Qualitative cowboy or qualitative dude: An impasse of validity, politics, and ethics?

Sociological theorists' recent critique of foundationalism, the notion that observers can accurately represent a single, objective reality, has led to calls for sociology to abandon its claim to epistemic privilege. A related debate has ensued among qualitative sociologists over ethnography's claim to produce objective, authoritative accounts of field realities. This debat e over "the crisis of representation" has apparently reached an epistemolog ical impasse, as both "modernist" and "postmodernist" participants draw on a conceptual dichotomy inherited from correspondence models of science. The impasse is ethical as well, as participants "talk past one another" as the y debate the appropriate responsibilities of sociologists. A pragmatist sol ution to this dilemma has been offered, but gives insufficient attention to the politics that shape the criteria to be used in judging the validity of accounts in local contexts. Drawing upon "modernist" discussions of field methods and an empirical case of "studying up" in Mondragon, Spain, this pa per argues that a more politically attentive pragmatism could contribute to research practice that is both epistemologically and empirically defensibl e.