Qualitative research

[Leila Monaghan]

I don't know of any scintillating works offhand on qualitative research but
would be interested in hearing about a good one.  The general approach I
take is that we are observers of human beings just as a field biologist
observes a fish, a bug or a fox in the wild.  Anthropologists document real
behavior that needs explaining by all sorts of different scientists as we
are animals as well as being humans.  One thing that has made this easier is
a recognition in the last 25 years or so of Chaos Theory and how human
behavior as well as much of the physics of the world is not predictable.
 Just because we have free will, however, does not mean that patterns of
behavior do not emerge.

all best,

Leila

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 10:19 PM, galey modan <gmodan at gmail.com> wrote:

> On a sort of related note, I'm teaching a course this quarter in which
> students have had no other exposure to qualitative social science and are
> having a really hard time understanding how ethnographic work can be
> 'scientific' since the claims are not widely generalizable. Can anyone
> suggest a good, very basic and accessible text explaining what qualitative
> research is and how it differs quantitative research?  Ideally I'd like to
> find something that's around 20 pages.
>
> thanks,
>
> Galey
>
> 2011/3/8 Matthew Bernius <mbernius at gmail.com>
>
> > On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 9:40 PM, Bruce Mannheim <mannheim at umich.edu>
> wrote:
> >
> > >  The problem I ran into (and one
> > > I'll be better prepared for in the future) is that some (?)/many (?) of
> > the
> > > students were reading their first sustained non-fiction work.  (They've
> > all
> > > read novels and they've all read textbooks, which break the world into
> > > bite-sized chunks.)  So your students might need to be prepared for the
> > > reading they do before they actually delve into the first book.
> > >
> >
> > This has been my experience too. The first couple sections/classes often
> > end
> > up dedicated to teaching them "how to read" and "extract."
> >
> > Also, their exposure (or lack there of) to texts that take critical
> > positions on western stances should be taken into consideration as well.
> > During the first few weeks, especially if a student has never encountered
> a
> > critical social science/humanities course, the seemingly tamest of
> > statements can lead to the majority of the class shutting down
> (especially
> > Freshmen).
> >
> > -----------------------------
> > Matthew Bernius
> > PhD Student | Cultural Anthropology | Cornell University |
> > http://anthropology.cornell.edu
> > Researcher At Large | Open Publishing Lab @ the Rochester Institute of
> > Technology | http://opl.cias.rit.edu
> > mBernius at gMail.com | http://www.mattbernius.com | @mattBernius
> > My calendar: http://bit.ly/hNWEII
> >
>



-- 
Leila Monaghan, PhD
Department of Anthropology
University of Wyoming
Laramie, Wyoming