Identity, values and method

Abstract

Qualitative research tends to be regarded as non-rigorous, 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 self-consciously 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.