Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.
Just tap then “Add to Home Screen”
Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.
Just tap then “Add to Home Screen”
Monday 17 – Friday 21 February 2019, 09:00–12:30
15 hours over five days
This course is for PhD students who have just started an interpretive or qualitative research project. It is aimed primarily at students of political science, sociology, international relations and public administration, but students of other social science disciplines such as public policy and anthropology will also benefit from it.
The course is organised around the typical steps of a research process – from how to formulate an interpretive research question to how to present and document analyses. It introduces a broad spectrum of interpretive approaches with a focus in particular on narrative methods and discourse analysis. These two approaches provide a good representation of different interpretive strategies, and by understanding their logics and uses, you will be able to select a research strategy that best fits your own research question.
By the end of the course, you should have a working knowledge of interpretive methods, including insights into how they can be used in an interpretive research process.
Tasks for ECTS Credits
2 credits (pass/fail grade) Attend at least 90% of course hours, participate fully in in-class activities, and carry out the necessary reading and/or other work prior to, and after, class, including daily matrix-group work based on readings of the day.
3 credits (to be graded) As above, plus prepare a group presentation, which requires approximately five hours' work outside class, based on matrix work of the day.
4 credits (to be graded) As above, plus complete a four-page assignment to be handed in shortly after the course.
Marie Østergaard Møller is Associate Professor at Aalborg University in Denmark.
Her research interests include social and political categories, categorisation, frontline work, welfare state research, classic social theory of solidarity, and systematic qualitative methods.
Read more about Marie here.
This course offers an introduction to different interpretive methods. You will learn to ‘read’ texts while becoming familiar with contemporary thinking about interpretation, narrative, and discourse. During the course we will focus on narrative method, hermeneutics, phenomenology, discourse analysis, deconstruction method and genealogy. The course is organised with the following six objectives in mind:
The course will cover basic techniques for collecting, interpreting, and presenting analyses. Throughout it, we will operate on two interrelated dimensions, one focused on theoretical approaches to various types of interpretive research, the other on practical techniques for data collection, coding strategies and interpretive strategies of analysis, writing, and presenting findings.
Theoretically, the course considers questions such as:
Practically, the course considers questions such as:
The course introduces a broad spectrum of interpretive approaches; however, its theoretical focus will be on narrative method and discourse analysis, to expose you to methods which put rather different weight on inductive and deductive strategies of interpretation. This will strengthen your general knowledge of interpretive methods, and give you a solid basis for choosing the ‘right’ strategy of interpretation after the course.
This course will give you a basic understanding of how to choose between interpretive methods, including insight into hands-on tools that can be used during an interpretive research process. It will prepare you to take advanced courses in interpretive methods with a more specialised focus on (for example) ethnographic method, grounded theory, narrative method or discourse analysis.
By the end of this course, you should have a basic understanding of how to:
None
Day | Topic | Details |
---|---|---|
1 | Introducing interpretive methods |
|
2 | Interpretive strategies, positions and methods (1) Hands-on strategies for interpretation and analysis (1) |
|
3 | Interpretive strategies, positions and methods (2) Hands-on strategies for interpretation and analysis (2) |
|
4 | Interpretive strategies, positions and methods (3) Hands-on strategies for interpretation and analysis (3). |
|
5 | Condensing and presenting interpretations. Drawing conclusions from interpretive analyses |
|
Day | Readings |
---|---|
1 |
Soss, Joe, 2006 Wagener, Hendrik Weiss, Robert S., 1994 Yanow, Dvora, 2006 Yanow, Dvora, 2012 |
2 |
Schaffer, Frederic Charles, 2006 Mark Bevir, 2006 Riessman, Catherine Kohler, 1993 |
3 |
Fairclough, Norman, 2003 Phillips, Nelson & Cynthia Hardy, 2002 |
4 |
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe, 2014 Stavrakakis, Y., Horwarth, D., & Norval, A., 2000 Dreyfus, Hubert. L. and Paul Rabinow, 1983 |
5 |
Miles, Matthew B., Michael A. Huberman and Johnny Saldana (2014) |
Case Material |
Lindekilde, Lasse Government of Denmark, 2009: A Common and safe future |
None
None
Government of Denmark, 2009: A Common and safe future
www.nyidanmark.dk
Dvora Yanow, 2006
Thinking interpretively: philosophical presuppositions and the human
sciences
in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn pp. 5–27
New York: M.E. Sharpe
Dvora Yanow & Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, 2012
Ways of Knowing
in Interpretive Research Design pp. 24–44
London: Routledge
Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, 1983
Interpretive Analytics
in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics pp. 104–125
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983, second edition
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe, 2014
Beyond the Positivity of the Social: Antagonisms and Hegemony
in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics Chapter 3, pp. 79–131
London: Verso
Lindekilde, Lasse
Discourse and Frame Analysis:
In-depth Analysis of Qualitative Data in Social Movement Research
in D. della Porta (ed.) Methodological Practices in Social Movement Research pp. 1–38
Oxford: Oxford University Press
Mark Bevir, 2006
How Narratives explain
in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn pp. 281–290
New York: M.E. Sharpe
Miles, Matthew B.,Michael A. Huberman and Johnny Saldana (2014)
Displaying the Data
in Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook, 3. edition Chapters 5,11,12, pp. 105–120, 273–338
London: SAGE
Fairclough, Norman, 2003
Social analysis, discourse analysis, text analysis pp. 19–61
Discourses and representations pp. 121–156
in Analyzing Discourse: Textual analysis of social research
London: Routledge
Phillips, Nelson & Cynthia Hardy, 2002
Discourse Analysis – Investigating Processes of Social Construction
in Qualitative Research Methods Series 50 pp. 1–87
London: SAGA Publications
Riessman, Catherine Kohler, 1993
Narrative Analysis
in Qualitative Research Methods Series 30 pp. 1–70
London: SAGA Publications
Schaffer, Frederic Charles, 2006
Ordinary Language Interviewing
in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn Chapter 7, pp. 150–160
New York: M.E. Sharpe
Soss, Joe, 2006
Talking Our Way to Meaningful Explanations – A Practice Centered View of Interviewing for Interpretive Research
in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn pp. 127–149
New York: M.E. Sharpe
Stavrakakis, Y., Horwarth, D., & Norval, A., 2000
Introducing discourse theory and political analysis
in Discourse theory and political analysis: Identities Chapter 1, pp. 1–23
Manchester: Manchester University Press
Weiss, Robert S., 1994
Respondents: Choosing Them and Recruiting Them
in Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies pp. 15–37
New York: Free Press
Summer School
Analysing Discourse
Expert Interviews for Qualitative Data Generation
Focus Groups for Qualitative Data Generation
Ethnography
Strategies of Interpretive/Qualitative Political Research
Qualitative Data Analysis: Methods and Procedures
Winter School
Analysing Political Language
Advanced Qualitative Data Analysis
Knowing and the Known: The Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences