COLLECTING AND INTERPRETING QUALITATIVE MATERIALS
alternative methods for evaluating their work, including verisimilitude, emotionality, personal responsibility, an ethic of caring, political praxis, multivoiced texts, and dialogues with subjects. In response, positivists and postpositivists argue that what they do is good science, free of individual bias and subjectivity. As noted above, they see postmodernism and post-structuralism as attacks on reason and truth.
Capturing the individual's point of view. Both qualitative and quantitative researchers are concerned with the individual's point of view. However, qualitative investigators think they can get closer to the actor's perspective through detailed interviewing and observation. They argue that quantitative researchers arc seldom able to capture their subjects' perspectives because they have to rely on more remote, inferential empirical methods and materials. The empirical materials produced by interpretive methods are regarded by many quantitative researchers as unreliable, impressionistic, and not objective.
Examining the constraints of everyday life. Qualitative researchers are more likely to confront and come up against the constraints of the everyday social world. They sec this world in action and embed their findings in it. Quantitative researchers abstract from this world and seldom study it directly. They seek a nomothetic or etic science based on probabilities derived from the study of large numbers of randomly selected cases. These kinds or statements stand above and outside the constraints of everyday life. Qualitative researchers, on the other hand, are committed to an emic, idiographic, case-based position, which directs their attention to the specifics of particular cases.
Securing rich descriptions. Qualitative researchers believe that rich descriptions of the social world are valuable, whereas quantitative researchers, with their etic, nomothetic commitments, are less concerned with such detail. Quantitative researchers are deliberately unconcerned with rich descriptions because such detail interrupts the process of developing generalizations.
The five points of difference described above (uses of positivism and p ostpositiv ism, postmodernism, capturing the individual's point or view, examining the constraints of everyday life, securing thick descriptions) reflect commitments to different styles of research, different cpistcmolo-gies, and different forms of representation. Each work tradition is gov-
16
introduction
crned by its own set of genres; each has its own classics, its own preferred forms of representation, interpretation, trustworthiness, and textual evaluation (see Becker, 1986, pp. 134-135). Qualitative researchers use ethnographic prose, historical narratives, first-person accounts, still photographs, life histories, fictionalized "facts," and biographical and autobiographical materials, among others. Quantitative researchers use mathematical models, statistical tables, and graphs, and usually write about their research in impersonal, third-person prose.
Tensions Within Qualitative Research
It is erroneous to presume that all qualitative researchers share" the same assumptions about the five points or difference described above. As the discussion below will reveal, positivist, postpositivist, and poststructural differences define and shape the discourses of qualitative research. Realists and postpositivists within the interpretive qualitative research tradition criticize poststructuralisrs for taking the textual, narrative turn. These critics contend that such work is nave! gazing. It produces conditions "for a dialogue of the deaf between itself and the community" (Silverman, 1997, p. 240). Those who attempt to capture the point of view of the interacting subject in the world are accused of naive humanism, or reproducing "a Romantic impulse which elevates the experiential to the level of the authentic" (Silverman, 1997, p. 248).
Stil! others argue char lived experience is ignored by those who take the textual, performance turn. Snow and Morrill (1995) argue that "this performance turn, like the preoccupation with discourse and storytelling, will take us further from the field of social action and the real dramas of everyday life and thus signal the death knell of ethnography as an empirically grounded enterprise" (p. 361). Of course, we disagree.
With these differences within and between the two traditions now in hand, we must now briefly discuss the history of qualitative research. We break this history into seven historical moments, mindful that any history is always somewhat arbitrary and always at least partially a social construction.
♦ The History of Qualitative Research
The history of qualitative research reveals, as Vidich and Lyman remind us in Chapter 2 of Volume 1, that the modern social science disciplines
"7
COLLECTING AND INTERPRETING QUALITATIVE MATERIALS
have taken as their mission "the analysis and undemanding of the patterned conduct and social processes of society." The notion that this task could be carried out presupposed that social scientists had the ability to observe chis world objectively. Qualitative methods were a major tool of such observations."
Throughout rhc history of qualitative research, investigators have always defined their work in terms of hopes and values, "religious faiths, occupational and professional ideologies" (Vidich ÖC Lyman, Chapter 2, Volume 1). Qualitativ« research (like all research) has always been judged on the "standard of whether the work communicates or 'says' something to us" (Vidich & Lyman, Chapter 2, Volume 1), based on how we conceptualize our reality and nur images of the world. Ľpistemology is the word that has historically defined these standards Of evaluation. In the contemporary period, as we have argued above, many received discourses on cpis-tcmology are now being reevaluated.
Vidich and Lyman's history covers the following (somewhat) overlapping stages: early ethnography (to the 17th century); colonial ethnography (17th-, 18th-, and I'lth-ccntury explorers); the ethnography of the American Indian as "other" (late- 19th- and early-20th-century anthropology); the ethnography ní the "civic other," or community studies, and ethnographies of American immigrants (early 2Urh century through the 1960s); studies of ethnicity and assimilation (nmlccntury through the 1980s); and the present, which we call the seventh moment.
In each of these eras, researchers were and have been influenced by their political hopes and ideologies, discovering findings in their research that confirmed prior theories or beliefs. Early ethnographers confirmed the racial and cultural diversity or peoples throughout the globe and attempted to fit this diversity into a theory about the origins of history, the races, and civilizations. Colonial ethnographers, betöre the professional ization of ethnography in the 20th century, fostered a colonial pluralism that left natives on their own as long as their leaders could be co-opted by the colonial administration.
European ethnographers studied Africans Asians, and other I'hird World peoples or color. Early American ethnographers studied the American Indian from the perspective of the conqueror, who saw the life world of the primitive as a window to the prehisronc past. The Calvinist mission to save the Indian was soon transferred to the mission of saving ihr "hordes" of immigrants who entered the United States with the beginning? of industrialization. Qualitative community studies of the ethnic other
:-
Introducťon
proliíeraicd from the early 1900s co the 1960s and included the work of E. Franklin Irazier, Robert Park, and Koben Redficld and their students, as well as William Footc Whyte, the Lynda, August Hollingshead, Herbert Gans, Stanford Lyman, Arthur Vidich, and Joseph Bensman. The post-1960 ethnicity studies challenged the ••inciting pot" hypothesis of Park and his followers and corresponded to the emergence of ethnic studies programs that saw Native American», Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Americans attempting to take control over the study of their own peoples.
The postmodern and post structural challenge emerged in the mid-1980s. It questioned the assumptions that had organized thi« earlier history in each ofitscolonializing moments. Qualitative research that crosses the "postmodern divide" requires one, Vidich and Lyman argue in Volume 1, Chapter 2, to "abandon all established and preconceived values, theories, perspectives ... and prejudices as resources for ethnographic study." In i Ins new era, the qualitative researcher does more than observe history; he or she plays a part in it. New tales from the field will now be wrirtcn, and they will reflect the researcher's direct and personal engagement with this historical period.
Vidich and Lyman's analysis covers the full sweep of ethnographic history. Ours is confined to the 20th century and complements many or their divisions. Wc begin with the early foundarional work of the British and French as well the Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Berkeley, and British schools of sociology- and anthropology. This early foundational period established the norms of classical qualitative and ethnographic research (sec Gupta & Ferguson, 1997; Rosaldo, 1989; Stocking, 1981»).
♦ The Seven Moments of Qualitative Research
As suggested above, our history of qualitative research in North America in this century divides into seven phases, each of which we describe in turn below.
The Traditional Period                         .
Wc call the first moment the traditional period (this covers Vidich and Lyman's second and third phases). It begins in the early 1900s and continues until World War II. In this period, qualitative researchers wrote
IS
COLLECTING AND INTERPRETING QUALITATIVE MATERIALS
"objective," colonializing accounts of field experiences that were reflective of the positivist scientist paradigm. They were concerned with offering valid, reliable, and objective interpretations in their writings. The "other" who was studied was alien, foreign, and strange.
Here is Malinowski (1967) discussing his ŕield experiences in New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands in the years 1914-1915 and 1917-1918. He is bartering his way into field data:
Nothing whatever draws me co ethnographic studies-----On the whole die
village struck me rather unfavorably- There is a certain disorganization ... the rowdinc5S and persistence of the people who laugh and stare and lie discouraged me somewhat.....Went to the village hoping to photograph a few
stages of the bara dance. I handed out half-sticks of tobacco, then watched a few dances; then rook pictures—bur results were poor.... they would not pose long enough for rime exposures. At moments I was furious at them, particularly because after I gave rhem their portions of tobacco they all went away, (quoted in Geerrz, 1988, pp. 73-7-1)
In another work, this lonely, frustrated, isolated field-worker describes his methods in the following words:
In the field one has to face a chaos of facts.... in this crude form they are not scientific facts at all; they are absolutely elusive, and can only be fixed by interpretation. . .. Only laws and generalizations are scientific facts, and field work consists only and exclusively in the interpretation of die chaotic social reality, in subordinating ir to general rules. (Malinowski, 1916/1948, p. 328; quoted in Geertz, 198S, p. 81)
Malino wski's remarks arc provocative. On the one hand they disparage fieldwork, but on the other they speak or it within the glorified language of science, with laws and generalizations fashioned out of this selfsame experience.
The field-worker during this period was lionized, made into a larger-than-life figure who went into and then returned from the field with stories about strange people. Rosaldo (1989, p. 30) describes this as the period of the Lone Ethnographer, the story of the man-scientist who went off in search of his native in a distant land. There this figure "encountered the object of his quest... [and] underwent his rite of passage by enduring the ultimate ordeal of 'fieldwork'" lp. 30). Returning home with his data, the Lone Ethnographer wrote up an objective account of the culture studied.
70
Introduction
These accounts were structured by the norms or classical ethnography. This sacred bundle of terms (Rosaldo, 1989, p. 31) organized ethnographic texts in terms of four beliefs and commitments: a commitment to objectivism> a complicity with imperialism, a belief in moniimenralism (the ethnography would create a museumlike picture of the culture studied), and a belief in timclcssness (what was studied would never change). The other was an "object" to be archived. This model of the researcher, who could also write complex, dense theories about what was studied, holds to the present day.
The myrh of the Lone Ethnographer depicts the birth of classic ethnography. The texts of Malinowski, Radcli f re-Brown, Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson are still carefully studied for what they can tell the novice about conducting fieldwork, taking field notes, and writing theory. Today this image has been shattered. The works of the classic ethnographers arc seen by many as relics from the colonial past (Rosaldo, 1989, p. 44). Although many feel nostalgia fot this past, others celebrate its passing. Rosaldo (1989) quotes Cora Du Bois, a retired Harvard anthropology professor, who lamented this passing at a conference in 1980, reflecting on the crisis in anthropology: "[I feel a distance) trom the complexity and disarray of what I once found a justifiable and challenging discipline.. .. It has been like moving from a distinguished art museum into a garage sale" (p. 44).
Du Bois regards the classic' ethnographies as pieces of timeless artwork contained in a museum. She feels uncomfortable in the chaos of the garage sale. In contrast, Rosaldo (1989) is drawn to this metaphor: "[The garage sale] provides a precise image of the postcolonial situation where cultural artifacts flow between unlikely places, and nothing is sacred, permanent, or sealed off. The image of anthropology as a garage sale depicts our present global situation" (p. 44). Indeed, many valuable treasures may be found if one is willing to look long and hard, in unexpected places. Old srandards no longer hold. Ethnographies do not produce timeless truths-The commitment to objectivism is now in doubt. The complicity with imperialism is openly challenged today, and the belief in monumental ism is a thing of the past.
The legacies of this first period begin at the end of the 19th century, when the novel and the social sciences had become distinguished as separate systems of discourse (Clough, 1992, pp. 21-22; see also Clough. 1998). However, the Chicago school, with its emphasis on the life story and the "slice-oŕ-Iiŕe" approach to ethnographic materials, sought to
2'
COLLECTING AND INTERPRETING QUALITATIVE MATERIALS
develop an interpretive methodology- that maintained the centrality of the narrated life history approach. This led to the production of texts that gave the researcher-as-author the power to represent the subject's story. Written under the mantle of straightforward, sentiment-free social realism, these texts used the language of ordinary people. They articulated a social science version of literary naturalism, winch often produced the sympathetic illusion that a solution to a social problem had been found. Like the Depression-era juvenile delinquent and other "social problems" films (Rorfman 3c Purdy, 1981), these accounts romanticized the subject. They rurned the deviant into a sociological version of a screen hero. These sociological stones, like their film counterparts, usually had happy endings, as they followed individuals through the three stages of the classic morality tale: being in a state of grace, being seduced by evil and fulling, and finally achieving redemption through suffering.
Modernist Phase
The modernist phase, or second moment, builds on the canonical works from the traditional period. Social realism, naturalism, and slice-of-lile ethnographies are still valued. This phase extended through the postwar years to the 1970s and is still present i n the work of many (for reviews, seeWolcott, 1990,1992, 1995;sccalsoTcdlockt Chapter 6, Volume 2). In this period many texts »ought to formalize qualitative methods (see, for example, Bogdan Ôc Taylor, 1975; Cicourel, 1964; l-ilstcad, 1970; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Lofland, 1971, 1995; Lofland «C Lofland, 1984, 1995; Taylor Sc Bogdan, 1998).12 The modernist ethnographer and sociological participant observer attempted rigorous qualitative studies of important social processes, including deviance and social control in the classroom and societ)'. This was a moment of creative ferment.
A new generation of graduate students across the human disciplines encountered new interpretive theories (cthnomcthodology, phenomenology, critical theory, feminism). They were drawn to qualitative research practices that would let i hem give a voice to society's underclass. Postpositive functioned as a powerful epistemological paradigm. Researchers attempted to fit Campbell and Stanley's (1963) model of internal and external validity to constructionist and interaction«! conceptions of the research act. They returned to the texts of the Chicago school as sour» o Ol inspiration (see Denzin, 1970, 1978).
22
Introduction
A canonical text from this moment remains Boys in While (Becker et a!., 1961; sec also Becker, 1998). Firmly entrenched in mid-20th-century
methodological discourse, this work attempted to make qualitative research as rigorous as its quantitative counterpart. Causal narratives were central to this project. This multiiucchod work combined open-ended and quasi-structured interviewing with participant observation and the careful analysis of such materials in standardized, statistical form. In a classic article, "Problems of Inference and Proof in Participant Observation," Howard S. Becker (1958/1970) describes the use of qu.iM-st.iri   li
Participant observation* have occasionally been garhcrcd in «aandardized form capable of being transformed into legitimate statistical dnu, But the exigencies of rhe field usunlly prevent the collection of data in meh I form to meet the assumptions ofstat^tical test*, so that the observer deals in what have been called "quasi-siamtics." Hi« conclusions, while implicitly numerical, do not require precise quantification, (p. 31)
In the analysis of data, Becker notes, the qualitative researcher takes a cue from statistical colleagues. The researcher looks (or probabilities or support for arguments concerning the likelihood that, or frequency with which, a conclusion in fact applies in a specific situation (see also Becker, 1998, pp. 166-170). Thus did work in the modernise period clothe itself in the language and rhetoric of positivist and postpositiv ist discourse.
Thii was the golden age of rigorous qualitative analysis, bracketed in sociology by Boys in White (Becker er al., 1961) at one end and The Discovery of Grounded Theory (Glaser Sc Strauss, 1967) at the other. In education, qualitative research in this period was defined by George and Louise Spindlcr, Jules Henry, Harry Wolcott, and John Singleton. This form of qualitative research is still present in the work of such persons as Strauss and Corbin (1998) and Ryan and Bernard (see Chapter 7, this volume).
The "golden age" reinforced the picture or qualitative researchers as cultural romantics. Imbued with Promethean human powers, they valorized villains and outsiders as heroes to mainstream society. They embodied a belief in the contingency of self and society, and held to emancipatory ideals for "which one lives and dies.'H'hey put in place a tragic and often ironic view of society and self, and joined a long line ol leftist cultural romantici that included Emetson, Marx, James, Dewey, C.ramsci, and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Wesr, 1989, chap. 6).
23