Search

Drawing on two multilingual qualitative datasets (Korean/English and German/English), this paper examines the dual role and positionalities of two researchers who simultaneously act as translators, as well as the implications of this dual role for multilingual qualitative research. This work is informed by transnational feminist translation studies and transnational feminist approaches to qualitative research, and founded on the two researchers' intimate familiarity with their participants' languages, contexts, and meaning-making processes. Considering the complexity of this familiarity, this work presents unique dilemmas—challenges and opportunities—with respect to translating, representing, and writing about multilingual qualitative data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings reflexivity into conversation with debates about positionality and live sociology to argue for reflexivity to be reimagined as an enduring practice that is collaborative, responsible, iterative, engaged, agile and creative. We elaborate our argument with reference to examples and contemplations drawn from our experiences researching what Brexit means for Britons living in the EU-27 for the BrExpats research project, which was informed from the outset by reflexive practice. We outline three (of a number of) potential strategies for engaging in reflexive practice: reflexive positioning, reflexive navigating and reflexive interpreting or sense-making. We acknowledge that these are not separate actions in practice but are conceptually distinguishable aspects of an ongoing reflexive practice, informed by our understanding of the cognitive relationship between reflexivity and practice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the authors' comments on a paper by Housley and Fitzgerald about discursive psychology (DP). In order to understand the intellectual place of DP, the authors suggest taking the kinds of fragmentary focus on psychological matters found in the work of Harvey Sacks. The authors present their response to the paper's claim that DP suffers from theoretical amnesia with respect to the analysis of accounts and motives and that that amnesia is confronted by re-emphasizing the sociological canon of interactionism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology. They say that the problem with the paper is that it is organized around disciplinary allegiance and sacred texts rather than around the specific arguments and analytic developments.

In an era of accelerated international mobility, migrant researchers are increasingly studying their migrant co-nationals in a language different from the language in which they report their findings. This raises very significant considerations regarding language experience and translation of research data. While crucial for understanding production of knowledge, these issues have not yet been given adequate attention. In response, this article focuses first on the challenges related to the assumed shared relationship with language between migrant researchers and their migrant informants. In doing so, it contributes to the discussion about positionality of a migrant researcher. Second, it recognizes the role of a translator researcher and discusses the implications of collecting data in one language and presenting the findings in another. As such, it addresses essential methodological queries many migrant researchers face when conducting studies involving their compatriot communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quotations from biographical talk are widely used in the presentation and writing up of qualitative research. This article discusses the unintended implications that such quotations can carry, partly as a result of the conventions for introducing them and because the basis for their selection is often unclear. These implications are discussed in terms of consistency. An assumption of consistency as an aspect of the talk or the person speaking is problematic because it disregards the situated and variable nature of talk, including talk about memory, and can invoke an over-simple model of the speaker. The article proposes that consistency should not be assumed but become a focus for analysis. An example is presented of an analysis of biographical talk about creative work, following an approach derived from social and discursive psychology. Consistencies in a speaker’s repeated accounts of the same job are interpreted in terms of both discursive resources around contemporary creative working, and ‘local resources’, which are derived from the speaker’s ‘discursive apprenticeship’ with his own family. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article critically evaluates ‘shadowing’ as a qualitative research method. Sometimes described as the relatively straightforward opportunity to observe and record the actions and behaviours of a single individual during the course of their everyday working activities (McDonald, 2005), this article demonstrates that shadowing is often a highly disruptive and to some extent performative undertaking, both for the researched and for the researcher. Yet, it is precisely the disruptive potential of shadowing that makes it a valuable data collection method, offering the opportunity to gain significant insights that would be largely unobtainable via any other method. Following a brief discussion of shadowing as a research tool and an introduction to the ‘Muslim Chaplaincy Project’, the remainder of the article describes the experience of shadowing an individual Muslim hospital chaplain in detail. What becomes apparent is that shadowing has the potential to blur into other qualitative data collection methods (e.g. interviewing), especially when those we are shadowing have developed roles that engage them in various discursive communities, and a range of cooperative networks. Shadowing such individuals complicates our understanding of how this method operates in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the authors' response to a critique of their article, focusing on progressive theorizing and powerful analytic work by reiterating concern with the question of social order and organization. According to the authors, contrary to their critics' suggestion that they seek to defend a canon, they merely identify the main strands of allied and sometimes incommensurate enquiry and method that discursive psychology has appropriated from sociology. They reiterate their claim that discursive psychology substitutes discourse for social organization and as such formulates a distinct and different analytic trajectory from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.

This article addresses one concern that is central to much of the sociology of memory currently ongoing: how can we remember terror and how can we forget it? And moreover, is there any cultural shape of remembering terror, which is more suitable than others? By addressing the issue of the social representation of a very controversial past - the massacre at the Bologna railway station in 1980 - the focus is here on the relation between the collective knowledge of public events, such as a terror attack, and the process of their fixing and shaping into social practices (commemorative ceremonies) and cultural objects (public symbols of the slaughter). It will be shown how, in the Bologna case, this process reflects tensions and articulates contradictions in the public inscription of the legitimate version of this past, between state and civil society. It will be argued that, due to a specific group of agents of memory - composed primarily by the association of the victims' relatives and the committees of solidarity founded in the city during the last two decades - the structure of the commemorative ceremony has led to the public fixing of a specific genre of memorization in Italy for the victims of terrorism. This genre, that defines the number of its degrees of freedom (the range of possible variation within itself), becomes a crucial key to understanding the public making of cultural memories. The methodological considerations that arise from this research are related to the possible ways to analyse controversial versions of the past. It will be shown how ethnographying public enactment of personal experience and interviewing the victims and their relatives represent a very specific type of research experience, where many usual assumptions used by qualitative interviews are violated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]