Cinnabar and Alabaster

qualitative research as bricolage: "The interpretive bricoleur produces a bricolage--that is, a pieced-together set of representations that are fitted to the specifics of a complex situation" to create an "'[emergent] construction'…that changes and takes new forms as different tools, methods, and techniques of representation and interpretation are added to the puzzle" (5-6). "The qualitative researcher as bricoleur or maker of quilts uses the aesthetic and material tools of his or her craft, deploying whatever strategies, methods, or empirical materials are at hand" (6).

in critique: "Positivists…allege that the so-called new experimental qualitative researchers write fiction, not science, and that these researchers have no way of verifying their truth statements. Ethnographic poetry and fiction signal the death of empirical science, and there is little to be gained by attempting to engage in moral criticism. These critics presume a stable, unchanging reality that can be studied using the empirical methods of objective social science….The province of qualitative research, accordingly, is the world of lived experience, for this is where individual belief and action intersect with culture" (12).

in theoretically-grounding explanation: "Poststructuralists and postmodernists have contributed to the understanding that there is no clear window into the inner life of an individual. Any gaze is always filtered through the lenses of language, gender, social class, race, and ethnicity. There are no objective observations, only observations socially situated in the worlds of—and between—the observer and the observed. Subjects, or individuals, are seldom able to give full explanations of their actions or intentions; all they can offer are accounts, or stories, about what they did and why. No single method can grasp all of the subtle variations in ongoing human experience. Consequently, qualitative researchers deploy a wide range of interconnected interpretive methods, always seeking better ways to make more understandable the worlds of experience they have studied" (31).

"Qualitative research is endlessly creative and interpretive" and "The interpretive practice of making sense of one's findings is both artistic and political" (37)

"The interview is negotiated text….is a conversation, the art of asking questions and listening. It is not a neutral tool, for at least two people create the reality of the interview situation. In this situation answers are given. Thus the interview produces situated understandings grounded in specific interactional episodes" (48).

on text: "Mute evidence—that is, written texts and cultural artifacts—endures physically and leaves its traces on the material past. It is impossible to talk to and with these materials. Researchers must interpret them, for in them are found important meanings about the human shape of lived culture" (50).

reality check: "We cannot study lived experience directly, because language, speech, and systems of discourse mediate and define the very experience we attempt to describe. We study the representations of experience, not experience itself. We examine the stories people tell one another about the experiences they have had. These stories may be personal experience narratives of self-stories, interpretations made up as the person goes along" (51).

the U.S. as "'the interview society' (Atkinson & Silverman, 1997; Silverman 1993). Both qualitative and quantitative researchers tend to rely on the interview as the basic method of data gathering, whether the purpose is to obtain a rich, in-depth experiential account of an event or episode in the life of the respondent or to garner a simple point on a scale of 2 to 10 dimensions. There is inherent faith that the results are trustworthy and accurate….One cannot escape being interviewed; interviews are everywhere, in the forms of political polls, questionnaires about doctor's visits, housing applications, forms regarding social service eligibility, college applications, talk shows, news programs—the list goes on and on….It seems that almost any question—personal, sensitive, probing, upsetting, accusatory—is fair game and permissible in the interview setting….the interview has become a means of contemporary storytelling, where persons divulge life accounts in response to interview inquiries" (63).

nonverbal techniques: "Proxemic communication is the use of interpersonal space to communicate attitudes, chronemics communication is the use of pacing of speech and length of silence in conversation, kinesic communication includes any body movements or postures, and paralinguistic communication includes all the variations in volume, pitch and quality of voice. (Gorden, 1980, p. 335)" (87).

feminist research: "The feminist, communitarian researcher does not invade the privacy of others, use informed consent forms, select subjects randomly, or measure research designs in terms of their validity. This framework presumes a researchers who builds collaborative, reciprocal, trusting, and friendly relations with those studied….It is also understood that those studied have claims of ownership over any material that are produced in the research process, icnluding field notes" (96). (denzin 1989a)

Chp 4 (Ian Hodder, "The Interpretation of Documents and Material Culture"; pp. 155-75): "This chapter is concerned with the interpretation of mute evidence—that is, with written texts and artifacts. Such evidence, unlike the spoken word, endures physically and thus can be separated across space and time from its author, producer, or user. Material traces thus often have to be interpreted without the benefit of indigenous commentary. There is often no possibility of interaction with spoken emic 'insider' as opposed to 'outsider' perspectives. Even when such interaction is possible, actors often seem curiously inarticulate about the reasons they dress in particular ways, choose particular pottery designs, or discard dung in particular locations. Material traces and residues thus post sepcial problems for qualitative research" (155).

"Writing is not an innocent practice" (459). (Denzin, "The Practices and Politics of Interpretation"; 458-98)