Doing Qualitative Research Differently

Book excerpt: This is both a `how to' book and one that critically reviews many of the assumptions, claims and methods of qualitative research. Applying a psycho-social understanding of subjectivity to research practice involves conceptualising researcher and researched as co-producers of meanings in the research relationship. The authors use the notion of the "defended subject" to indicate that people will defend themselves against any anxieties in the information they provide in a research context. To interpret interviewees' responses should entail developing a method in which narratives are central, as should a strategy of interpretation in which interviewees' free associations are given precedence over narrative coherence. The author