Reflexive Methodology : New Vistas for Qualitative Research

'Reflexive Methodology is a textbook indispensable to any young researcher.

It does not tell its readers how to do research. It does something much more important: It shows how research has been done in the qualitative tradition, thus encouraging the readers to make their own choices' - Barbara Czarniawska, Goteborg University 'I would go so far as to argue that this book should be on the reading list of all social scientists and philosophers with an interest in the theory and practice of research' - Prometheus In their overview of the problems of reflexivity and interpretation, Mats Alvesson and Kaj Sk[um]oldberg have provided an invaluable guide to this central aspect of research methodology.

The authors review the major intellectual streams; discuss the development of a reflexive methodology; and show how culture, language, selective perception, and ideology all, in complicated ways, permeate scientific activity.

They make explicit the links between techniques used in empirical research and different research traditions, making possible a theoretically informed approach to qualitative research.