Hegemony

Hegemony

Hegemony refers to the domination of one group of people over another. More specifically, and more relevant to critical qualitative research, it refers to the domination of the ideas of one group over those of another. As such, hegemony refers to the mainstream deployment and acceptance of ideologies that justify the inequities inherent in modern society including capitalism, sexism, racism, and so on.

Hegemony as a concept was first employed in Marxist thought in the mid- to late 1800s. Marxist conceptions focused on political leadership and domination by the ruling bourgeois over the subordinate working class proletariat through politically endorsed systems of economic and material distribution. The term hegemony, however, was coined by Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) and most fully explicated in his work Selections from the Prison Notebooks.

Gramsci’s work extended Marxist thought beyond its focus on capitalist struggle to an analysis of intellectual struggle and the role of external forces such as the mass media in stifling creative thought.

Hegemony is of interest to qualitative researchers as a lens through which ideologies can be identified, documented, exposed, and used to create alternate ideology. Given the political nature of such research projects, it is no wonder that research into hegemonic thought is concentrated within critical research approaches, such as critical ethnography and critical discourse analysis, which aim to make explicit and often challenge power hierarchies.

 

 

 

 

Grounded Theory

Grounded Theory

Grounded theory refers simultaneously to a method of qualitative inquiry and the products of that inquiry. Like most discussions of grounded theory, this entry emphasizes the method of inquiry. As such, the grounded theory method consists of a set of systematic, but flexible, guidelines for conducting inductive qualitative inquiry aimed toward theory construction.

This method focuses squarely on the analytic phases of research, although both data collection and analysis inform and shape each other and are conducted in tandem. The analytic strategies are inherently comparative and interactive; this method guides researchers to make systematic comparisons and to engage the data and emerging theory actively throughout the research process.

The significance of Glaser and Strauss’s book must be placed in its historical context. Despite long-standing qualitative traditions largely at the University of Chicago and the impressive contributions of its faculty and students, qualitative research had waned by the early 1960s as sociologists and other social scientists increasingly turned to sophisticated quantitative methods. At that time, survey research was gaining dominance in sociology.

Not only did Glaser and Strauss put forth a powerful rhetorical statement about the place and promise of qualitative research, but also they provided a set of flexible strategies that guided the analysis of qualitative data. They presented the first detailed, systematic attempt to codify qualitative analysis—and, simultaneously, to develop middle-range theories through subjecting data to rigorous analytic scrutiny. Since 1967, Glaser and Strauss’s message inspired both students and seasoned researchers to pursue inductive qualitative research.

Adele Clarke (2005) also adopts constructivist principles and combines them with postmodernism in her revision of grounded theory, called situational analysis. Bryant, Charmaz, and Clarke advocate adopting key grounded theory strategies devoid of their positivistic underpinnings that include the discovery of an external reality, an objective social scientist, quest for explanation and prediction, and erasure of how the conditions of the research process, including the researcher’s experiences and subjectivities affect the research process.

Instead, constructivism takes a relativistic view and emphasizes: (a) the social conditions of the research situation; (b) the researcher’s perspectives, positions, and practices; (c) the researcher’s participation in the construction of data; and (d) the social construction of research acts, as well as participants’ worlds. Constructivism retains the central foci of action, process, and meaning in earlier versions, but favors theoretical understanding over explanatory generalizations.

Constructivists attend to locating their analyses in the specific historical, social, and interactional conditions of their production, rather than constructing concepts abstracted and separated from their origins. In short, constructivists seek abstract understanding of empirical phenomena as situated knowledge. 

Document Analysis

Document Analysis

The standard approach to the analysis of documents focuses primarily on what is contained within them. In this frame, documents are viewed as conduits of communication between, say, a writer and a reader—conduits that contain meaningful messages. Such messages are usually in the form of writing but can engage other formats such as maps, architectural plans, films, and photographs.

Every document enters into human activity in a dual relation. First, documents enter the social field as receptacles (of instructions, obligations, contracts, wishes, reports, etc.). Second, they enter the field as agents in their own right, and as agents documents have effects long after their human creators are dead and buried (e.g., wills, testaments). In addition, documents as agents are always open to manipulation by others—as allies, as resources for further action, as opponents to be destroyed or suppressed. (We should not forget that people burn, ban, censor, and forge documents as well as read and write them.)

Perhaps the best intellectual starting point for a qualitative researcher is in the work of Michel Foucault (1926–1984).

The production of documents, such as statistical and other reports on crime, health, poverty, and the environment, has figured as an object of study in numerous areas of social science research. The standard research stance is to use such reports as a resource for further study—as, say, a source of data on crime or health.

what is important is a study of the manner in which people use written (and nonwritten) traces to facilitate or manage features of social organization— whether they be transitory episodes of interaction or the ongoing functioning of a hospital, a business, or a school. For example, in the field of medical sociology, there have been numerous studies directed at showing the ways in which patient identities and diagnoses are often shored up through the use of written traces in medical “charts” and patient files.

Data Analysis

Data Analysis

Data analysis is an integral part of qualitative research and constitutes an essential stepping-stone toward both gathering data and linking one’s findings with higher order concepts. There are many variants of qualitative research involving many forms of data analysis, including interview transcripts, field notes, conversational analysis, and visual data, whether photographs, film, or observations of internet occurrences (for the purpose of brevity, this entry calls all of these forms of data text).

First, the gathering of data and the analysis of those data are iterative processes. In its ideal form, early data analysis provides sufficient insight to shape the gathering of further data.

Researchers who conduct interviews may use early analysis to revise interview guides or to focus future interviews. Some field-workers do not settle on a research question until they have spent some time in the field and have observed and begun to analyze what is of theoretical interest in a particular social setting.

Both during and after collecting data, researchers engage in memoing. Memoing occurs when researchers take note of personal, conceptual, or theoretical ideas or reflections that come to mind as they collect and analyze the data. Early memoing may occur while researchers are writing up field notes or transcribing interviews.

Some researchers find it useful to embed memos into their actual field notes or interview transcripts, whereas others find it more profitable to set up the memos separately. No doubt there are researchers who combine the two methods. Some researchers use memos themselves as material for coding, as described next.

Any analysis of data involves some form of coding. Coding reflects both the personal analytic habits of researchers and the general principles that flow from particular qualitative research methodologies and theoretical perspectives. In its most stringent form, the analysis of data can entail line-by-line coding of text whereby researchers capture every empirical and conceptual occurrence in each line.

Qualitative researchers arrive at a more profound analysis of the data when they engage in writing up the data as soon as possible. These short or lengthy writing bouts often yield insights that were not readily apparent even after the coding had been completed. Indeed, researchers may find that they need to go back to the data to recode for concepts that became apparent during the initial writing up of the data.

All data analysis must move toward developing concepts or relating to already existing concepts. This final stage of data analysis is analogous to having a conversation with the literature of the discipline or what was found in other social settings.

More recently, researchers have seen the introduction of software, such as Ethnograph and NVivo, developed for the express purpose of managing and coding qualitative data. These programs, however, remain controversial and have influenced, and continue to influence, data analysis in unforeseen ways.

 

 

Cross-Cultural Research

Cross-Cultural Research

Cross-cultural researchers examine differences and similarities between different groups in society. A concern with culture and cross-cultural research permeates a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, cultural studies, and social work.

Part of the difficulty in defining and separating cultures is that what they consist of can be based on a variety of characteristics, including race, gender, and age. There has been interesting research, for example, on youth culture, lesbian culture, and drug and gang culture. Cross-cultural research in these examples would refer to behavior and beliefs characterized by age, sexuality, and lifestyle. However, cross-cultural research is often seen as being about race, ethnicity, and (more recently) religious differences.

Researchers have studied cultures using a variety of methods, including interviews and ethnographies. Interviews are usually loosely structured to allow participants to put forward their concerns and perspectives. Interviewers can use a variety of theoretical approaches to inform their interviewing, including the increasing use of biographical narrative theories to situate lives within the context of the culture they are examining.

Some of the issues addressed by cross-cultural interviewers are also of concern to ethnographers, and ethnographers may use interviews to collect some of their data.

There are differing views about the period of time needed to study a culture in this way as well as the status of the findings. Some researchers believe that it is a way of finding “the truth” about a culture, whereas others suggest that it provides valuable data but is still dependent on the perspectives of those involved.

Cross-Cultural Research

Cross-cultural researchers examine differences and similarities between different groups in society. A concern with culture and cross-cultural research permeates a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, cultural studies, and social work.

Part of the difficulty in defining and separating cultures is that what they consist of can be based on a variety of characteristics, including race, gender, and age. There has been interesting research, for example, on youth culture, lesbian culture, and drug and gang culture. Cross-cultural research in these examples would refer to behavior and beliefs characterized by age, sexuality, and lifestyle. However, cross-cultural research is often seen as being about race, ethnicity, and (more recently) religious differences.

Researchers have studied cultures using a variety of methods, including interviews and ethnographies. Interviews are usually loosely structured to allow participants to put forward their concerns and perspectives. Interviewers can use a variety of theoretical approaches to inform their interviewing, including the increasing use of biographical narrative theories to situate lives within the context of the culture they are examining.

Some of the issues addressed by cross-cultural interviewers are also of concern to ethnographers, and ethnographers may use interviews to collect some of their data.

There are differing views about the period of time needed to study a culture in this way as well as the status of the findings. Some researchers believe that it is a way of finding “the truth” about a culture, whereas others suggest that it provides valuable data but is still dependent on the perspectives of those involved.

Critical Theory

Critical Theory

Critical theory is a foundational perspective from which analysis of social action, politics, science, and other human endeavors can proceed. Research drawing from critical theory has critique (assessment of the current state and the requirements to reach a desired state) at its center.

Critique entails examination of both action and motivation; that is, it includes both what is done and why it is done. In application, it is the use of dialectic, reason, and ethics as means to study the conditions under which people live. This entry describes the development of critical theory and its applications to a variety of research questions.

Although there are three identified stages of critical theory, all three conceptions have methodological value. There are some conceptual and foundational differences among the three stages, but there are questions as to which methodological specifics of each stage can be applied. The realm of social theory generally is extremely broad; any historical, political, economic, and technological elements can be studied in depth. Furthermore, conceptions of ideology can be applied to analysis in numerous ways. Therefore, the changes to critical theory do not represent suppressive variables. Because of the breadth of critical theory’s brush, many kinds of questions may be amenable to its application.

The observation consists of the living conditions of individuals, the kinds of work being done and the places where the work is done and spatial limitations that effectively limit movement, living space, and other kinds of existence. The observation is informed (shaped) by critical theory.

Opportunities for observation in the critical theoretic framework exist in the normal course of events. For example, a city may plan to rejuvenate a downtown area that has fallen into a state of deterioration. The plan could involve housing, retail business, office space, and other elements. Initially, the plan will likely be subject to review at several levels, including community response.

Individuals, who are other selves, apprehend their lived lives in some particular ways. For instance, spatial limitations might be perceived not merely as geographic boundaries but also as social and cultural boundaries. The meaning of perceptions can be comprehended by researchers only by inquiring of the individuals. Asking people what they believe is open to them and what is closed is the practical application of reason by the researcher. The interviewing process also opens the potential practice of reason on the part of the interviewees.

The second and third stages of critical theory, in particular, pay attention to people lived lives. The second stage is especially influenced by Habermas’s work in communicative action and discourse ethics. During this stage, a more pragmatic focus to inquiry is evident.

One factor that pervades all three stages of critical theory is the recognition that reason is possible and necessary for human action. The practice of critique depends both on reasons as a tool for the practice and on observation of practical reason. Reason as applied by the researcher entails the avoidance of engaging in human behavior and action as instrumentalities.

Analysis grounded in critical theory includes examination of ideological forces and statements that influence human action. Once again, this aspect of critical theory signals its Marxian basis; capitalism is a major ideology that has been, and continues to be, the focus of much attention. During the first stage, capitalism was the dominant perceived ideology. During the latter two stages, the study of ideology was broadened to include many aspects of race, gender, class, and other things.

The warnings that customarily apply to observational study, interviewing, and phenomenological research in general also apply with regard to critical theory. Errors or insufficiencies in those areas could have deleterious effects on the process and product of critique. Because critique is the intended outcome of investigation, it is essential that the researcher apply the theory with care and vigilance.

Critical Research

Critical Research

Critical research is a loosely defined genre of social inquiry whose central theme involves the problematization of knowledge. Knowledge is not simply a matter of representing and explaining reality but rather a social phenomenon itself, having substantive– constitutive relations to personal identities, social practices, institutions, and power structures. This includes knowledge produced by social researchers; therefore, critical research must profoundly include a self-reflexive or reflective component.

Most critical research practiced at this time draws from both critical theory and poststructuralism/postmodernism despite the differences between them. This is possible because there are intersections between critical theory and poststructuralism/ postmodernism at the level of methodology and at many levels of sociocultural criticism.

Foucault’s research methods are called archaeology and genealogy. Both are ways to study knowledge in the human sciences as discourse practices that construct specific forms of the human subject   internally (e.g., “the insane,” “the criminal,” “the sexual deviant”), mask the arbitrary form of these constructions, and then subjugate the constructed subjects to punishment, discipline, examination, and surveillance.

Contradictions in the notion of the human subject as it emerged at the end of the 18th century are regarded as insightful—not condemning—by critical theory. Philosophies based on dialectical reason modified Kantian insights to argue that existence itself is contradictory.

Freedom is a state of knowing one’s self to not be anything objective, but self-knowledge requires objectivations from which to reflect. Hence, in different ways, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx developed theories in which the epistemic subject–object relation has an ontological status; knowledge is part of an existential spiral in which subjectivity acts to objectivate (“posit”) itself and then reflects from the objectivations to know itself and know itself as free.

In Hegel and Marx, the subject is transindividual—a cosmic subject for Hegel and a species subject for Marx—and develops itself through history with the staged overcoming of alienated forms of self-understanding.

Critical theory has had a first generation, which emphasized dialectical reason but sought to combine it with Weberian social theory and the psychoanalytic tradition, and a second generation, which shifted from dialectics to intersubjectivity. The theory of communicative action developed by Jürgen Habermas has been most influential for contemporary forms of research informed by critical theory. Such research makes use of virtually all research methods available to the social sciences at this time, including empiricist methods, interpretive hermeneutic methods, critical hermeneutics, and systems theory. What makes research critical are not the methods employed but rather the theory of knowledge and society used in designing a study and interpreting results. A typical critical research project will artfully combine several methods.

Critical Ethnography

 

Critical Ethnography

Critical ethnography is a relatively new mode of qualitative investigation and one in need of further elaboration, discussion, and debate. Critical ethnography shares the methods of traditional ethnography, such as by seeking the emic perspective gained through intense fieldwork, but it adds an explicit political focus.

Critical ethnography has its roots in the well-established tradition of anthropological ethnography. Critical ethnography grew out of dissatisfaction with both the a theoretical stance of traditional ethnography, which ignored social structures such as class, patriarchy, and racism, and what some regarded as the overly deterministic and theoretical approaches of critical theory, which ignored the lived experience and agency of human actors.

The most notable publications influencing the uptake and development of critical ethnography have been Jim Thomas’s Doing Critical Ethnography, which outlined the theoretical underpinnings of critical ethnography, and Phil Carspecken’s Critical Ethnography in Educational Research, which provided a methodological theory of critical ethnography accompanied by empirical techniques, data, and findings.

Carspecken pointed to what he referred to as a social ontology tied tightly to critical epistemology. He described the social site of research as composed of social interactions between actors and the social practices that reproduce systemic relationships.

These interactions and relations occur within the context of economic, political, and cultural structures that integrate the particular social site, and the actors within it, within a society. These interactions, Carspecken noted, can be evidenced through objective, subjective, and normative truth claims inherent in all human interaction.

Critical ethnographic approaches necessarily rely on reflexivity of method and, as such, must recognize the interplay between the researcher and the participant, between data and theory, and between research and action. Critical ethnographic projects need to move beyond the interview-only study not only to engage participants in naturalistic dialogue but also to involve them as co-researchers with a stake in interpreting results and suggesting avenues for action.

The methodology of critical ethnography has emerged as a useful approach to explore many of the issues confronting contemporary society. Although there are a range of possibilities in terms of method, these need to be located within a robust ontology and epistemology to counter challenges posed by critics of openly ideological research. Although a single study might not achieve the structural change desired by either researchers or participants, adhering to the principles of critical research methodologies will enable both parties to identify and explore oppression and inequality and to move closer to emancipatory action.

Critical discourse analysis

Critical discourse analysis

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a theoretical approach to studying the role of language in society that originated within linguistics but has found widespread application across the social sciences.

M. A. K. Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics, which provides an important foundation for current CDA theory and methodology as well. Although the specific research areas and methods of analysis within CDA are by no means homogeneous, what unites all scholars engaged in CDA is a critical perspective that is geared toward examining the subtle ways in which unequal power relations are maintained and reproduced through language use.

The term discourse is generally understood to refer to any instance of signification, or meaning-making, whether through oral or written language or nonverbal means. In this sense, a dinner table conversation and a newspaper article on globalization are instances of discourse, and so is an advertisement in a fishing magazine, although most CDA analyses rely on written texts or transcripts of oral interactions as data.

Much of the early work within CDA targeted the political domain. This remains a very active line of research to date, and studies typically scrutinize speeches by key politicians or critique documents published by government agencies, institutions, or international organizations. Many scholars have engaged in researching and critiquing media texts from a CDA perspective, pointing to systematic biases and discriminatory tendencies in news reporting.

In addition to methodological and conceptual diversity, CDA as a mode of investigation lacks a unitary theoretical framework, although it is by no means a theoretical.

Norman Fairclough was one of the leading developers of CDA’s theoretical grounding, and his writings have become standard reference points for many who pursue critical textual analysis. One of the theoretical challenges for CDA as a socially and politically sensitive model of language use has been to explicate the relationship between discourse and social formations while attending to the layered nature of social existence.

A second theoretical strand within CDA concerns itself with the role of cognition in maintaining oppressive social practices and reproducing ideologies, and the works of Teun van Dijk and Paul Chilton are relevant in this regard. Cognition within CDA is always socially rooted and encompasses shared group norms, beliefs, attitudes, and ideologies. Researchers studying social cognition emphasize that individual or group discriminatory practices, such as acts of race related violence or anti-immigrant legislation, need to be studied in conjunction with the social cognitions (attitudes and ideologies) that are necessary to produce and maintain them.

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Use of sanction in U.S foreign policy: The case of UN resolution 2231 on Iran

 

1)      Economic sanctions reconsidered; History and current policy

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=etyVmnPOrG8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=sanction+on+U.S+foreign+policy&ots=Te9ClmSb0L&sig=JWRUp3DgkPfGIGtwufomhWrFEBw#v=onepage&q=sanction%20on%20U.S%20foreign%20policy&f=false

 

2)       Designing foreign policy: Voters, special interest groups, and economic sanctions

3)      Economic sanctions and the U.S foreign policy

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8772878&fileId=S1049096500022654

 

4)      Trade Sanctions As Policy Instruments: A Re-Examination

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2600674?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

 

5)      Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool: Weighing Humanitarian Impulses

http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/36/5/499.short

 

6) The Iranian quagmire: How to move forward

7)Trade sanctions in international environmental policy: Deterring or encouraging free riding?

 

8)      Economic sanctions as a instrument in The U.S foreign policy

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=mn7Wxx1SigcC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=sanction+on+U.S+foreign+policy&ots=o3Quf28lN0&sig=tP5pP-MxhJDMku9duf_-KlS3O18#v=onepage&q=sanction%20on%20U.S%20foreign%20policy&f=false

 

 

9) The effect of foreign direct investment on the use and success of US sanctions 

10)Why sanctions against Iran are counterproductive: Conflict resolution and state–society relations