Location
Knight Auditorium
Format Type
Plenary
Format Type
Workshop
Start Date
7-1-2011 12:00 AM
End Date
7-1-2011 12:00 AM
Abstract
Taking its place alongside such core metaphors as culture, phenomenon, discourse, and narrative, identity has emerged as an important trope in qualitative research. Be it people's sense of themselves as members of a family, culture, corporation, or the world society, qualitative researchers are interested in learning how people come to define themselves within their varied contexts. This area of research is also fraught with controversy as researchers and their research participants struggle with gender, sexual, cultural, brand, product, customer, and corporate identities and the methodological and ethical decisions entailed in studying such phenomena. An associated concern is how do we clearly and ethically identify ourselves as researchers to our research participants, clients, and colleagues and how they come to identify us? How transparent do we become as we dance with our own self-identity and the identities of others? As these dance steps are made, how do we as producers and consumers of these (e)merging arcs make decisions of quality and utility? As we explore these self-narratives and narratives of others, what are the differences that make a difference in our qualitative research?
Announcements and Plenary Address – A Dance of Transparencies: Researching Identity and Identifying Researchers
Knight Auditorium
Taking its place alongside such core metaphors as culture, phenomenon, discourse, and narrative, identity has emerged as an important trope in qualitative research. Be it people's sense of themselves as members of a family, culture, corporation, or the world society, qualitative researchers are interested in learning how people come to define themselves within their varied contexts. This area of research is also fraught with controversy as researchers and their research participants struggle with gender, sexual, cultural, brand, product, customer, and corporate identities and the methodological and ethical decisions entailed in studying such phenomena. An associated concern is how do we clearly and ethically identify ourselves as researchers to our research participants, clients, and colleagues and how they come to identify us? How transparent do we become as we dance with our own self-identity and the identities of others? As these dance steps are made, how do we as producers and consumers of these (e)merging arcs make decisions of quality and utility? As we explore these self-narratives and narratives of others, what are the differences that make a difference in our qualitative research?