Paul Atkinson – Sage Qualitative Research Methods

Автор: Paul Atkinson
Название книги: Sage Qualitative Research Methods
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Политология и Социология
Страницы: 1617
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

SAGE has been a major force shaping the field of qualitative methods: not just in its specialist methods journals like Qualitative Inquiry but in the 'empirical' journals such as Social Studies of Science. Delving into SAGE's deep backlist of qualitative research methods journals, Paul Atkinson and Sara Delmont, editors of Qualitative Research, have selected over seventy articles to represent SAGE's distinctive contribution to Methods publishing in general and qualitative research in particular. The SAGE Qualitative Research Methods includes research from the past four decades and addresses key issues or controversies, such as explanations and defenses of qualitative methods; ethics; research questions and foreshadowed problems; access; first days in the field; field roles and rapport; practicalities of data collection and recording; data analysis; writing and (re) presentation; the rise of auto-ethnography; life history, narrative and autobiography; CA and DA; and alternatives to the logocentric (such as visual methods).

Academics and academic book publishers enjoy continuing relationships
based on enlightened self-interest. They are driven by interests and
values that are sometimes mutually reinforcing and sometimes in
conflict. Academic publishers need to publish books and journals, selfevidently:
they are their stock-in-trade. Without books and journals, publishers
would go out of business. While electronic publishing can change the forms
of publishing to some extent, the necessity remains for publishers to produce
a regular supply of books and journals. The imperative is commercial, of
course. Publishers need not just to produce books and journals; they need to
sell them. They need to sell to individuals and to institutions (such as university
libraries). The individuals include practising academics and their students.
Publishers need to position themselves in relation to particular kinds of
output, targeted at particular categories of reader. They have to know what
kinds of books they want to produce (e.g. monographs, introductory
textbooks, handbooks, trade books) and what sector(s) of the market they
want to reach (school students, undergraduates, postgraduates, professionals
etc.). When a publisher can establish the right market niche, then they can
succeed commercially. To do so, they need all the apparatus of a modern
publishing house: commissioning editors, marketing departments, distribution
networks and so on. They also need authors, and ideally, they need authors
who are committed to them.
Authors need publishers. Academics must publish. They are required to
do so for several reasons, and they partly mirror the interests of publishers.
Clearly, academics need academic journals because the peer-reviewed
academic journal paper is, in many quarters, the gold standard of scholarly
and scientific publishing. Hence, publishers and authors need journal editors,
journal editorial boards and panels of referees to sustain the moral economy
of the journals, in which credit and legitimacy circulate, and where standards of quality are maintained, by academics working altruistically. Academics
also need to publish monographs, which are the definitive academic outputs
in many disciplines, such as social anthropology or history where an
individual’s academic identity is largely defined by his or her standing as a
book author.
The publication of journal papers and research-based monographs is
among the key aspirations of academics. Publishers and authors can both
reap the rewards of prestige from such publications. But, as we have already
suggested, they are not the only kind of undertaking from which publishers
and authors benefit. At the opposite end of the spectrum from a research
monograph is the introductory textbook. Equally, there are more advanced
textbooks that can occupy a hybrid, intermediate position between ‘journal
science’ and ‘textbook science’; these types are derived from the early work
on science by Ludwik Fleck (1979). While ‘textbooks’ of various sorts may
not have the same academic cachet as the purely research-based work, they
can be hugely influential in a field, and can reach much wider audiences
than the more esoteric work of research scholarship. The markets that books
might be expected to reach speak for themselves. An introductory textbook
can, in principle, reach tens of thousands of students, and the social sciences
have a number of famous examples. An advanced textbook can still sell
thousands of copies, reaching a large number of graduate students, as well
as their mentors. There are, in other words, various ways in which academic
authors and publishers share interests, and where esteem, monetary gain
and career advancement are enhanced on both sides.
Successful publishing means more than just that, however. The kinds of
relationships fostered by publishers, journals and authors can make real
differences to the direction of academic disciplines. If a journal is created in
a particular specialist domain, it can provide the intellectual space in which
that emergent field can flourish. New journals develop hand-in-hand with
the disciplines and specialist sub-disciplines that they publish. Modern social
research – in common with all academic work – has been marked by the
proliferation of journals devoted to newly developed specialisms. The
establishment of such journals and the papers published in them help to
validate new academic domains and intellectual movements.
Likewise, the establishment of book series can serve a similar function.
Under the general editorship of one scholar or a small group of specialists
promoting a new direction, a new substantive field, and so on, a book series
can provide an intellectual space in which original scholarship in that
innovative domain is made visible, and is given shape by its inclusion in the
book series itself. Books such as Methuen’s ‘New Accents’ series, under
the general editorship of Terry Hawkes, for instance helped to define a whole
generation of literary criticism, informed by structuralism, post-structuralism
and other theoretical movements. Key textbooks can also help to define a field, to mark new departures and to help establish new reputations. So too
can edited collections of innovative essays (sometimes promoting an emergent
grouping, or school of thought). The social sciences are full of examples of
such defining volumes and such defining moments.
While it would be easy to think of publishers as merely passive vessels
for the academic work they promote, they are not simply responsive to the
work of the academic communities they work with and to whom they sell
books and subscriptions. Successful publishing means being proactive. Good
commissioning editors are alert to emerging trends and to rising ‘stars’ in the
academic world. They work quite decisively to help shape a discipline. In an
ideal world for both sides, there would be a virtuous circle between publishers’
and scholars’ interests. New ideas are taken up by publishers, while they
simultaneously help to define an academic field and a market for their books
and journals.
This is not characterised by a constant search for novelty on the part of
publishers, however. No publisher really wants to be the first in the field.
Would-be authors soon learn that assuring a publisher that a proposed book
is unique and entirely novel is a sure-fire way of ensuring a rejection letter.
Publishers – like any commercial actors – like to spot a trend and then to
amplify it by establishing a distinctive position in a new and expanding market.
Throughout these processes – of shared interests and self-interest –
academics and publishers are all concerned with issues of quality. Journals
that publish sub-standard work do not flourish: subscriptions are not renewed.
Monographs have to establish some sort of reputation for themselves, not
least through the process of published reviews in the scholarly journals (not
to be confused with peer-review ahead of publication, which also takes place).
If textbooks are meretricious, they will not stand the test of time; they will
not be recommended to students; they will not sell in university bookshops
or through the online companies that are replacing bookshelves. So academic
quality and commercial interests also go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, this
does not mean that everything that gets published is equally good: there is
an element of Darwinian competition between titles, between authors and
between publishers.
Competition and pressures on quality are increased when there are periods
of economic restraint. Journals are dependent on institutional subscriptions
(increasingly bundles of rights to electronic access as well as the printed
copies on library shelves). Sales of textbooks are also dependent on libraries’
and students’ budgets. Academic and commercial interests in publishing
therefore converge once again, in trying to identify and maintain niche
positions, while ensuring outputs of high quality. Despite repeated jeremiads
about the demise of the academic journal and the death of the book, some
publishers continue to occupy significant positions in the market and to
produce materials of high value.
It is against this general background that we can understand the distinctive contribution made by SAGE to the publication and promotion of research
methods in the social sciences. Research methods publishing and SAGE
itself have expanded pari passu over the past forty-five years. It is undeniable
that SAGE has contributed to the research methods literature in a way that
is, if not unique, then certainly pre-eminent. They have helped, to a very
considerable extent, to shape the academic work on research methods and
on methodology in the social sciences. This has been one very clear instance
where the general climate of scholarship, academics’ intellectual interests,
teaching needs and student demand, and the commercial interests of a
publisher have coincided. The result has been an explosion of published work,
academic and publishing careers founded on that work, and the expansion
of SAGE itself as a publishing house.
Since 1970 or thereabouts, SAGE has succeeded in positioning itself as a
(perhaps the) leading publisher of research methods in the English-speaking
world. Of course, to those unacquainted with the relevant literature and the
current scene in the social sciences themselves, the above assertion may seem
trivial. So what? Of what consequence is it that SAGE, or indeed any publisher,
should establish a major reputation and a major market share in social research
methods?
The answer is that research methods themselves have become hugely
significant in the social and cultural disciplines. There has been an exponential
growth in the teaching of research methods, at undergraduate and
postgraduate levels, in all the major countries where those disciplines are
represented. The expansion in ‘methods’ as a kind of specialism in its own
right has been remarkable. There are several reasons and their respective
contributions have been different in different national contexts, although
the trends have converged to create a global discourse of methodological
expertise and pedagogy. These changes represent a huge sea-change in the
collective perception of social research and training at undergraduate and
postgraduate levels.
In the United Kingdom a major driver has been a progressive
transformation in postgraduate research training. The change has been
promoted by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) who fund
many of the postgraduate studentships (the vast majority of funded studentships
in the social sciences, though not the majority of students) and who
can, therefore, exercise a strong influence over the shape and content of
postgraduate training itself. The ESRC has promoted an emphasis on formal
training as an essential component of postgraduate work (Delamont, Atkinson
and Parry, 2000). When they first introduced their policy in 1985/86, the
training in methods was grafted into the standard British three-year doctoral
programme. In more recent years, the ESRC has moved to a ‘1+3’ system of
funding, whereby doctoral candidates complete a one-year Masters in research
methods, followed by three years of independent, supervised research supplemented by further career development and advanced training activities.
There is, moreover, a sustained discourse of ‘capacity building’ in UK social
science. This places considerable emphasis on the enhancement of research
skills for scholars at all levels throughout the UK academic community, through
various forms of training and interventions. The wisdom and effectiveness of
these programmes are not our concern here. Rather, we draw attention to
them as just one significant impetus towards a pervasive discourse of
methodology. The provision of basic and advanced methods training is a
significant undertaking for all research-led university departments in the UK.
Careers are increasingly open to scholars with a substantial interest in
methodology of all stripes.
It would be wrong to attribute the rise of interest in research methods
publishing primarily to the UK context of higher-degree training. The latter
is as much a symptom of various ‘methodological turns’ in the social sciences
as it is a cause of any of them. The greatest impetus – as in so many things in
the social sciences – derives from the United States, where methods training
and methods publishing have become ‘big science’ and ‘big business’. In many
ways, recent changes in UK higher education policy have led British provision
towards a ‘mid-Atlantic’ model. American doctoral programmes have for long
incorporated a requirement for methods training (as well as other Masterslevel
courses) for doctoral candidates. There has continued to be a major
expansion in provision in the United States, with a concomitant rise in demand
for textbooks.
The expansion of demand for research methods has been accelerated by
the increase in social research in ‘applied’ areas. Sociology or anthropology
alone would not support the increase in sociologically- or anthropologicallyinspired
methods. We must acknowledge the role played by the expansion –
the colonisation perhaps – of fields like nursing and healthcare studies, of
education, of business and organisation studies, of design and cultural studies,
of fashion and fine arts by sociological and anthropological ideas. (There
have, of course, been migrations of ideas in opposite directions.) More and
more textbooks and sourcebooks of research methods aimed specifically at
such markets have swelled the volume of academic publishing in social
research. Not only have such fields increased the absolute number of students
and researchers, they have also contributed to a wider desire for methodological
expertise and advice.