Qualitative Research in Action

Qualitative Research in Action edited by TIM MAY SAGE Publications London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi Introduction Tim May 2002 Chapter 1 Dorothy E. Smith 2002 Chapter 2 Sam Porter 2002 Chapter 3 Peter K. Manning 2002 Chapter 4 Christian Heath and Jon Hindmarsh 2002 Chapter 5 Malcolm Williams 2002 Chapter 6 Martín Sánchez-Jankowski 2002 Chapter 7 Nigel G. Fielding 2002 Chapter 8 Valerie Walkerdine, Helen Lucey and June Melody 2002 Chapter 9 Kathleen Gerson and Ruth Horowitz 2002 Chapter 10 Jennifer Mason 2002 Chapter 11 Steph Lawler 2002 Chapter 12 Linda McKie 2002 Chapter 13 Lynne Haney 2002 Chapter 14 Tracey Reynolds 2002 Chapter 15 Amanda Coffey 2002 Chapter 16 Lisa Adkins 2002 Chapter 17 Beverley Skeggs 2002 Chapter 18 Sherryl Kleinman 2002 First published 2002 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd 32, M-Block Market Greater Kailash – I New Delhi 110 048 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7619 6067 8 ISBN 0 7619 6068 6 (pbk) Library of Congress Control Number 2001 132949 Typeset by SIVA Math Setters, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge, Wiltshire CONTENTS Notes on Contributors vii Acknowledgements xiii Introduction: Transformation in Principles and Practice 1 Part 1 Putting the Practice into Theory 15 1 Institutional Ethnography 17 Dorothy E. Smith 2 Critical Realist Ethnography 53 Sam Porter 3 Framing the Rational in Fieldwork 73 Peter K. Manning 4 Analysing Interaction: Video, Ethnography and Situated Conduct 99 Christian Heath and Jon Hindmarsh Part 2 Generalization, Interpretation and Analysis 123 5 Generalization in Interpretive Research 125 Malcolm Williams 6 Representation, Responsibility and Reliability in Participant-Observation 144 Martín Sánchez-Jankowski 7 Automating the Ineffable: Qualitative Software and the Meaning of Qualitative Research 161 Nigel G. Fielding 8 Subjectivity and Qualitative Method 179 Valerie Walkerdine, Helen Lucey and June Melody Part 3 Choices in Context 197 9 Observation and Interviewing: Options and Choices in Qualitative Research 199 Kathleen Gerson and Ruth Horowitz vi CONTENTS 10 Qualitative Interviewing: Asking, Listening and Interpreting 225 Jennifer Mason 11 Narrative in Social Research 242 Steph Lawler Part 4 Power, Participation and Expertise 259 12 Engagement and Evaluation in Qualitative Inquiry 261 Linda McKie 13 Negotiating Power and Expertise in the Field 286 Lynne Haney 14 On Relations between Black Female Researchers and Participants 300 Tracey Reynolds Part 5 Reflexivity, the Self and Positioning 311 15 Ethnography and Self: Reflections and Representations 313 Amanda Coffey 16 Reflexivity and the Politics of Qualitative Research 332 Lisa Adkins 17 Techniques for Telling the Reflexive Self 349 Beverley Skeggs 18 Emotions, Fieldwork and Professional Lives 375 Sherryl Kleinman Index 395 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Lisa Adkins is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester. Her research interests are in the areas of social theory, feminist theory, sexuality, gender and economy. Her publications include Gendered Work (Open University Press, 1995), Sexualizing the Social (with Vicki Merchant, Macmillan, 1996) and Sex, Sensibility and the Gendered Body (with Janet Holland, Macmillan, 1996). Recent articles have been published in Theory, Culture and Society and Economy and Society. She is currently completing a book called Revisions: Towards a Feminist Sociology of Late Modernity (Open University Press) which considers theories of identity transformation in relation to gender and sexuality. Amanda Coffey is based at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. She is one of the founding editors of the journal Qualitative Research and a co-editor of The Handbook of Ethnography (Sage, 2001). Her research interests include ethnographic representation and (auto)biography in qualitative method. Her publications include (with Paul Atkinson) Making Sense of Qualitative Data (Sage, 1996) and The Ethnographic Self (Sage, 1999). Nigel G. Fielding is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Surrey. He has taught field methods and criminology at Surrey since 1978. His research interests are in qualitative methods, new research technologies and criminal justice. He was editor of the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice from 1985 to 1998, and is co-editor of the series ‘New Technologies for Social Research’ (Sage). He has published twelve books and is currently working on the second edition of Computer Programs for Qualitative Data Analysis (with E. Weitzman and R. Lee) and a four-volume set on Interviewing (both for Sage). Kathleen Gerson is Professor (and Chair) of Sociology at New York University, where she specializes in the study of gender, work, family and social change processes. She is the author of several books, including No Man’s Land: Men’s Changing Commitments to Family and Work (Basic Books, 1993) and Hard Choices: How Women Decide about Work, Career, and Motherhood (University of California Press, 1985). She is currently at work on a study of ‘Children of the Gender Revolution’, in which she is examining the experi- ences, responses and gender strategies of the young women and men who have grown up in non-traditional families over the last few decades of tumul- tuous work and family changes in American society. Additional ongoing viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS projects include a study of trends in working time, work arrangements and gender equity in modern workplaces and an examination of how growing conflicts between family and work have created new moral dilemmas that are blurring the gender boundaries between women and men. Lynne Haney is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at New York University. She has conducted ethnographic research on the state in both the United States and in Hungary. Her book, Inventing the Needy: Gender and the Politics of Welfare in Hungary, is forthcoming from the University of California Press. She is also one of the authors of Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World (University of California Press, 2000), which lays out a framework for studying globalization ethnographically. Her current research project examines the politics of contemporary welfare reform in the United States through interviews with two generations of low- income women in Maryland and California. Christian Heath is a Professor at King’s College London and leads the Work, Interaction and Technology Research Group. He specializes in video-based field studies of social interaction. Current projects include studies of museums, of operation centres on London Underground and of medical consultations, and address such varied issues as the embodiment of suffering, the aesthetic experience of art-work and ecological perception of public behaviour. These projects also involve the design and deployment of new artefacts and technologies ranging from interactive art installations through to image recogni- tion systems. His recent publications include Technology in Action (with Paul Luff, Cambridge University Press, 2000). Jon Hindmarsh is a Research Fellow in the Work, Interaction and Technology Research Group in the Management Centre, King’s College London. His prin- cipal interests concern the interactional organization of talk and embodied conduct within workplace settings, such as control centres, anaesthetic rooms and classrooms. He has also collaborated with computer scientists on studies of social interaction in virtual reality and is currently extending that work to inform the design of advanced, interactive exhibits in museums and galleries. Recent articles have appeared in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Journal of Pragmatics and Symbolic Interaction. He is also co-editor of Workplace Studies (with Paul Luff and Christian Heath, Cambridge University Press, 2000). Ruth Horowitz is Professor of Sociology at New York University and received her PhD from the University of Chicago. Teen Mothers: Citizens or Dependents? (University of Chicago Press, 1995) won the Charles Horton Cooley Award and Honor and the American Dream: Culture and Identity in a Chicano Community (Rutgers University Press, 1983) received an honourable mention for the C.W. Mills Award. She is currently working on a project about public participation on state medical licensing and disciplinary boards in the United States. NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix Sherryl Kleinman is Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of Equals before God: Seminarians as Humanistic Professionals (University of Chicago Press, 1984), Opposing Ambitions: Gender and Identity in an Alternative Organization (University of Chicago Press, 1996) and co-author of Emotions and Fieldwork (with Martha Copp,

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