Understanding qualitative research in the context of cultures: methodological consequences

As researchers, we conduct qualitative research in a wide variety of contexts, addressing an even broader range of questions, some of which explicitly name culture as a focus of interest. The term culture itself, while familiar, however, does not have an univocal meaning, and thus a preliminary step for researchers is to explain exactly what they mean by the term. Fields such as anthropology, cultural studies, and sociology all offer us guidance here, providing different and sometimes convergent images of our object of interest. Once we have explained the particular purchase on culture that our research purports to address, we must then explore the methodological consequences this choice entails. By consequences, I mean that commitments to a particular version of culture will demand choices and modifications to the methods associated with the epistemological, ideological and methodological position(s) we take. Exploring and defining these consequences is the second substantive task for the qualitative researcher. In this chapter, I offer a preliminary discussion of the scoping of the term culture for qualitative research. I follow this with a consideration of the potential methodological and representational consequences of doing culture in research, focusing on the discovery of culture through qualitative research, methodological adjustment to culture in such contexts, and approaches to the discursive production of culture in such contexts. In addition to reference to 'classic' qualitative texts and exemplar studies, I include where relevant some reference to my own work of addressing culture in the contexts of qualitative research