This course provides an overview of the rationale, principal design issues, and techniques of one set of qualitative methods in the social sciences. We will begin with a discussion of the concepts of lifeworld and typicality, and then move to several weeks of sessions on the design of qualitative studies, notably the issues of sampling, coding, and abducing patterns. At that point, we will turn to three techniques of qualitative methods: the analysis of transcripts, direct (in situ) observations, and ethnographic interviews. For each of these techniques, we will begin with “how to” readings, then study particular research articles or monographs as a way to see how the techniques actually work in practice. Following this, there will be class discussions of student writeups on their exercises.
These exercises are in many ways the heart of the course. I would like students to analyze a transcript, to observe a natural setting, and to interview a stranger. If there are enough students in class, these exercises can be carried out in teams of two; otherwise, they should be done individually. Each exercise must eventuate in a short (ca. 5-10 pages) writeup, which presents the material being studied (including as an appendix a snippet of text, or a description of the site, or a transcript of a short segment of the interview) and how it was accessed, and then analyzes it, i.e., codes it and abduces certain patterns. My strong belief, having for many years engaged in this kind of research and taught these techniques, is that it is indispensable to carry out the exercises, even if you only intend to audit the course. To do otherwise, as I indicate in my paper for the first week, is like trying to learn a language without ever trying to speak it.
One tool that I think is worth having is some type of computer software designed to facilitate coding qualitative raw materials. There’s no magic to such software: it doesn’t do the job for you. But it does increase your degree of reflexivity and awareness when coding, and for that reason, I think it is worth spending some time mastering it. We will be using one of the standard packages, NVivo, and I will go over with you how to obtain the software and how to start using it.
As I mentioned above, we will be discussing several studies, some of which are classics. But as with any field, one learns more by familiarizing oneself with how other scholars carried out their research, and so I recommend you browse around and regularly (say once a week) read research articles in the major qualitative journals, notably Qualitative Sociology and Ethnography. Feel free to try some of the techniques in these pieces; as the saying goes, good artists borrow, great artists steal.
A word about qualitative methods and the study of international relations. For the most part, this is an empty set – that is, if the term “qualitative methods” refers to something other than a dislike of statistics and mathematics, or of “positivism.” In recent years, some work has been done keying off of Wittgenstein’s notion of language games, or pragmatists’ concerns with truth conditions in speech; and many years ago, Chadwick Alger pioneered the use of direct observational techniques. On the whole, however, international relations has been a field unreceptive to qualitative methods, a state of affairs quite similar to that of its cognate discipline of political science.* As a result, most of the readings we will be doing here come from other social sciences, notably sociology and anthropology. However, at least two of your exercises, the ones on transcripts and interviews, can certainly be carried out on “international” subjects.
Given the relatively small number of students I expect to take the course, those readings which are not available online or in the photocopy packet can be obtained for photocopying purposes from the course assistant. You may wish to order and buy for yourselves the books by Becker, Strauss and Corbin (though note that I am asking for you to look at the second edition, not the current, third, one), Spradley (it is out of print, but used copies are available), and Whyte. I will supplement the syllabus early in the semester with additional example readings.
Practical information. My office is Rigot 28, phone 022 908 59 42, e-mail david.sylvan@graduateinstitute.ch, office hours Wed. 16.30 to 17.30 and by appointment. The assistant for the course is Steffi Dornschneider: office Rigot 21, phone 022 908 59 38, e-mail stephanie.dornschneider@graduateinstitute.ch; office hours Thurs. 12.00 to 13.30. The course web site (on which you will find this syllabus, course news, and links to special readings, such as cases, for each week) is http://graduateinstitute.ch/political-science/qualitative-methods-2010.html
*Over the last few years, the Qualitative = Anything But Statistics line has led to a certain divergence between political science and international relations. The former has since the early 2000s had an “organized section” on qualitative methods with a newsletter (now called Qualitative and Multi-Method Research), an annual institute, and awards; this institutionalization has now led the section to welcome hypothesis-testing, experiments, and other facets of positivist methodology they had earlier eschewed. By contrast, international relations is some years behind and so the first reader on the subject (Audie Klotz and Deepa Prakash, eds., Qualitative Methods in International Relations: A Pluralist Guide, Palgrave Macmillan 2008) explicitly aims at “a cross-sample of perspectives, ranging from interpretation inspired by Foucault [sic] to mechanism-seeking process tracing all the way to agent-based modeling” (p. 3). It is unclear how either of these approaches would be of much use as methods.
Week 1. Sep. 22.
Introduction
Week 2. Sep. 29.
Lifeworld and typifications
Alfred Schutz, “Action in Society,” in The Structures of the Life World, vol. 2 (Northwestern, 1989), pp. 65-70; and “Selective Attention: Relevances and Typification,” in On Phenomenology and Social Relations (Chicago, 1970), ch. 5.
Optional: Harold Garfinkel, “A Conception of, and Experiments With, ‘Trust’ as a Condition of Stable Concerted Actions,” in Jeff Coulter, ed., Ethnomethodological Sociology (Edward Elgar, 1990), ch. 1.
Optional: my paper “In the Field” (available online).
Week 3. Oct. 6.
Sampling
Patrick Biernacki and Dan Waldorf, “Snowball Sampling: Problems and Techniques in Chain Referral,” Sociological Methods and Research 10,2 (1981): 141-63.
John K. Watters and Patrick Biernacki, “Targeted Sampling: Options for the Study of Hidden Populations,” Social Problems 36,4 (1989): 416-30.
Howard S. Becker, Tricks of the Trade (Chicago 1998), ch. 3.
Michael Bloor, “Techniques of Validation in Qualitative Research: A Critical Commentary,” in Robert M. Emerson, ed., Contemporary Field Research, 2d edn., Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2001.
Optional: John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, vol. 1, ch. 8.
Optional: Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Social Theory (Aldine, 1967), ch. 3.
Optional: Michael Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” Sociological Theory 16,1 (1998): 4-33.
Week 4. Oct. 13. [Note: I will be away this week, so we will have to make up the class the day before.]
Coding
Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research, 2nd edn. (Sage, 1998), chs. 5-10. Please note, as pointed out above, that there is now a third edition; unfortunately, it is not either as good or as apposite for our purposes as the second edition.
Kathy Charmaz, “Grounded Theory,” in Emerson, Contemporary Field Research.
Optional: Cynthia Weston et al., “Analyzing Interview Data: The Development and Evolution of a Coding System,” Qualitative Sociology 24,3 (2001): 381-400.
Optional: Ann Lewins and Christina Silver, Using Software in Qualitative Research (Sage, 2007), chs. 5-8. We may schedule a supplementary class on using NVivo.
Week 5. Oct. 20.
Abducing
Becker, Tricks, chs. 4-5.
Strauss and Corbin, Basics, chs. 11-14.
Jacqueline P. Wiseman, “The Development of Generic Concepts in Qualitative Research Through Cumulative Application,” Qualitative Sociology 10,4 (1987): 318-38.
Optional: Matthew B. Miles and A. Michael Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis, 2nd edn. (Sage, 1994), chs. 5, 7.
Optional: Patrick Tierney, “The Fierce Anthropologist,” New Yorker, 6 November 2000. Note: this article, about Napoleon Chagnon’s study of the Yanomani, is justly famous. It’s widely available on various websites.
Optional: Jill A. McCorkel and Kristen Myers, “What Difference Does Difference Make? Position and Privilege in the Field,” Qualitative Sociology 26,2 (2003): 199-231.
Week 6. Oct. 27.
Textual analysis: technical issues
Harvey Sacks, Lectures on Conversation (Blackwell 1992), vol. 1, pp. 136-98, 236-66.
Sacks, “On the Analysability of Stories by Children,” reprinted in Coulter, ed., Ethnomethodological, ch. 9.
Optional: Gavan Duffy, “Pragmatic Analysis,” in Klotz and Prakash.
Optional (and technical, but very interesting): Zellig S. Harris, “Discourse Analysis,” Language 28,1 (Jan.-Mar. 1952): 1-30.
Week 7. Nov. 3.
Textual analysis: examples
Livia Polanyi, Telling the American Story (Ablex, 1985), chs. 2-3. See also idem, “A Long Story,” Eurolan tutorial, 2007.
Christopher Browning, Remembering Survival (Norton, 2010), chs. 17-18; 21-25. See also: Review of the book by Timothy Snyder, "Jews, Poles and Nazis: The Terrible History," New York Review of Books, June 24, 2010.
Note: neither of these two pieces applies the techniques advocated by Sacks and (differently) Harris, although Polanyi does key off of the former. Think of how these studies could be redone if they were to be “CA-ified.”
Jason B. Jimerson, “‘Who Has Next?’ The Symbolic, Rational, and Methodical Use of Norms in Pickup Basketball,” Social Psychology Quarterly 62,2 (1999): 136-56.
Week 8. Nov. 10.
Textual analysis: student exercises
Writeups to be distributed.
Week 9. Nov. 17.
Direct observation: technical issues
Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw, Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (Chicago,1995), chs. 1-4, 7.
William Foote Whyte, Street Corner Society, 2nd edn. (Chicago, 1955), Appendix.
Optional: Calvin Morrill et al., “Toward an Organizational Perspective on Identifying and Managing Formal Gatekeepers,” Qualitative Sociology 22,1 (1999): 51-72.
Optional: Brooke Harrington, “Obtrusiveness as Strategy in Ethnographic Research,” Qualitative Sociology 25,1 (2002): 49-216.
Optional: Steven L. VanderStaay, “One Hundred Dollars and a Dead Man: Ethical Decision Making in Ethnographic Fieldwork,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 34,4 (2005): 371-409.
Week 10. Nov. 24.
Direct observation: examples
Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” reprinted in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (Basic, 1973). Note: this is an extremely problematic essay, but is extraordinarily famous as a putative instance of direct observation.
Mitchell Duneier, Sidewalk (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), pp. 253-92. (This chapter is the pivot of the book, but the other chapters are well worth reading.)
Scott, James, Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale University Press, 1985), preface and chapter 6.
Optional: Donald J. Black, “Production of Crime Rates,” American Sociological Review 35,4 (1970): 733-48.
Optional: Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil, Berkeley: University of California Press 1992, ch. 6.
Optional: Christine L. Williams, “Inequality in the Toy Store,” Qualitative Sociology 27,4 (2004): 461-86.
Optional: Stefan Hirschauer, “On Doing Being a Stranger: The Practical Constitution of Civil Inattention,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 35,1 (2005): 41-67.
Optional: Iver B. Neumann, “‘A Speech That the Entire Ministry May Stand For,’ or: Why Diplomats Never Produce Anything New,” International Political Sociology 1,2 (2007): 183-200.
Week 11. Dec. 1.
Direct observation: student exercises
Writeups to be distributed.
Week 12. Dec. 8.
Interviews: technical issues
James P. Spradley, The Ethnographic Interview (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979), p. 25-106. [Note: you should read this entire book; but since the second half of it has been covered indirectly in the class session on coding, I will leave this to your leisure over the next few months.]
David A. Snow, Louis A. Zurcher, and Gideon Sjoberg, “Interviewing by Comment: An Adjunct to the Direct Question,” Qualitative Sociology 5,4 (1982): 285-311.
Optional: Charles T. Morrissey, “The Two-Sentence Format as an Interviewing Technique in Oral History Fieldwork,” Oral History Review 15,1 (1987): 43-53.
Optional: Robert S. Weiss, Learning From Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies (Free Press, 1994), chs. 2-4.
Optional: Terry Arendell, “Reflections on the Researcher-Researched Relationship: A Woman Interviewing Men,” Qualitative Sociology 20,3 (1997): 341-68.
Optional: Joseph C. Hermanowicz, “The Great Interview: 25 Strategies for Studying People in Bed,” Qualitative Sociology 25,4 (Winter 2002): 479-99.
Optional: Wendy D. Roth and Jal D. Mehta, “The Rashomon Effect: Combining Positivist and Interpretivist Approaches in the Analysis of Contested Events,” Sociological Methods and Research 31,2 (2002): 131-73.
Optional: Juliet Corbin and Janice M. Morse, “The Unstructured Interactive Interview: Issues of Reciprocity and Risks When Dealing With Sensitive Topics,” Qualitative Inquiry 9,3 (2003): 335-54.
Optional: Martin Tolisch, “Internal Confidentiality: When Confidentiality Assurances Fail Relational Informants,” Qualitative Sociology 27,1 (2004): 101-6.
Optional: Kathrine Vitus, “The Agonistic Approach: Reframing Resistance in Qualitative Research,” Qualitative Inquiry 14,3 (2008): 466-88.
Week 13. Dec. 15.
Interviews: examples
Whyte, Street Corner Society, rest of book (i.e., pp. xv-276).
Optional: Lillian Breslow Rubin, Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family (Basic, 1976), chs. 1-6.
Optional: Jackie Krasas Rogers, “Just a Temp: Experience and Structure of Alienation in Temporary Clerical Employment,” Work and Occupations 22,2 (1995): 137-66.
Optional: Ashley Mears and William Finlay, “Not Just a Paper Doll: How Models Manage Bodily Capital and Why they Perform Emotional Labor,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 34,3 (2005): 317-43.
