The New Language of Qualitative Method
The N ew Language of Qualitative Method
Susan Brown Eve 0
0 University of North Texas , USA
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social and psychological impacts of contamination. There is much common
resonance around themes such as local knowledge and lay epidemiology.
Having offered the promise of Citizen Science as an alternative paradigm
for science, Irwin waits to the last chapter to admit "there is no easy synthesis
on offer which can replace enlightenment/modernist thinking." The volume
is more reactive than proactive. The discussion of building sustainable
futures is dominated by tales of failure rather than success, even in examining
such important models as that of the European science shops or the Canadian
MacKenzie River Pipeline Inquiry. Thus, as attractive as is Irwin's vision,
one cannot but be disappointed by the sparse delivery on the promise of
Citizen Science. Perhaps the paucity of positive and successful models is itself
instructive, a challenge to the thesis that is not addressed. Lacking indications
of practical success, Irwin is left to cite abstract notions about a "greener
science" that asks of any application "which form of science is appropriate
and in what relationship to other forms of knowledge." With the public as
peer reviewers, this new science would become better able to address the
ambiguities of the real world. Irwin's integration thus bridges the
post-modernist critique of contamination with the socially transformative steps
necessary to reach sustainability. This is a vision that I, for one, share, and, even
absent claims for idealized applications and successes, Citizens Science
correctly charts the direction that field experimentation, innovative practice, and
environmental action research should urgently pursue.
The New Language of Qualitative Method, by Jaber F. Gubrium and James
A. Holstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 244 pp. ISBN
0-19509993-1 (cloth), 0-19-509994-X (pbk.)
Susan Brown Eve
University of North Texas
The purpose of this book is to analyze the way the language of qualitative
method relates to how researchers view and describe social life. The authors,
Jaber Gubrium and James Holstein, describe the four most influential
approaches to qualitative research in contemporary social science. These four
approaches are naturalism, ethnomethodology, emotionalism, and
postmodernism. Naturalism is defined as "...a way of knowing that locates
meaningful reality in the immediate settings of people's daily affairs (p. 7)."
Naturalists seek "...descriptions of people and interaction as they exist and
unfold in their native habitats...in order to understand what things mean to
them (pp. 6-7)." Ethnomethodologists listen "...to naturally occurring
conversation in order to discover how a sense of social order is created through
talk and interaction. At the heart of the research is a deep concern for
ordinary, everyday procedures and practices that society's members use to make
their social experiences sensible, understandable, accountable and orderly (p.
7)." Emotionalism focuses on understanding the total man in his total
environment (p. 9). To do that, requires ".. .open sharing and intimacy, affective
sensitivity...to develop true empathy and understanding. The goal is to
capture, even reenact, the subject's experience and to describe that in full
emotional color (p. 9)." Postmodernism is concerned with the growing awareness
that there is a reflexive relationship between social reality and the methods
used to study it; "...that research procedure constructs reality as much as it
produces descriptions of it... This 'crisis of representation' has inspired a
host of attempts to 'deconstruct' research to reveal its
reality-constitutingpractices (pp. 9-10)." Each of these four major approaches is analyzed in separate
chapters in the first part of the book and their differences are discussed in
detail.
In Part II, the authors show how the differences can be integrated using
common characteristics of the four methods to create a "renewed language of
qualitative method." The common characteristics include a skepticism toward
common wisdom about social reality, a commitment to close scrutiny of the
social world, a commitment to describe the "qualities," or understandings, of
experience, a focus on the processes of social life, an appreciation for
subjectivity, and a tolerance for the complexity of social reality. Differences in the
methods have led researchers to emphasize different research questions.
Naturalists focus on the what questions, ethnomethodologists focus on the how
questions, emotionalists warn that naturalists and ethnomethodologists
overrationalize the what and the how questions, and the postmodernists have
focused on procedural issues in qualitative research as the central problem. In
their "renewed language of qualitative method," the authors argue that
interpretive practice, or reality construction, that is at the heart of qualitative
research requires both artful interpre (...truncated)