Svend Brinkmann

CONFRONTING THE ETHICS OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Abstract In this article we question the “ethicism” that often permeates the discourse on qualitative research, that is, the implicit idea that qualitative research is ethically good in itself, or at least ethically superior to the uncaring quantitative approaches. In order to throw light on the ethics of qualitative interviews in contemporary consumer societywhat has also been called “the interview society”we draw on microethics as well as macroethics, that is, on the relationships within the interview situation, as well as the relations to society and culture at large. We argue that prevailing forms of warm, empathic interviews are ethically questionable, and, as an antidote, we propose various forms of actively confronting interviews. We argue that ethics is a real and inescapable domain of the human world, and we propose that “The real has to be described, not constructed or formed” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. xi). Therefore we relocate the focus away from the construction of our ethics, to the question of how the researcher should be enabled to skillfully confront ethical reality, particularly by mastering the art of “thick ethical description.”

Meta-synthesis of qualitative research on return to work among employees with common mental disorders

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to investigate which opportunities and obstacles employees with common mental disorders (CMD) experience in relation to return to work (RTW) and how they perceive the process of returning to work. In addition, the study explores what characterizes an optimal RTW intervention and points to possible ways to improve future interventions for employees with CMD. METHODS A systematic literature search was conducted, and eight qualitative studies of medium or high quality published between 1995-2011 were included in this systematic review. The eight studies were synthesized using the meta-ethnographic method. RESULTS This meta-synthesis found that employees with CMD identify a number of obstacles to and facilitators of returning to work related to their own personality, social support at the workplace, and the social and rehabilitation systems. The employees found it difficult to decide when they were ready to resume work and experienced difficulties implementing RTW solutions at the workplace. CONCLUSIONS This study reveals that the RTW process should be seen as a continuous and coherent one where experiences of the past and present and anticipation of the future are dynamically interrelated and affect the success or failure of RTW. The meta-synthesis also illuminates insufficient coordination between the social and rehabilitation systems and suggests how an optimal RTW intervention could be designed.

Doing Without Data

Coding and data are conceptual twins. This article focuses on the latter concept in particular and opens with a dilemma: We can either follow the root meaning of “data” and say that they are the “givens” that we “collect” and code. In this case, however, data turn out to be mythological, for they are always produced, constructed, or “taken” as the pragmatists said. Or we can say, like some qualitative researchers, that “everything is data,” which rests on a more sophisticated philosophical position but which easily renders the concept empty. The article describes a way out of this dilemma by presenting a way to think about (and teach) qualitative analysis that is neither data-driven (induction) nor hypothesis-driven (deduction) but driven by astonishment, mystery, and breakdowns in one’s understanding (abduction). Materials are “taken” and produced to describe or resolve a mystery, which, to me, is “analysis after coding.”

Changing psychologies in the transition from industrial society to consumer society

Psychologists have traditionally been reluctant to investigate not just the historical nature of their subject matter — humans as acting, thinking and feeling beings — but even more so the historical nature of their discipline, its theories and practices. In this article, I will try to take seriously the historical transformation in the West from industrial society to consumer society. After having introduced these socio-economic designations, I shall try to illustrate how the transformation relates to changes in significant societal practices with a particular attention to education and work. Since its inception, psychology has been deeply involved in the management of human beings in and through these practices, and considerable changes have taken place in the dominant psychologies with the change from industrial to consumer society. I interpret psychoanalysis and behaviourism as psychologies of industrial society, and humanistic psychology and the more recent wave of social constructionism as psychologies of consumer society. With shifting psychologies also come shifting life problems and pathologies, which I briefly address.

Identity as Self-Interpretation

The hermeneutic tradition in psychology and the social sciences claims that we should understand human identity in terms of self-interpretation. This article is an attempt to spell out what it means to think of identity as self-interpretation. First, two dimensions of identity as self-interpretation are outlined: that we can only have an identity if we are committed to issues of moral worth; and that self-interpretation involves a temporal dimension that has a narrative form. Second, I outline four levels of self-interpretation in order to show that identity is not confined to either social or mental representations, but is dispersed across bodies, persons, practices, and society. Often there are discrepancies and conflicts between levels of self-interpretation, which can lead to social progress but also to social pathologies. Finally, I analyse some pathological aspects of a dominating Western self-interpretation in the current consumer society, which frames identity formation in terms of self-realization.

Towards an expansive hybrid psychology: Integrating theories of the mediated mind

This article develops an integrative theory of the mind by examining how the mind, understood as a set of skills and dispositions, depends upon four sources of mediators. Harré’s hybrid psychology is taken as a meta-theoretical starting point, but is expanded significantly by including the four sources of mediators that are the brain, the body, social practices and technological artefacts. It is argued that the mind is normative in the sense that mental processes do not simply happen, but can be done more or less well, and thus are subject to normative appraisal. The expanded hybrid psychology is meant to assist in integrating theoretical perspectives and research interests that are often thought of as incompatible, among them neuroscience, phenomenology of the body, social practice theory and technology studies. A main point of the article is that these perspectives each are necessary for an integrative approach to the human mind.

The Topography of Moral Ecology

The idea that the human world contains moral properties, that is, moral values and goods, raises a fundamental challenge to the prevailing methodological paradigm in psychology, which is connected to a problematic metaphysical worldview that excludes values from the world. In contrast, this article conceptualizes the human world as a moral ecology; as a meaningful world with moral properties that present human beings with moral reasons for action. The concept of social practice is employed to understand the nature of moral ecology. Thinkers such as Aristotle, Heidegger and Dewey, who emphasize our practical dealings with the world as the basis of understanding, along with the perspectives on morality found in Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre, help provide the framework of moral ecology. The article concludes by addressing key problems related to the nature of psychology, relativism and identification of moral properties and practices.

The Good Qualitative Researcher

This article discusses what it means to be a good qualitative researcher. The aim is to deliberately blur the distinction between epistemic and ethical goodness by arguing that there is a close connection between being a good qualitative researcher in the epistemic and the ethical senses. First, the relation between researcher and researched is articulated as a power relation giving rise to certain ethical demands. Second, some similarities between the discourses on ethics and qualitative research are brought forth, and it is argued that many key capabilities that enable qualitative researchers to deal well with their subject matter are also moral virtues. Finally, the concepts of objectivity and validity in qualitative research are discussed as moral matters.

Questioning Constructionism: Toward an Ethics of Finitude

This article develops an existential-phenomenological critique of the social constructionist movement in psychology, taking its lead from what Kenneth Gergen calls “the most pressing question”: What happens to us when we begin to employ constructionist ideas in our lives? It is suggested that contemporary consumer societies already work according to the logic of social construction and that constructionism already has become many people’s philosophy. Some points of conversion between constructionism and consumerism are pointed out, including a shared focus on identity morphing, aesthetization of life, and a denial of life’s tragic dimensions. As an antidote to this “ethics of infinitude,” this article outlines an existential-phenomenological ethics that starts from certain basic facts of human existence, including human interdependency and mortality. It is argued that nonconstructed moral demands spring from these facts. Social constructionists too easily miss the fact that solidarity, compassion, and care are possible only for finite, vulnerable creatures.

Languages of suffering

Human beings are meaning-making creatures, who not only suffer in an immediately felt way, but who can interpret and articulate their discontents through the use of language. The goal of this article is to map different languages of suffering that have been—and still are—in use, when human beings make sense of their problems in living. I argue that our current conception of suffering has been pathologized and biomedicalized with the diagnostic manuals serving as a significant source from which a diagnostic language of suffering emanates. I briefly present four other languages of suffering—religious, existential, moral, and political ones—that are today often delegitimatized by the dominant psychiatric language. Building on pragmatist and hermeneutic philosophies, my goal is to argue that different languages enable different forms of understanding and action, and that we need many different languages in order to fully understand the human condition.