Packer M. The Science of Qualitative Research

Cambridge University Press, 2011. — 438 p. — ISBN10: 0521148812.This book is a unique examination of qualitative research in the social sciences, raising and answering the question of why we do this kind of investigation. Rather than offering advice on how to conduct qualitative research, it explores the multiple roots of qualitative research – including phenomenology, hermeneutics, and critical theory – in order to diagnose the current state of play and recommend an alternative. The diagnosis is that much qualitative research today continues to employ the mind–world dualism that is typical of traditional experimental investigation.
The recommendation is that we focus on constitution: the relationship of mutual formation between a form of life and its members. Michel Foucault’s program for “a historical ontology of ourselves” provides the basis for a fresh approach to investigation. The basic tools of qualitative research – interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and analysis of discourse – are reforged in order to articulate how our way of living makes us who we are and so empower us to change this form of life.The Objective Study of Subjectivity
What Is Science?
The Qualitative Research Interview
The Analysis of Qualitative Interviews
Hermeneutics and the Project for a Human Science
Qualitative Analysis Reconsidered
Ethnographic Fieldwork – The Focus on Constitution
Calls for Interpretive Social Science
Dualism and Constitution: The Social Construction of Reality
Constitution as Ontological
The Crisis in Ethnography
Studying Ontological Work
Inquiry with an Emancipatory Interest
Qualitative Research as Critical Inquiry
Emancipatory Inquiry as Rational Reconstruction
Social Science as Participant Objectification
Archaeology, Genealogy, Ethics
A Historical Ontology of Ourselves