This seminar is an intermediate/advanced class on qualitative methods; it builds upon but goes beyond the SPS introductory qualitative methods course. We begin – Part I - with three sessions on foundational issues: philosophy and ethics. Philosophically, the action in recent years has been more at the level of ontology than epistemology; we thus consider the widespread adoption of relational ontologies and their implications for the theory and practice of qualitative methods. For research ethics, we explore both its multiple meta-theoretical foundations (de-ontological / consequentialist / feminist / post-colonial) and its varying practice across qualitative and quantitative-computational methods and experimental designs.
The seminar concludes with a half-day brainstorming workshop – on 6 December – where researchers assess and constructively critique each other’s efforts at operationalizing various qualitative methods.