The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.)

Citation

Wright, A. and Tiu Wright, L. (2006), "The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.)", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 40 No. 9/10, pp. 1145-1147. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090560610681050

This section has two book reviews. They show critically the examples of how notions of consumer empowerment and applications are treated within the broad domain of social science researches and also in the marketing discipline. As interest in this topic gathers pace, evident with this special issue on consumer empowerment, it would add contributions to qualitative research – Len Tiu Wright.

This is an impressive looking book with its collection of 44 articles and 59 contributors. As such it is a thick and weighty book to plough through. As a handbook it provides much substance for thought with its broad coverage of topics concerning qualitative research. In their Introduction the editors have succinctly explained the rationale for their book and the scope of it. The articles provide linkages to past and present studies in their respective fields so there is an implicit assumption that the book performs a useful function as a reference source. It is not in our opinion, a textbook suitable for teaching students new to qualitative research, as much for its cost as for the lengthy and at times convoluted explanations of some of the contributors. With so many contributors it is reasonable to expect varying degrees of disparity between those who choose straightforward ways to explain their meanings and others whose long sentences at times required unravelling.

Some of the discussions of empowerment provide examples:

Authentic change, and the empowerment that drives it and derives from it, requires political sustenance by some kind of collective, too easily construed as an “action group” that defined itself by opposition to, and distinctiveness from, a wider, social or public realm (p. 569).

Or “Increasingly, we came to understand empowerment not only as a lifeworld process of cultural, social, and personal development and transformation but also as implying that protagonists experienced themselves as working both in and against system structures and functions to produce effects intended to be read in changed systems structures and functioning” (p. 593). Or with the mission of social science research:

… in enabling community life to prosper – equipping people to come to mutually held conclusions … In contrast, to utilitarian experimentalism, the substantive conceptions of the good that drive the problems reflect the conceptions of the community rather than the expertise of researchers or funding agencies (p. 151).

Others are good at clarifying scenarios, e.g. in explaining the Russell Bishop's view of how the Kaoupapa Mâori created conditions for self‐determination which came to be used as evaluative research criteria. These were “five bases of power … initiation, benefits, representation, legitimation and accountability … addressed in the affirmative, empowering knowledge is created, allowing indigenous persons to free themselves” (p. 35).

The empowerment contexts, as referred to in the book's subject index: pages 35; 155‐156; 160n21; 281‐282; 569; 593‐594 are indeed very limited, when compared to say, the discussion about “power”.

“Empowerment” is an important topic and may, we hope, one day grace the front cover of a book on its own, but for the time being, references to this are to be found within the broad domains of social science researches.

This handbook is about qualitative research and gives a good view of the different perspectives both from the social science domain and from the personal researcher or individual viewpoints. The editors have written the Preface, Part 1 and the Epilogue as well as contributing an article each: “Institutional review boards and methodological conservatism: the challenge to and from phenomenological paradigms” by Y. Lincoln and “Emancipatory discourses and the ethics and politics of interpretation” by N. Denzin.

The book has six major parts: Part I, Locating the Field; Part II, Paradigms and Perspectives in Contention; Part III. Strategies of Inquiry; Part IV, Methods of Collecting and Analyzing Empirical Materials; Part V, The Art and Practices of Interpretation, Evaluation and Presentation; and Part VI, The Future of Qualitative Research. The structure of the book is good and represents a varied representation of the narratives, histories and discussions of the concepts and the examples of applications in the rich field of qualitative research.

The European Journal of Marketing's readers should find this book relevant when wishing to read about qualitative research as this is a book that is recommended for scholarly interest or just as a good read in one's spare time. Academics and doctoral researchers should find this book helpful in seeking to follow through their modes of inquiry and in refreshing or updating knowledge.