Part II - Ethnographic Fieldwork – The Focus On Constitution
Summary
Ethnographic Fieldwork – The Focus On Constitution
In the first part of this book, I have followed Thomas Kuhn’s lead and examined the common practices of qualitative research today in order to see what epistemological and ontological commitments were embedded in them. In the conduct and analysis of semistructured interviews we found the assumption that subjectivity is an inner, mental realm that contrasts and yet coexists with the objectivity of an outer world. We found subjective experience contrasted with objective knowledge. The latter is abstract and general, so that subjective kinds of knowing must be extracted from their context, their indexicality must be repaired, and commonalities must be found across individuals in order to arrive at objective statements. We also found contradictory metaphors for language. Language is a conduit. It is a repository of concepts, names for objects and events. It is a joint production.
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- Information
- The Science of Qualitative Research , pp. 121 - 122Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010