Because my computer has stopped receiving emails from Goanet, I have had to go to the archives to keep up with correspondence. Hopefully, this problem will soon be rectified but I hope you will forgive me for not getting back to you more promptly for the above reason.
The nature of your questions suggests that you are an aspiring, or an active researcher yourself. Indeed, I recall a post from you, about three years ago, on Goanet, which stated your interest in the study of ferry people/workers across the Mandovi. I do hope you have continued such work and have a good link with the University of Goa. When I was there recently, I was shown around by a very helpful librarian and I noted the reasonably good stock of books in the areas of social science, sociology and education. OK, the range was not as extensive as in universities in the UK, Canada, Australia and the USA of which I am familiar but I feel certain that things can only improve, in this respect, in Goa.
You have raised many questions and all of them are basically addressed in books on Qualitative research. Two books I can recommend strongly, from memory, are Glasser and Strauss on Grounded Theory and also Denzin and Lincoln's massive tome, titled A Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods. Both were in the reference section of the University of Goa when I was there. I do have a long list of more recent texts but it would be inappropriate to present them here. The Americans are particularly strong in the Qualitative field of methodology incidentally.
When in Goa even earlier (perhaps in 2001) I had met with Alito Sequeira and talked to his Masters class. Alito also gave me a draft of a paper on tourism to critique. Later, he sent me another one of his drafts for comment but on a different theme altogether. I had also met his HOD of sociology who had spent some time in the UK at one of the smaller UK universities which I know well. Both seemed very dedicated towards social research.
With reference to the excerpts I collected on caste and included for illustrative purposes in a post to Gilbert, I'd like to emphasise the importance of triangulation. Thus one would use in a single study, with appropriate randomness, observation or participant observation, in-depth interviews, and to ensure rigour, the construction and use of a Likert type scale which uses rigorous statistical method, for positive and negative statements collected for scale construction to interpretation of results/findings. This helps to sometimes refute claims that Qualitative research lacks rigour compared to Quantitative methods.
Two other issues you raised related to the conflict between the activist researcher and the 'pure' researcher. There is so much written about this as well as the issue of neutrality you were interested in also. These issues are debated endlessly in university classes and at conferences and in texts. There has been a long academic debate, of course, whether humans can ever be neutral, as such, but I won't go into this as I don't want to bore those who would find our dialogue an absolute bore!
I am sure we could correspond on research methods (both, Quantitive and Qualitative) if you so wish but privately and not through Goanet.
With all good wishes for your personal academic research interests. Also, thank you for the searching questions you raised.
Regards,
Cornel
*********************************************************************** * G * O * A * N * E * T *** C * L * A * S * S * I * F * I * E * D * S * *********************************************************************** Greet your loved ones in Goa with flowers!
http://www.goa-world.com/goa/expressions/ EXPRESSIONS - The Flower Shop. World famous all over Goa! ***********************************************************************
