Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences (EUROQUAL)
European Science Foundation (ESF), 2006-2009
ApplicantsPaul Atkinson (Cardiff University, UK)
Simone Bonnafous (Université Paris 12, France)
Hubert Knoblauch (TU Berlin, Germany)
Herbert Gottweis (Universität Wien, Austria)
Steering group:Shalini Randeria (Zurich, Switzerland)
Rudolf Richter (Vienna, Austria)
Giampietro Gobo (Milan, Italy)
Anne Ryen (Oslo, Norway)
Miguel Valles (Madrid, Spain)
Tuula Gordon (Helsinki, Finland)
Jef Verhoeven (Leuven, Belgium)
Hendrik Wagenaar (Leiden, Netherlands)
Uwe Flick (Berlin, Germany)
Jacob Torfing (Roskilde, Denmark)
Péter Bodor (Budapest, Hungary)
David Silverman (London, UK)
AbstractThe proposal is for a research programme in qualitative methods, complementing the existing ESF programme in quantitative methods. It is based on the fact that while qualitative research is highly visible in many fields of social-science research, it exists within many sub-specialisms, and reflects national as well as disciplinary boundaries. There is a clear need for scholars throughout Europe to share, develop and promote high-level methodological expertise. There is an equally pressing need for capacity-building within the European social sciences. The proposal addresses these needs through two closely linked activities: expert interdisciplinary and cross-national workshops and associated training events.
BackgroundThe use of qualitative research methods has become increasingly widespread throughout the social sciences. From their origins in disciplines like social anthropology and sociology, qualitative research methods are now firmly entrenched in major fields of inquiry, including health and nursing studies, educational research, criminology, human and cultural geography, media and cultural studies, discursive and social psychology, management and organization studies, political science and policy analysis. Furthermore, the range and variety of qualitative research methods have expanded. There are now empirical and methodological literatures relating to, inter alia, analyses of talk, visual materials, life-histories and documents of life, material culture and display cultures, archival data, internet and cyber-culture. The past decade or so has seen a proliferation of methodological literature, vigorously marketed by commercial publishers, and dominated by Anglo-American authors and their intellectual traditions.
These trends suggest that qualitative research is flourishing and therefore they may appear to need little further support. While the first is true, up to a point, the second is not. There remains an urgent need for qualitative research to be promoted, and its quality enhanced, through national and international programmes. There are, moreover, particularly good reasons why a distinctively European perspective is needed.
RationaleDespite the widespread use of qualitative research in the social sciences, there is a clear need for capacity-building throughout the social science disciplines. The mere fact of their use does not necessarily lead to high quality research or significant levels of expertise throughout the research communities. There is good evidence to suggest that a good deal of 'qualitative' research is methodologically limited. Leading researchers repeatedly report difficulty in recruiting research associates and research fellows who have sufficiently well-developed skills to carry out funded research. This remains a problem even when - as in the United Kingdom - there are well-established requirements and programmes for postgraduate research training. The need for capacity-building is by no means restricted to the promotion of skills at relatively junior levels. Arguably, there is an equally pressing need for skills enhancement at more senior levels. At the level of principal investigators, doctoral supervisors and methods teachers, there is a clear need to improve the quality of skills, the range of training competences, and technical expertise.
The methodological literature is, globally, dominated by commercial publications from UK and American publishing houses, and English-language academic journals. The dominance of some English-language perspectives is amplified by the use of English as the lingua franca of much social research and most methodological discourse. The proliferation of such literature has promoted qualitative research and rendered it more visible. But it tends to overlook and marginalize the actual and potential contributions from other national and intellectual disciplines, especially from key European states outside the UK. For instance, Grounded Theory, deriving from US sociology is now widely used in Europe and its influence is felt across a wide range of disciplinary fields, including organization analysis, health studies, political science and policy analysis, as well as its discipline of origin. There are important, but mutually isolated, traditions that relate to qualitative research that ought to be brought together. They can and should inform and enhance the existing research literature and the collective skills of European social scientists. Synergy between European perspectives and Anglophone traditions would enhance research capacity throughout the research networks, most notably the European Research Area (ERA). Key intellectual traditions to be included in these perspectives include:
Discourse and semiotic analysisThe French tradition is partly known outside France, but in the Anglophone world often only through a small number of key authors (Foucault, Lacan, Barthes, Greimas) and therefore only at a very broad, general level. French discourse analysis is most widely disseminated in Continental Europe. The work that has wider circulation is not necessarily the most significant in informing the conduct of current research. Equally, while Anglophone linguistic philosophy has had an important impact in France, current empirical research and methodological work from the Anglophone world in discourse analysis, conversation analysis and discursive psychology, deserves greater attention.
Hermeneutics and verstehende perspectivesThere are strong traditions of research within the German-speaking countries that run parallel to other qualitative traditions, but are not well-known elsewhere. They include the perspective known as objective hermeneutics that has important potential applications more widely than is currently the case, especially beyond the confines of the German-language academic communities.
Collective memorialization and the archiveQualitative research is a powerful means for understanding how collective memories and identities are constructed through the collection, distribution, storage and display of oral histories, visual documents and other memorabilia. There are important uses of these materials and the modes of analysis associated with them. For instance, Spanish uses of qualitative research, with roots in the 'Madrid School' and the 'Barcelona School', have developed the analysis of life-documents in understanding formations of memory and identity in Spain: the Civil War, Franco and post-Franco periods of the recent Spanish past are key moments in this work. Likewise, the collective memorialization of political violence in Italy is a key topic that brings together archival and observational data. The documentation of recent history in Northern Ireland through visual and life-history archival work provides another example of qualitative research in a local setting.
These are just selected examples of how significant work, informed by qualitative research traditions, can have a strongly national, regional or local character. While there are large and flourishing research communities using and developing qualitative work in some European states, in others research is conducted in small discrete research communities. The Nordic states, for instance, have excellent qualitative researchers, but the overall tenor of social research means that quantitative work - often with an orientation to state welfare interests - occupies a predominant position. In Spain and Italy, as already indicated, there are relatively small numbers of researchers, who contribute to the international research programmes, but are working in relative isolation within their own nation states.
Overview of the ProgrammeIt is recommended that ESF supports funding a four-year programme on qualitative methods in the social sciences in Europe in order to: a) advance knowledge of the methods of analysing increasingly complex social science data; b) increase the human capacity to analyse such data; and c) advance comparative qualitative social science. This will be effected through a series of integrated workshops and seminars which will provide training for junior social scientists in the latest methods of analysis of social scientific data and also provide the opportunity for senior researchers working through Europe at the cutting edge of analysis and methodological innovation to share their research. Throughout the programme the emphasis will be on the methodological solutions to real social science problems and as a consequence there will be a strong emphasis on engagement with researchers in substantive areas. The intention is that a network of senior researchers will foster a new network of more junior scholars who will be able to lead the next generation of qualitative social scientists.
The proposed programme will consist of a series of 10 high-level workshops that will develop and disseminate the increasingly specialised methods for data collection, analysis and theory-building in qualitative social research. The workshops will each have a dual function. First, each will bring together experienced, senior researchers from across Europe, together with a smaller number of scholars from North America and elsewhere, to share, develop and promote the high-level skills and analytic traditions that characterise the different disciplinary and national traditions. Secondly, each will have a capacity-building function, bringing together less experienced colleagues drawn from the different national constituencies, in order to disseminate the methods and to develop networks of researchers who are able to extend the methods in their own research, through research methods teaching, and through further networking. The overall vision for the programme is one of cascading expertise across boundaries and across generations of researchers.