is to try to specify objective facts associated with their
situations.

So, there is a qualitative methods crisis only if we buy into the
verificationist model of research. While I advocate and engage in
mixed-methods research, it is not so much to be able to be better verify
my qualitative data with quantitative data but to offer multiple kinds of
information about the same topic. So, even if you practice mixed methods
research, you need not do so because you think there is a verification
crisis with qualitative methods.

Sandy Schram

> Dvora,
>
> Interesting premise for a workshop, but the article left open what is
> meant
> by "legitimation crisis." After all, legitimacy implies a community which
> lends/withholds its support, but we don't know what the relevant community
> is. If it's anthropologists, I suspect there's no legitimation crisis;
> perhaps the opposite is true-that statistical approaches experience such a
> crisis. If it's political science, there's something like a crisis (though
> that may be too strong, given some headway made by Dvora and others.)
>
>
>
> One other possibility (and something that I am grappling with) is that
> qualitative methods generally have a harder time speaking relevance to
> power. Thus, it could be that policymakers tend to appreciate the policy
> significance of research if it's couched in quantitative terms. If this is
> the case (as I suspect it may be for many, though clearly not all), then
> the
> legitimation crisis is rooted in broader aspects of bureaucracy,
> modernity,
> etc., as they manifest themselves in modern states. That would be a much
> bigger crisis, and one harder to contend with.
>
>
>
> OK, back to writing lectures!
>
> Ed
>
>
>
>
>
>   _____
>
> From: interpretationandmethods-bounces at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu
> [mailto:interpretationandmethods-bounces at malagigi.cddc.vt.edu] On Behalf
> Of
> Dvora Yanow
> Sent: January 10, 2008 8:17 AM
> To: Interpretationandmethods (E-mail)
> Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Article of interest
>
>
>
> Colleagues,
>
>
>
> May I call your attention to this article:
>
>
>
> Is There a "Legimitation Crisis" in Qualitative Methods? by Shalva Weil
>
> The link is:
>
>
>
> http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/2-08/08-2-6-e.htm
>
>
>
> from the December 2007 issue of
>
>
>
> FQS - Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung
> / Forum: Qualitative Social Research (ISSN 1438-5627)
> English ->  <http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs-eng.htm>
> http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs-eng.htm
> German ->  <http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs.htm>
> http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs.htm
> Spanish ->  <http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs-s.htm>
> http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs-s.htm
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dvora Yanow
>
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>


Sanford Schram
Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research
Bryn Mawr College
300 Airdale Road
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-1697

Phone: 610-520-2622
Fax: 610-520-2655
Email: sschram at brynmawr.edu
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