Syllabus: Qualitative methods and social science research (2014)

Qualitative methods and social science research Geography 299C Time: Friday 10-12:50 Room: Bunche 1261 Instructor: Adam Moore Email: adam.moore@geog.ucla.edu Office: Bunche 1157 Office hours: Tuesday 10-11 “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better”—Samuel Beckett Overview This seminar focuses on qualitative methods in the social sciences. It is structured as a survey course, exposing students to a range of issues, rather than intensive training in a single approach. The purpose of the seminar is twofold: First, to provide participants with a broad sense of qualitative research strategies, a better understanding of how to design and carry out research, an awareness of the different logics and trade-offs that distinguish methodologies and methods and an improved capacity to read and evaluate diverse qualitative social science research. Second, to write a dissertation proposal that will be competitive for various external dissertation fellowship funders—such as NSF, Fulbright, SSRC, etc.—and defensible before one’s dissertation committee. Course requirements Weekly responses/mini-workshop assignments and seminar participation More details on this during first meeting. Research proposal: Write a proposal for a dissertation-size research project. The completed proposal (roughly 15 pages not including bibliography) should include a clear statement of your research question and its significance, a focused review of relevant literature, a description of your research strategy, a discussion of feasibility and ethical considerations, and estimated timetable. Grades Seminar participation and weekly papers: 40% Research proposal: 60% Books This course has a heavy reading load, made necessary by the 10-week quarter and days reserved for the AAG conference (week 2) and proposal workshops. Most of the readings consist of articles or book chapters. These readings will be posted on the class website. Additionally the following books, which are available at Ackerman, are required: Andrew Abbott. 2004. Methods of discovery: Heuristics for the social sciences Michele Lamont. 2010. How professors think: Inside the curious world of academic judgment Recommended: Allaine Cerwonka and Liisa Malkki. 2007. Improvising theory: Process and temporality in ethnographic fieldwork Part I: Social science inquiry and research design Week 1: Research proposals: What are funding agencies and reviewers looking for, and what do successful ones look like? Michele Lamont. 2010. How professors think: Inside the curious world of academic judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chapters 1-2, 5-6. (Rest of book highly recommended, but not required). Michael Watts. 2001. The Holy Grail: In pursuit of the dissertation proposal. UC Berkeley. http://iis.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/InPursuitofPhD.pdf Adam Przeworski and Frank Salomon. 1995. The art of writing proposals. SSRC. http://www.ssrc.org/workspace/images/crm/new_publication_3/%7B7a9cb4f4-815f-de11-bd80-001cc477ec70%7D.pdf Examples: Adam Moore. 2005. Political Science qualitative methods seminar dissertation proposal Adam Moore. 2006. International and Research Exchanges Board (IREX) funded dissertation fieldwork proposal Timur Hammond. 2009 Fulbright-Hays proposal (not funded) and 2010 Fulbright-Hays proposal (funded), with comments included Week 2: No class—AAG meeting Week 3: Research questions and logics of inquiry Andrew Abbott. 2004. Methods of discovery: Heuristics for the social sciences. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Read chapters 2-7; skim chapter 1. Gary King et al. 1994. “Improving research questions.” In, Designing social inquiry: Scientific inference in qualitative research. pp. 14-19. Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora Yanow. 2012. “Ways of knowing: Research questions and logics of inquiry” (Chapter 2). Interpretive research design: Concepts and processes. New York: Routledge. pp. 24-44. National Science Foundation. 2004. Scientific foundations of qualitative research. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation. pp. 9-19. Howard Becker. 1996. “The epistemology of qualitative research.” In, Richard Jessor et al, eds. Ethnography and human development: Context and meaning in social inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 53-71. Examples: James Ferguson. 2005. “Seeing like an oil company: Space, security and global capital in neoliberal Africa.” American Anthropologist. 107(3): 377-82. Steve Herbert. 1997. “Preface and acknowledgments” (pp. vii and viii) and “Introduction” (pp. 1-8). In, Policing space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles police department. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Week 4: Cases and sites: What do they do and how do you select them? Bent Flyvbjerg. 2006. “Five misunderstandings about case study research.” Qualitative Inquiry. 12(2): 219-245. Matei Candea. 2007. “Arbitrary locations: In defense of the bounded field-site.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 13: 167-184. Mario Luis Small. 2009. “’How many cases do I need? On science and the logic of case selection in field based research.” Ethnography. 10: 5-38. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson. 1997. “Discipline and practice: ‘The field’ as site, method and location in anthropology.” In, Anthropological locations: Boundaries and grounds of a field science. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. pp. 1-46. Jenna Burrell. 2009. “The field site as a network: A strategy for locating ethnographic research.” Field Methods. 21(2): 181-91. Examples: Sverre Molland. 2013. “Tandem ethnography: On researching ‘trafficking’ and ‘anti- trafficking.’” Ethnography. 14(3): 300-323. Eugene McCann. 2008. “Expertise, truth and urban policy mobilities: Global circuits of knowledge in the development of Vancouver, Canada’s ‘four pillar’ drug strategy.” Environment and Planning A. 40(4): 885-904. Part II: Varieties of qualitative evidence and methods of acquiring them Week 5: Negotiating the field: Access, ethics and other dilemmas of fieldwork Samer Shehata. 2006. “Ethnography, identity and the production of knowledge.” In D. Yanow and P. Schwartz-Shea, eds. Interpretation and method. New York: M.E. Sharpe. pp. 244-63. Erin Jessee. 2011. “The limits of oral history: Ethics and methodology amid highly politicized research settings.” Oral History Review. 38(2): 287-307. Christian Davenport. 2013. “Researching while black: Why conflict research needs more African Americans (maybe).” Political violence @ a glance: http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2013/04/10/researching-while-black-why-conflict-research-needs-more-african-americans-maybe/ Nancy Scheper-Hughes. 2004. “Parts unknown: Undercover ethnography of the organs-trafficking world.” Ethnography. 5(1): 29-73. Jennifer Robertson. 2002. “Reflexivity redux: A pithy polemic on ‘positionality.’” Anthropological Quarterly. 75(4): 785-92. Sarah Brooks. 2013. “The ethical treatment of human subjects and the institutional review board process.” (Chapter 2). In, Interview research in political science. Cornell University Press. pp. 45-66. Review IRB standards and procedures for UCLA http://ora.research.ucla.edu/OHRPP/Pages/PoliciesandGuidance.aspx#applying Week 6: Ethnography Ellen Pader. 2006. “Seeing with an ethnographic sensibility: Explorations beneath the surface of public policies.” In D. Yanow and P. Schwartz-Shea, eds. Interpretation and method. New York: M.E. Sharpe. pp. 161-75. Paul Lichterman. 2002. “Seeing structure happen: Theory-driven participant observation” (Chapter 5). In, Methods of social movement research. pp.118-45. Roger Sanjek. 1990. “A vocabulary for field notes.” In, Fieldnotes. pp 92-121. Sudhir Venkatesh. 2002. “‘Doin’ the hustle’: Constructing the ethnographer in the American ghetto.” Ethnography. 3(1): 91-111. Leslie Salzinger. 2004. “Revealing the unmarked: Finding masculinity in a global factory.” Ethnography. 5(1): 5-27 Examples: Dydia Delyser. 1999. “Authenticity on the ground: Engaging the past in a California ghost town.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 89(4): 602-632. Hannah Appel. 2012. “Offshore work: Oil, modularity, and the how of capitalism in Equitorial Guinea.” American Ethnologist. 39(4): 692-709. Week 7: Interviews Howard Becker. 1998. “Ask ‘how’? not ‘why’?” Tricks of the trade: How to think about your research while you’re doing it pp. 58-60. Joe Soss. 2006. “Talking Our Way to Meaningful Explanations: A Practical Approach to In-Depth Interviews for Interpretive Research.” In D. Yanow and P. Schwartz-Shea, eds. Interpretation and Method. New York: M.E. Sharpe. pp. 127-49. Irene and Herbert Rubin. 2005. Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data (2nd edition). pp. 108-200. Melissa Hyams. 2004. “Hearing girls’ silences: Thoughts on the politics and practices of a feminist method of group discussion.” Gender, Place and Culture. 11(1): 105-119. Robert Mikecz. 2012. “Interviewing elites: Addressing methodological issues.” Qualitative Inquiry, 18(6): 482-93. Examples: Lee Ann Fujii. 2010. “Shades of truth and lies: Interpreting testimonies of war and violence.” Journal of Peace Research. 47(2): 231-41. Analia Ines Meo. 2012. “Picturing students’ habitus: The advantages and limitations of photo-elicitation interviewing in a qualitative study in the city of Buenos Aires.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods. 9(2): 149-71. Week 8: Archival, performative, and internet-based methods Carey-Ann Morrison. 2012. “Solicited diaries and the everyday geographies of heterosexual love and home: Reflections on methodological process and practice.” Area. 44(1): 68-75. Ana Laura Stoler. 2002. “Colonial archives and the arts of governance.” Archival Science. 2: 87-109. Cameron G. Thies. 2002. “A pragmatic guide to qualitative historical analysis in the study of international relations.” International Studies Perspectives. 3: 351-72. Examples: Dittmer, Jason. 2008. “The geographical pivot of (the end of) history: Evangelical geopolitical imaginations and audience interpretation of Left Behind.” Political Geography. 27(3): 280-300. Paul Simpson. 2011. “‘So, as you can see…’: Some reflections on the utility of video methodologies in the study of embodied practices.” Area. 43(3): 343-52. Kate Brown. 2004. Selections from “Introduction”, and “Inventory” (Chapter 1). In, A biography of no place: From ethnic borderland to Soviet heartland. pp. 12-51. Week 9: Proposal workshop No readings Week 10: Proposal workshop No readings An incomplete and idiosyncratic list of suggested further readings (organized by week) Week 3: Research questions and logics of inquiry J. Ann Tickner. 2005. “What is your research program? Some feminist answers to international relations methodological questions.” International Studies Quarterly. 49(1): 1-21. Daniel Little. 1990. Varieties of social explanation: An introduction to the philosophy of social science. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Clifford Geertz. 1973. “Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture.” The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. pp. 3-32. Albert Hirschman. 1970. “The search for paradigms as a hindrance to understanding.” World Politics. 22(3): 329-43. Ann Chih Lin, “Bridging Positivist and Interpretive Approaches to Qualitative Methods,” Policy Studies Journal 26:1 (1998), pp. 162-180. Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sudhir Venkatesh. 2008. “How does it feel to be black and poor?” (Chapter 1). Gang leader for a day: A rogue sociologist takes to the streets. New York: Penguin. pp. 1-26 Bent Flyvbjerg. 2001. Making social science matter. Cambridge University Press. George Steinmetz, ed. 2005. The politics of method in the human sciences: Positivism and its epistemological others. Duke University Press. Week 4: Cases and sites: What do they do and how do you select them? Michael Buroway. 1998. “The extended case method,” Sociological Theory 16(1): 4-33. Clifford, James. 1997. “Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the Disciplining of Anthropology.” In Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 52-91. Stone, Pamela. 2007. “Introduction” and “Appendix: Study Methodology.” In Opting Out: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-20 and 239-256 Harding, Susan. 2000. “Introduction: Standing in the Gaps” and “Chapter One: Speaking is Believing.” In The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics” Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 3-60. Ghassan Hage. 2005. “A not so Multi-sited Ethnography of a not so Imagined Community.” Anthropological Theory. 5(4): 463-475. William Cronon. 1992. “Kennecott journey: The paths out of town” In, Under an open sky: Rethinking America’s western past. New York: W.W. Norton. pp. 28-51. Charles Ragin. 1987. “The distinctiveness of comparative social science” (Chapter 1). The comparative method: Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. pp. 1-18. Iddo Tavory and Stefan Timmermans. 2009. “Two cases of ethnography: Grounded theory and the extended case method.” Ethnography. 10(3): 243-63. Audie Klotz, “Case Selection,” in Audie Klotz and Deepa Prakash, eds., Qualitative Methods in IR: A Pluralist Guide (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), Ch.4, pp. 43-60. John Gerring. 2004. “What is a Case Study and What is it Good for?” American Political Science Review 98, pp. 341-354. John Gerring. 2007. Case study research: Principles and practices. Cambridge University Press. Charles Ragin and Howard Becker. 1992. What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cohn, Carol. (2006). “Motives and methods: using multi-sited ethnography to study US national security discourses.” Chapter 5 in, Feminist Methodologies for International Relations. Brook Ackerly, et al. eds. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 91-107. Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods. (multiple editions). Burawoy, Michael (2003). Revisits: An Outline of a Theory of Reflexive Ethnography. American Sociological Review, 68(5):645-679. J. Passaro (1997) “You Can't Take the Subway to the Field!” In A. Gupta and J. Ferguson, eds. Anthropological Locations, pp. 146-162 Timothy J. McKeown, “Case Studies and the Statistical Worldview,” International Organization Vol. 53, No. 1 (Winter 1999), pp. 161-190. Barbara Geddes, “How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics,” Political Analysis Vol. 2 (1990), pp. 131-150. Douglas Dion, “Evidence and Inference in the Comparative Case Study,” Comparative Politics Vol. 30, No. 2 (January 1998), pp. 127-45. David Collier and James Mahoney, “Insights and Pitfalls: Selection Bias in Qualitative Research,” World Politics Vol. 49, No. 1 (October 1996), pp. 56-91. Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers, “The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry,” Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol. 22, No. 2 (April 1980), pp. 174-197. Snyder, Richard. “Scaling Down: The Subnational Comparative Method.” Studies in Comparative International Development 36:2 (2001), pp. 93-110. Charles Ragin and Lisa Amoroso. 2011. “Using comparative methods to study diversity” (Chapter 6). Constructing social research: The unity and diversity of method. pp. 135-162. Posner, Daniel. 2004. “The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi.” American Political Science Review 98(4): 529-46. Jared Diamond, “One island, two peoples, two histories: The Dominican Republic and Haiti,” Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), pp. 329-357 Week 5: Negotiating the field: Access, ethics and other dilemmas of fieldwork Carolyn Ellis. 1995. “Emotional and Ethic Quagmires in Returning to the Field.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. 24(1): 68-98. Elisabeth Jean Wood. 2003. “Ethnographic research in the shadow of war” (Chapter 2). Insurgent collective action and civil war in El Salvador. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 31-50. Patrick G. Coy. 2001. “Shared Risks and Research Dilemmas on a Peace Brigades International Team in Sri Lanka.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. 30(5): 575-606. Laud Humphreys. 1975. “Methods: The sociologist as voyeur” (Chapter 2). Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public spaces. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. pp. 16-44; Donald Warwick. 1975. “Tearoom trade: Means and ends in social research” (Retrospect). Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public spaces. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. pp. 191-212. Chih Yuan Woon. 2013. “For emotional fieldwork in critical geopolitical research on violence and terrorism.” Political Geography. 33: 31-41 K. Narayan (1993) “How native is the native anthropologist?” American Anthropologist 95(3): 671-686 Thorne, Barrie. 1980. “‘You Still Takin’ Notes?’ Fieldwork and Problems of Informed Consent.” Social Problems 27(3): 284-297. England K. 1994. Getting personal: reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research. Professional Geographer 46 80-89. Week 6: Ethnography Timothy Pachirat. 2009. “The Political in Political Ethnography: Reflections from an Industrialized Slaughterhouse on Perspective, Power, and Sight.” In Ed Schatz, editor. Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 143-61. Michael Barnett. 1997. “The UN Security Council, Indifference, and Genocide in Rwanda.” Cultural Anthropology. 12(4): 551-78. Jamie Gillen. 2012. “Investing in the field: Positionalities in money and gift exchange in Vietnam.” Geoforum. 43 (6): 1163-1170 Paul Rabinow. 1977. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. University of California Press. Rachel Pain and Peter Francis. 2003. “Reflections on Participatory Research.” Area. 35(1): 46-54. Robert M. Emerson, et al., Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Week 7: Interviews Layna Mosely, ed. 2013. Interview research in political science. Cornell University Press (there are several excellent chapters in this book!) Anne Galletta. 2013. Mastering the semi-structured interview and beyond. New York University Press. Robert S. Weiss, 1994. Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies. New York: Free Press. Jamie Baxter and John Eyles. 1997. “Evaluating Qualitative Research in Social Geography: Establishing ‘Rigour’ in Interview Analysis.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 22(4): 505-525. Frederic Charles Schaffer. 2006. “Ordinary Language Interviewing.” In D. Yanow and P. Schwartz-Shea, eds. Interpretation and Method. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Linda McDowell. 1998. ”Elites in the City of London: Some Methodological Considerations.” Environment and Planning A. 30(12): 2133-2146. Peter E. Hopkins. 2007. “Thinking critically and creatively about focus groups.” Area. 39(4): 528-35 Elwood, S. and D. G. Martin (2000) ‘Placing’ Interviews: Location and scales of power in qualitative research. Professional Geographer 52(4): 649-657. Week 8: Archival, performative, and internet-based methods Alan Latham. 2003. “Research, Performance and Doing Human Geography: Some Reflections on the Diary-photograph and Diary-interview Method.” Environment and Planning A. 35(11): 1993-2017. Jennie Middleton. 2010. “Sense and the city: Exploring the embodied geographies of urban walking.” Social and Cultural Geography. 11(6): 575-96. Claire Dwyer and Gail Davies. 2010. “Qualitative methods III: Animating archives, artful interventions and online environments.” Progress in Human Geography. 34(1): Rose, G. (2001) Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications). Ian Lustick. “History, Historiography, and Political Science: Multiple Historical Records and the Problem of Selection Bias,” American Political Science Review 90, 1996: 605-618. E. Thomas Ewing, "Personal Acts with Public Meanings:  Suicide by Soviet Women Teachers in the Stalin Era," Gender & History 14 (2002) pp. 117-137 Marc Trachtenberg. 2006. The Craft of International History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.