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The nature and application of methodology is theory dependent.
Moreover theoretical frameworks are often discipline specific.
In terms of qualitative research methods, disciplines can place
different emphases on different strategies for data collection
and analysis. Indeed qualitative inquiry can mean rather different
things to different disciplinary communities, within and outwith
the social sciences. Hence a diverse range of methodological,
epistemological and disciplinary positions potentially inform
qualitative approaches. This seminar explores some of the ways
in which theoretical frameworks and epistemological understandings
are and can be used to inform qualitative research practice.
Welcome and Introduction - Chris
Taylor, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University
How
realist are you? Revisiting realism in qualitative research
Lynn Jamieson, School of Social and Political Studies, Edinburgh
University
Socially relevant research is arguably research
that results in new understanding of a 'real world'. Qualitative
researchers have sometimes struggled to demonstrate that qualitative
research is not 'soft' in comparison to the 'hard' evidence of
numbers. At the same time, key thinkers across the social sciences
and humanities have produced sophisticated critiques of versions
of realism. This presentation will begin by briefly considering
traditions of doing qualitative research in terms of realism,
noting the long running tradition in sociology which is basically
realist and that, despite various persuasive arguments against
taking people literally at their word, in much of current qualitative
sociological work, interviews are taken as telling us about the
meanings and experiences of research participants, albeit with
some caveats. Comparative reference will be made to psychology
and the take up of discourse analysis, before turning to discussions
of feminist methodology and reference to critical realism for
further commentary inciting adoption and rejection of realism
in qualitative research. Finally consideration will be given to
whether there is a necessary bent towards a narrow realism in
mixed methods approaches.
Theorising Qualitative Research
in Practice Oriented Disciplines
Ian
Shaw, Department of Social Policy and Social Work,
University of York
Applicability, Credibility and Context
Tim
May, SURF, University of Salford
Universities are subject to considerable changes
as environmental pressures increasingly place their futures in
question. As core sites of social scientific activity, it is important
to understand not only why these changes are occurring, but their
consequences for practices within universities. A central reason
for this is in order to constitute their distinctiveness and viability
for the future under pressure from other sites of knowledge production
and transmission. This talk, using examples from qualitative work
undertaken at SURF, examines these issues in terms of working
in an environment that has to balance applicability for clients
and credibility according to academic standards or, to express
it another way, excellence and relevance.
Building things with fictions:
what film can tell us about housing
Peter
King, CCHR, De Montfort University
In this paper I want to look at some aspects
of the nature and status of housing studies as a field. Housing
is clearly not an academic discipline, but has traditionally been
based around economics, sociology, geography and politics. More
recently there has been some influence from psychology, social
anthropology, social theory and philosophy. However, much housing
research is undertaken within a narrow positivist framework that
deliberately eschews cross-disciplinary or theoretical approaches.
The first part of the paper will consider the reasons for this,
which are seen to be disciplined based, but also related to the
institutional nature of housing education and research.
One issue that has held housing studies back
is the very manner in which the term 'housing' is used and appreciated.
Housing academics usually use the term to denote collective physical
entities - a stock of dwellings - and see research as concerned
with policy making that influences this stock. The result is a
concern on a very narrow set of issues and a minority of the housing
stock. But housing is also an activity and something that that
is quite singular: we are housed and most often in a place we
see as 'mine' or 'ours'. One way that we can explore this different
sense of housing is through the use of film studies. I shall argue
that film can open up our understanding of housing in a manner
not available to more traditional disciplines. The paper draws
on a number of films by directors such as Bergman, Fincher, Shyamalan
and Tarkovsky to demonstrate the meaning housing has and the manner
in which we are able to use it. This approach can be seen as additive
to more traditional approaches to housing research, but also one
that takes the field beyond social policy to understand the broader
cultural significance of housing.
'What there is & what to do with
it: Historical sociology, archive research and the redundancy
of the so-called qualitative/quantitative divide'
Liz Stanley,
School of Social and Polictical Studies, Edinburgh University
Since the late 1970s (eg. Stanley & Wise 1979,
1983, 1993), I have argued that the so-called divide between quantitative
and qualitative methods is at the least unhelpful, at the most
reifies someting that 'in life' does not exist, because words
and numbers are frequently used in tandem. Historical sociology
and archive research exemplifies the redundancy of the often presumed
division, in which data sources may frequently include both within
one document as well as one collection. The result is that the
presumed-to-be-qualitative method of archive and documentary research
in practice often transcends such divisions.
Drawing on the collections of the Chief Superintendents
of Burgher Camps Collections (Free State Archives Depot, Bloemfontein;
and Transvaal Archives Depot, Pretoria; both in South Africa)
concerning the concentration camps of the South African War (1899-1902),
I shall argue that the only viableapproach for the archive researcher
is to work with what there is, and to decide what to do with it
on the basis that it is 'there' and must be grappled with. Archive
research as a consequence offers an example of a 'post-divide'
approach which focuses on methodology and epistemology, rather
than method in the narrow sense of technique. This argument will
be discussed in relation to a nunber of key archive documents
Discussant: Sheila
Riddell, Professor of Inclusion & Diversity, University
of Edinburgh.
Click on name of speaker to view biography
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