Ethnography Unbound: From Theory Shock to Critical Praxis

12. Protean Subjectivities: Qualitative Research and the Inclusion of the Personal by JANET ALSUP

SINCE THE EARLY 1980s, qualitative research has become increasingly valued in the humanities and education as a viable mode of inquiry and scholarship. Responding to researchers such as Shirley Brice Heath, Linda Brodkey, and Mina Shaughnessy, those working in the disciplines of education and composition studies began to recognize what social anthropologist Clifford Geertz and sociologists of the Chicago School of the 1920s and 1930s had recognized long before: qualitative, empirical research offers advantages over more quantitative , experimental, and quasiexperimental studies when the research subjects are people and the research foci are primarily human behaviors and interactions . An emphasis on individual experience, cultural and social issues, identities, inequities, and researcher self-reflexivity are some the characteristics of qualitative research that make it attractive to humanists and educators. To clarify, I use the phrase qualitative research to denote a type of research that, as Denzin and Lincoln explain, “is multi-method in focus, involving an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter . . . [and] that describe[s] routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives” (3). I am also referring here to qualitative research that is empirical; that is, that is based on observations of people, events, and phenomenon in natural or slightly modified settings. Critical ethnography, the focus of this book, is a culturally and socially active brand of qualitative research that explores the 219 12 Protean Subjectivities Qualitative Research and the Inclusion of the Personal JANET ALSUP effects of race, class, and gender on the social contexts and material lives of research participants and primary investigators. But qualitative research has not been accepted in the humanities and social sciences without question. The very characteristics that make researchers value qualitative research are, paradoxically, sometimes the same reasons that make others leery of it: its acceptance of multiple interpretations of a singular data set, its tendency to vary widely in form and focus (from interview-based studies and case studies to more naturalistic studies emphasizing the researcher as cultural participant rather than outside researcher), and the wide variety of methods of data analysis that are acceptable to qualitative or ethnographic researchers. To some this variety in design and method of analysis is evidence of the versatility and usability of qualitative paradigms; to others, it is evidence of a lack of standards, rigor, and validity. Researchers coming out of the so-called positivistic (that is, based on the epistemological belief in the existence of external validity) tradition have resisted qualitative research because of its denial that “truth” can transcend the personal or, in other words, that research results can be understood as separable from the researcher and research context. Although modern “hard” scientists do not often make such simplistic assertions about research, qualitative research has been called “soft scholarship” by those associated with the these so-called hard sciences (for example, chemistry, physics, economics, psychology), and the positive sciences are often seen as the “crowning achievements of Western civilization, and in their practices it is assumed that ‘truth’ can transcend opinion and personal bias” (Carey 99, qtd. in Denzin and Lincoln 7). Therefore, a history of epistemological conflict exists between those devoted to the quantitative and qualitative paradigms, and this actual historical conflict has grown into an almost mythic one. The conflicts between those who are qualitative researchers and those who are quantitative researchers have often been oversimplified and turned into binary oppositions that put scholars into niches—usually either a postmodern, relativistic, and even politically correct niche (qualitative) or a traditional, serious, naïve, and positivistic one (quantitative). I do not want to engage in such reductive binaries here. However, I think recognizing the existence of this lore of opposition is important in understanding why qualitative research (and by association the use of the personal) has often had to justify its scholarly existence. Therefore, later in this essay I discuss one possible reason for such binaries in hopes that such a discussion will help us understand recent debates over the use of the personal. Undoubtedly, one of the most recent and hotly debated issues to surface about qualitative or ethnographic research concerns the use of personal narrative or anecdote as a form of self-reflexivity. Researcher self-disclosure has 220 Janet Alsup become almost a generic convention in qualitative text, but some researchers question whether this use of autobiographical narrative is a valuable practice in constructing and reporting qualitative or ethnographic research. Such author-saturated research, as Clifford Geertz...