This is the wiki entry on Glaser's version of grounded theory. There's a lot of free access material around about Glaser, but not much by Glaser. In a way, that's not such a bad thing.

Reading Barney Glaser is like reading a televangelist's script or sitting through an Amway pep talk. On one hand that's appropriate because he does reject traditional academia's preference for obscure terminology, along with the main target which is how research is supposed to be done. On the other hand he's not much help if you're trying to convince an academic audience that grounded research is a good idea. For a start, it's called grounded theory (GT), but it's actually a method, only not so much a method as a methodological approach. Try explaining that in a way that sounds convincing.

Glaser is surprised that so few disciplines use GT, but a lot of his linguistic turns sound as though they come straight from Timothy Leary and 1960s psychedelic drug culture. He basically puts the beginner in the uncomfortable position of telling 'the establishment' that their establishment sucks.

The fundamentals of GT are Don't read the literature, Don't limit your data set, and Don't start writing until you've got something of your own to say. You collect your qualitative data and code according to what the data is doing, not what somebody else's pet theory says it should be doing. You take this inductive approach to the literature later on, the idea being that you compare your empirical work with theory to test for fit before your confidence is eroded by the authority of famous theorists.

Most grounded research is done in nursing and education where the realities of practice barely resemble the theory. Experienced teachers and nurses going back to uni for Masters have been living GT in their work, so their research amounts to doing what they already do, but more deliberately. Adding another purpose to their work. They already know what's wrong with the theory and how to prove their point. They also have the accumulated capital of experience behind them.

It strikes me that this is a sensible approach if the idea of research is to find out what's actually going on, as opposed to shoring up the ideas of others. Melissa Gregg at Home Cooked Theory blogged recently about a conference she'd attended where the great Stuart Hall inspired appropriate levels of awe. She argues that stature of such magnitude casts a "shadow over the efforts of scholars past and present to move the field forward, or in a range of directions even". The comments thread has some revealing things to say about this and the frustration this causes for the innovative, the less experienced, and particularly those of us from perceived intellectual backwaters like Australia.

In his Doing Grounded Theory Glaser calls it "theoretical capitalism" (1998:71), which wouldn't please Hall in the least. For all the mileage we've had from reflexivity, there doesn't seem to be much reflexing going on, or at least reflexing that has any real outcome. Maybe there's no problem at all - maybe these are just the grumblings of a few disgruntled wannabees? Sheer contrariness? Not the sort of attitude that'll get you that doctorate?

Gregg's post is printed out and pinned on the wall above my desk with Glaser's "just do it" scrawled across the top. I often wonder what the great and powerful Nike would make of it. Best not to think about what the great and powerful social theorists might say.

Comments

Posted by: John | August 16, 2007 1:52 PM

Posted by: Lyn | August 16, 2007 3:16 PM