Mira Crouch

The logic of small samples in interview-based qualitative research

In a qualitative framework, research based on interviews often seeks to penetrate social life beyond appearance and manifest meanings. This requires the researcher to be immersed in the research field, to establish continuing, fruitful relationships with respondents and through theoretical contemplation to address the research problem in depth. Therefore a small number of cases (less than 20, say) will facilitate the researcher’s close association with the respondents, and enhance the validity of fine-grained, in-depth inquiry in naturalistic settings. Epistemologically prior to these considerations, however, is the explanatory status of such research. From a realist standpoint, here concept formation through induction and analysis aims to clarify the nature of some specific situations in the social world, to discover what features there are in them and to account, however partially, for those features being as they are. Since such a research project scrutinizes the dynamic qualities of a situation (rather than elucidating the proportionate relationships among its constituents), the issue of sample size - as well as representativeness - has little bearing on the project’s basic logic. This article presents this argument in detail, with an example drawn from a study of persons with a past history of cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Discordant Feelings in the Lifeworld of Cancer Survivors

This article concerns persons who live in uncertainty following an earlier diagnosis of (and completed treatment for) cancer. Fear of recurrence of the disease underlies the uncertainty and the attendant perception of being profoundly endangered, more ‘at risk’ than anyone else. Such a reflective assessment engenders a sense of separation from the everyday ‘practical consciousness’ that seems effortlessly to be shared by ‘ordinary’ others. The mismatch between the interaction order and individual psychology gives rise to interpersonal emotional dissonance, which forms a significant aspect of the chronic suffering contained in the ‘at-risk illness’ experience of cancer survivors. The article examines the emotional patterns involved in their situation and seeks to elucidate the pain that accompanies their alienation from the lifeworld in which nonetheless they must continue to dwell.

Social Realities of Loss and Suffering Following Mastectomy

This article draws on personal accounts of women’s thoughts and feelings following mastectomy. The analysis of the material obtained in multiple, focused interviews has revealed two major themes in these accounts: on the one hand, the loss of bodily symmetry (one of the basic cultural criteria of physical beauty) was deeply felt; and on the other, peace of mind (a characteristic of psychological beauty) was permanently disturbed by the fear of the recurrence of cancer and the possibility of death. While the asymmetrical body is a potentially (socially) visible problem of presentation and representation, the fear of recurrence is a fear of the workings of the body that are not visible and not knowable. A woman who has had a breast removed will concern herself, usually in isolation, with her secret unpredictable interior. This fear will be her very own preoccupation, not only because in our society death and disease are deemed threatening and ugly – but also because the uncertainty of the health-status of a woman following mastectomy is socially (as well as medically) veiled by discourse which assumes that she is ‘well’. Though a woman may feel well, she fears that her body may not be well; yet her fear is necessarily silenced through both social denial and incongruity with experience. The article explores in some detail the nature of the stress that inevitably results in this ill-understood, complex situation.

Sustaining identities? Prolegomena for inquiry into contemporary foodways.

As an essential yet also mundane everyday activity, eating in all cultures is expressive of both belief-systems and social distinctions that exist within them. While this has been recognized in social science - and, particularly, anthropology - many questions concerning the meanings of foodways within the overall patterns of “post-modern” culture have yet to be tackled. We argue that a novel signification of food consumption is currently taking place: in a social context where attrition of customary practices creates an extended range of options (which, notably, also represents a constraint), some of the needs of self-conscious individuation that arise within such a context are met through eating practices based on personal choice rather than social habit. In this article, the concept of an “eaters career” is used to explore theoretical and methodological dimensions of inquiry into uses of food that are significant for identity formation and maintenance in contemporary society.

Parturition as Social Metaphor

This paper is concerned with the social labour and delivery. It is informed by field work carried out between 1982 and 1987. The discussion rests on a general proposition concerning the nature of childbirth in its social context. Birth is an unique and crucial social event as well as a singularly important one for the person concerned. As a consequence of its social significance, practices related to birth reflect salient cultural conditions and values and articulate these further within their own domain of meaning and reference. Birth practices - and even more so their ideational representations or images - can be understood as rituals (or templates for rituals) and their meaning is analysed here in relation to the cultural milieu of contemporary society. It appears that birth imagery is not only a metaphor for significant cultural themes. It is also an index of effective dominance of certains ideas - and, through those ideas, a pointer to their substantive supports in the social structure.

The evolutionary context of postnatal depression

Abstract“Postnatal depression” denotes the syndrome of dysphoria, debility, and anxiety that follows childbirth in about 10–20% of women (as variously estimated). Its etiology is seen to be lodged in a variety of psychosocial as well as biological factors, among which the isolating and pressured culture of contemporary society (especially for women/mothers) is commonly singled out as a powerful precipitator. This view is extended here through the evolutionary perspective which casts maternal distress as a set of adaptive responses with the function, in ancestral environments, of soliciting support for a mother who feels that her maternal responsiveness may be threatened. As continuous caretaking of the infant is the active expression of evolved maternal responsiveness, departures from this pattern result in anxiety and distress that seek resolution. Manifestations of maternal distress in contemporary society are dysfunctional, however, since the present social structure does not provide spontaneous and immediate support that can spring forth within small, closely knit social units. Furthermore, for present-day mothers distress is self-perpetuating since the ingrained tendency toward continuing responsiveness rarely finds practical expression and is thus converted into anxious vigilance and depression. This view generates the hypothesis that the emotional and cognitive contents of maternal vigilance are associated with the needs of the infant and will therefore be focused on crying and feeding. A number of qualitative studies of women’s experiences during the postpartum bear out this prediction and support the feasibility of the evolutionary hypothesis of “postnatal depression” as a set of adaptive responses, now out of place in a novel environment.

Bonding, postpartum dysphoria, and social ties

Since the late 1970s, disruptions and “failure” of maternal-infant bonding have been causally linked to postpartum depression. Part I of this paper examines the grounds for this connection while tracing the ramifications of bonding theory (Klaus and Kennell 1976) through obstetrics, pediatrics, and psychiatry, as well as in the (mis)representations of it in the popular media. This discussion resolves into a view of maternal attachment as a long-term development progressively established through intensive mother-infant interaction. The forms of this interaction are phylogenetically determined, albeit culturally and personally mediated. Flowing from this premise, Part II of the paper casts postpartum depression as an adaptive response to threat (from whatever cause) to adequate mothering, and develops an argument for the evolutionary role of enacted social ties in the establishment of maternal responsiveness.