The Landscape of Qualitative Research: Theories and Issues

Book Overview

In this, the first of a three-volume paperback version of the landmark Handbook of Qualitative Research, editors Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln survey the field of qualitative research from a wide-ranging theoretical perspective. Part I locates the field, providing historical context as well as background on applied qualitative research, the "self" and the "other," and the politics and ethics of qualitative inquiry. Part II examines the major...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0761914331
• ISBN13: 9780761914334
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Both a wide-ranging survey and an up-to-date source book

This is one of three large paperbacks that are the components of Sage's extensive and essential Handbook of Qualitative Research. This volume presents the most thorough theoretical survey of qualitative research that I have read or taught. Denzin and Lincoln's historical view of the field in the introduction and conclusion create a deep contextual understanding of what has been and is now at stake in qualitative research. The volume includes two other aspects that are essential: seeing research as it relates to higher education, and a consideration and critique of research approval bureaucracies (like IRB's) that are sometimes hostile to qualitative work. While many many other books can offer recipes of how one can do qual, this one sets out the "Why?", and the research work out of it flows. It also offers a consideration of the challenges faced when you want to use your own cultural assumptions to study another culture, rather than learning of their own ideas of how things work. Each chapter also functions as a thorough bibliography of the area under consideration.

A very good survey

The editors bring together a very good representative sample of the "state of the art" in qualitative research. In an age of paradigmatic controversies, this book is very helpful in understanding the issues under discussion. As a grad student in anthropology, I found this book to contain a number of useful chapters. It perhaps goes without saying, but it is most useful as a pointer to source materials, rather than being an end unto itself.