SocProf reviewed What Is Qualitative Research? by Martyn Hammersley
Review of 'What Is Qualitative Research?' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This book is short but contains a lot of things. It is not really an introduction to qualitative research, despite the title. The first three chapters might look introductory but the fourth, and last, chapter veers into the inside baseball of Wacquant v. Duneier, Anderson, and Newman, which might not be helpful to the novice in the field. Again, too inside baseball.
Weirdly enough, in the conclusion, Hammersley pretty much dismisses everything he had written in the previous chapters, dismissing the philosophical strings of qualitative analysis (interpretivism, critical, and constructivism), and then stating, in the next to last paragraph, that "I do not believe that 'qualitative research' is a genuine or useful category - any more than is 'quantitative research'. (99)
So, it seems Hammersley advocates a murky "bag of tools" approach where researchers pick and choose based on what they are researching without holding on to specific nomenclatures. This …
This book is short but contains a lot of things. It is not really an introduction to qualitative research, despite the title. The first three chapters might look introductory but the fourth, and last, chapter veers into the inside baseball of Wacquant v. Duneier, Anderson, and Newman, which might not be helpful to the novice in the field. Again, too inside baseball.
Weirdly enough, in the conclusion, Hammersley pretty much dismisses everything he had written in the previous chapters, dismissing the philosophical strings of qualitative analysis (interpretivism, critical, and constructivism), and then stating, in the next to last paragraph, that "I do not believe that 'qualitative research' is a genuine or useful category - any more than is 'quantitative research'. (99)
So, it seems Hammersley advocates a murky "bag of tools" approach where researchers pick and choose based on what they are researching without holding on to specific nomenclatures. This is not entirely unproblematic and Hammersley concedes his position is not one shared by many. But for Hammerlsey, in the end, it's only and all about producing knowledge (but can you do that in what looks like a theoretical vacuum?).