The norm and the text: Denzin and Lincoln's handbooks of qualitative method

Qualitative methods have lately enjoyed enhanced legitimacy and are increas ingly used in academic and applied social research. Yet the field is marked by controversy about virtually every key tenet of qualitative inquiry from matters of epistemology to purely practical matters of relations with rese arch subjects. Not only is the practice of qualitative research hotly conte sted, consensus is lacking about the purpose of qualitative research and wh ether it has a distinctive role to play relative to other approaches to the study of social phenomena. Against this context, the handbooks of qualitat ive method edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln represent a significa nt attempt to capture the breadth of contemporary approaches to qualitative method. The article examines key contributions from the handbooks, drawing on these to develop a view of qualitative method from a pragmatic, realist perspective. Among the issues considered are the significance of relativis m, subjectivity, post-modernism and feminist method, the politicization of the purposes of qualitative research, the debate over criteria of validity and the more to treat qualitative research as an entertainment rather than a scientific practice.