Analysis of an interview conducted by a white researcher with an African American nutritionist points to the significance of racial-ethnic dynamics in the conduct of qualitative research. Interviewers who follow the standard methodological rule—to let findings “emerge” from their data—may fail to hear the significance of race-ethnicity in the accounts of informants. Close analysis suggests that talk will sometimes reveal racial-ethnic dynamics even when these are not explicit topics and that active attention to such structured inequalities produces a more robust analysis. Institutional ethnography and narrative analysis are discussed as alternatives to the grounded-theory approach to qualitative analysis.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
American Dietetic Association.
1991. Selected information from the 1990 membership database of the American Dietetic Association.Chicago: American Dietetic Association.
2.
Amott, Teresa
, and Julie A. Matthaei. 1991. Race, gender, and work: A multicultural economic history of women in the United States.Boston: South End.
3.
Baca Zinn, Maxine.1979. Field research in minority communities: Ethical, methodological and political observations by an insider.Social Problems27:209-19.
4.
Cannon, Lynn Weber
, Elizabeth Higginbotham, and Marianne L. A. Leung.1988. Race and class bias in qualitative research on women.Gender & Society2:449-62.
5.
Chase, Susan.
1995. Ambiguous empowerment: The work narratives of women school superintendents.Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
6.
Collins, Patricia Hill.
1990. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment.Boston: Unwin Hyman.
7.
DeVault, Marjorie L.1990. Talking and listening from women's standpoint: Feminist strategies for interviewing and analysis.Social Problems37:96-116.
8.
DeVault, Marjorie L.
1995. Between science and food: Nutrition professionals in the health-care hierarchy. In Research in the sociology of health care, vol. 12, edited by Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI.
9.
Edwards, Rosalind.1990. Connecting method and epistemology: A white woman interviewing Black women.Women's Studies International Forum13:477-90.
10.
Fausto-Sterling, Anne
, and Lydia L. English.1987. Women and minorities in science: An interdisciplinary course.Radical Teacher30:16-20.
11.
Frankenberg, Ruth.
1993. White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
12.
Gilkes, Cheryl Townsend.1982. Successful rebellious professionals: The Black woman's professional identity and community commitment.Psychology of Women Quarterly6:289-311.
13.
Glazer, Nona Y.1991. “Between a rock and a hard place”: Women's professional organizations in nursing.Gender & Society5:351-72.
14.
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano.
1987. Racial ethnic women's labor: The intersection of race, gender, and class oppression. In Hidden aspects of women's work, edited by Christine Bose, Roslyn Feldberg, and Natalie Sokoloff, with the Women and Work Research Group. New York: Praeger.
15.
Gould, Stephen Jay.
1981. The mismeasure of man.New York: Norton.
16.
Haraway, Donna.
1989. Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science.New York: Routledge.
17.
Harding, Sandra.
1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women's lives.Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
18.
Hine, Darlene Clark.
1989. Black women in white: Racial conflict and cooperation in the nursing profession, 1890-1950.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hughes, Everett.
1984. The place of field work in social science. In The sociological eye: Selected papers.New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books.
21.
Jordan, June.
1985. Nobody mean more to me than you and the future life of Willie Jordan. In On call: Political essays.Boston: South End.
22.
Ladner, Joyce.
1972. Tomorrow's tomorrow: The Black woman.Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
23.
Ladner, Joyce.
1973. The death of white sociology.New York: Random House.
24.
Levenstein, Harvey A.
1988. Revolution at the table: The transformation of the American diet.New York: Oxford University Press.
25.
Merton, Robert K.1972. Insiders and outsiders: A chapter in the sociology of knowledge.American Journal of Sociology78:9-48.
26.
Mishler, Elliot G.
1986. Research interviewing: Context and narrative.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
27.
Nagel, Joane.1994. Constructing ethnicity: Creating and recreating ethnic identity and culture.Social Problems41:152-76.
28.
Oakley, Ann.
1981. Interviewing women: A contradiction in terms. In Doing feminist research, edited by Helen Roberts. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
29.
Omi, Michael
, and Howard Winant. 1986. Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s.New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
30.
Paget, Marianne A.1983. Experience and knowledge.Human Studies6:67-90.
31.
Riessman, Catherine Kohler.1987. When gender is not enough: Women interviewing women.Gender & Society1:172-207.
32.
Riessman, Catherine Kohler.
1993. Narrative analysis.Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage.
33.
Rushin, Donna Kate.
1981. The bridge poem. In This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color, edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua. New York: Kitchen Table Women of Color Press.
34.
Shapiro, Laura.
1986. Perfection salad: Women and cooking at the turn of the century.New York: Henry Holt.
35.
Smith, Dorothy E.
1987. The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology.Boston: Northeastern University Press.
36.
Smith, George W.1990. Political activist as ethnographer.Social Problems37:629-48.
37.
Stanfield, John H. II.
1994. Ethnic modeling in qualitative research. In Handbook of qualitative research, edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
38.
Strauss, Anselm L.
1987. Qualitative analysis for social scientists.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
39.
Wax, Rosalie H.1979. Gender and age in fieldwork and fieldwork education: No good thing is done by any man alone.Social Problems26:509-22.
40.
West, Candace
, and Don H. Zimmerman.1987. Doing gender.Gender & Society1:125-51.
41.
Young, Iris Marion.
1990. Justice and the politics of difference.Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
