|
|
|
BOOK REVIEWS
| KEY THEMES IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: CONTINUITIES AND CHANGE. By Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, and Sara Delamont. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2003. 232 pp. Hardbound $69.00; Softbound $24.95 .
|
|
In this new volume on qualitative research, three sociologists outstanding in this area wrestle with the problem of how much we can hold on to the guides from the past and how much we must accommodate to the new ideas suggested by postmodernists. The new world they encounter draws "inspiration from feminism, postcolonialism, and queer theory" (3). Although the emphasis in the book is on ethnography, since interviewing is one aspect of ethnographic research, some parts of the book bear directly on what we do as oral historians. The authors observe, "There has never been such an emphasis on the conduct of interviews as there is now. Indeed, it is noticeable that the terrain of research methods has become dominated by qualitative interviewing in various guises" (111). |
1
|
|
Atkinson, Coffey, and Delamont organize the book along the lines of key themes, such as the insider/outsider debate, the researcher's distance from the subject versus identification, the extent to which the researcher should reflect on his or her own involvement in the research and share these reflections with readers, and the validity of evidence from qualitative research. In each chapter, the authors discuss a classic text, offer ideas about "how its major premises can be supported, (re)designed, or made problematic today," and then state their position on this theme (2). |
2
|
|
Consider a typical chapter: Chapter 1, "Strangeness and Familiarity" begins with a brief discussion of Blanche Geer's classic study from 1964, "First Days in the Field." As an anthropologist, Geer expected to do her fieldwork abroad. Instead, she studied the social world of college students; and although this was her culture, she found, in the authors' words, "an ambiguous context of strangeness and familiarity" (27). In some ways she was an "insider," in some ways, an "outsider." The curiosity of the outsider can be weighed against the competence of the insider. But the authors observe that there has been a shift in thinking about dualisms like insider/outsider. Postmodern thinking stresses the variety of perspectives operating, for, as the authors explain, "Current practice reveals a multiplicity of modes of understanding. The fixed positions of insider and outsider have been transformed into a kaleidoscopic array of practices. Rather than knowing 'the other,' the work of the ethnographer has been seen as a series of interactional and interpretive actions that simultaneously construct and question the processes of othering" (43). And what do this text's authors conclude? " 'Othering'—in the sense of treating cultures and social groups as inherently exotic and alien—is no longer acceptable, intellectually and morally. On the other hand, we still need to recognize that the purpose of ethnographic field research is to make sense of social settings we are not familiar with, and to make strange social contexts that we assume we understand by virtue of our taken-for-granted cultural competence" (47). |
3
|
|
Of direct interest to oral history practitioners is the chapter on "Participant Observation and Interviewing." The authors begin with the now classic position of sociologists Howard Becker and Blanche Geer that "observation and interviewing stand in opposition to one another" (97). Becker and Geer wrote in 1957, "The point is that things can be reported in an interview through such a distorting lens, and the interviewer may have no way of knowing what is fact and what is distortion of this kind; participant observation makes it possible to check such points" (100; see also I. Filstead, ed., Qualitative Methodology, 1970). Atkinson, Coffey, and Delamont seem unaware of the critical ways historians approach the document based on an oral history interview. |
4
|
|
Later, the book's authors admit that the researcher who privileges his observations over the testimony of people who lived through the events discussed is no less biased: "After all, the 'data' of participant observation are the events as narrated (written down, often retrospectively) by observers, and hence rely on the same culturally shared categories of memory, account, narrative, and experience" (110). |
5
|
|
These three authors reveal an uncritical acceptance of Becker and Geer's emphasis on participant-observation as the best research method, across the board. Why construct such a dichotomy? In a rejoinder to Becker and Geer's article, Martin Trow pointed out that "the problem under investigation properly dictates the methods of investigation" (I. Filstead, ed., Qualitative Methodology, 1970, 143). |
6
|
|
Work on analyzing the oral history interview published by historians is noticeably lacking. And although the authors say they do not deny the existence of psychological processes, they proceed to do so. On the connection of memory and interview data, they write, "What is 'memorable' is a function of the cultural categories that shape what is thinkable and what is not, what is counted as appropriate, what is valued, what is noteworthy and so on." Personal, autobiographical memory is discounted. They repeat Becker's belief that interviews reveal only what people say they have done—not what they did. Current research by both psychologists and historians refute this assumption that testimony has little connection to actual past behavior. |
7
|
|
Atkinson, Coffey, and Delamont focus solely on sociology and anthropology because they believe that important innovations in participant-observer research have been made only by scholars in those disciplines. But the book would have been richer if the authors had ventured to consider the work being done in other disciplines. And by definition, they limit their study to Britain, the United States, and Canada. What insights European scholars offer do not enter in. While Atkinson, Coffey, and Delamont make a contribution to ongoing debate on postmodernist influence in social science research, narrowness of perspective mars this book. |
8
|
| |
|
| Valerie Yow |
| Independent Scholar |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|