Qualitative methodologies for geographers : issues and debates /

Over recent years there has been an increasing trend towards the adoption of interpretative and critical approaches to research within human geography. Qualitative methodologies offer a gateway to exploring the processes shaping our social worlds, allowing the researcher to engage with the lives and experiences of others through interviews, group discussions or participant observation. This book is a critical introduction to qualitative methodologies for those preparing to undertake their own qualitative research, or who need to better understand the processes to evaluate and interpret the geographic research of others. Its aim is to demystify the process of doing qualitative methodologies through the discussion and illustration of research in practice. Each chapter presents an insight into the author's own experiences of using qualitative research across a number of projects, and reflects on the dilemmas, thought-processes and questions involved. The reader is invited to engage in the issues and debates thrown up by these examples and, in doing so, to deepen their understanding of the research processes which may be applied to their own projects.Includes bibliographical references and index.1. Introduction: doing qualitative research in geography / Claire Dwyer and Melanie Limb -- pt. 1. Research design -- 2. Doing qualitative research: from interpretation to action / Susan Smith -- 3. At the drawing board: developing a research design / Gill Valentine -- 4. Negotiating the personal and the political in critical qualitative research / Audrey Kobayashi -- pt. 2. Interviewing -- 5. Shared lives: interviewing couples, playing with their children / Stuart Aitken -- 6. Cross-cultural research: issues of power, positionality and 'race' / Tracey Skelton -- 7. 'Insiders' and/or 'outsiders': positionality, theory and praxis / Robina Mohammad -- pt. 3. Group discussions -- 8. The focus-group experience / Tracey Bedford and Jacquelin Burgess -- 9. Working with groups / James Kneale -- pt. 4. Participant observation and ethnography -- 10. Fieldwork in the trenches: participant observation in a conflict area / Lorraine Dowler -- 11. Multiple methods and research relations with children in rural Bolivia / Samantha Punch -- 12. Negotiating different ethnographic contexts and building geographical knowledges: empirical examples from mental-health research / Hester Parr -- pt. 5. Interpretative strategies -- 13. Making sense of qualitative data / Peter Jackson -- 14. Filed work: making sense of group interviews / Mike Crang -- 15. Interpretation, representation, positionality: issues in field research in human geography / David Ley and Alison Mountz -- pt. 6. Writing -- 16. Writing conversation / Katy Bennett and Pam Shurmer-Smith -- 17. From where I write: the place of positionality in qualitative writing / Ruth Butler -- pt. 7. Vignettes -- 1. Schooling and striving for success: an investigation into the aspirations of girls attending high school in rural south India / Katharine Moss -- 2. Being Asian, being British and being into black music: the influence of black music on hybrid identities of young South Asian womOver recent years there has been an increasing trend towards the adoption of interpretative and critical approaches to research within human geography. Qualitative methodologies offer a gateway to exploring the processes shaping our social worlds, allowing the researcher to engage with the lives and experiences of others through interviews, group discussions or participant observation. This book is a critical introduction to qualitative methodologies for those preparing to undertake their own qualitative research, or who need to better understand the processes to evaluate and interpret the geographic research of others. Its aim is to demystify the process of doing qualitative methodologies through the discussion and illustration of research in practice. Each chapter presents an insight into the author's own experiences of using qualitative research across a number of projects, and reflects on the dilemmas, thought-processes and questions involved. The reader is invited to engage in the issues and debates thrown up by these examples and, in doing so, to deepen their understanding of the research processes which may be applied to their own projects