Identity, Values and Method: Taking Interview Research Seriously in Political Economy  

Oleh:

Cawthorne, Pamela

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Qualitative Research vol. 1 no. 1 (Apr. 2001), page 65-90.
Topik: development; fieldwork method; Fiji; garments; India; Marx; positivist economics; Wittgenstein
Fulltext: 65QR1.1.pdf (190.86KB)

Isi artikel

Qualitative research tends to be regarded as nonrigorous, subjectively biased and, in general, unscientific. This paper is a restatement of the merits of this type of research allied to a repudiation of the arguments of its various critics - particularly the positivist tradition in economics. Primarily, it takes issue with the supposed greater objectivity attained through quantitative and positivistic research methods. But it is equally critical of a too narrow understanding of language and text and of (some types of) worries about disempowered informants. Instead, it is argued that seeking to understand, interpret and report honestly the things people say and the things people do in all their 'messy complexity' enables deep and rich knowledge claims to be made. However, for the full richness of such claims to emerge, they must be mediated reflexively and selfconsciously through the purposes - and associated theoretical frameworks - researchers bring to their work. An understanding of the Wittgensteinian approach to language, if allied with a Marxian framework for the broader understanding of social processes, is argued to provide powerful analytical tools in the practice of qualitative social and economic research.

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