Fear and Loathing in Appalachia; But What About the Method?

"There is no one way of qualitative thinking, but a grand collection of ways: It is interpretive, experience based, situational, and personalistic. Each researcher will do it differently, but almost all of them will work hard at interpretation. They will try to convey some of the story in experiential terms. They will show the complexity of the background, and they will treat individuals as unique, yet in ways similar to other individuals." -- Robert Stake, Qualitative Research (31)


"The best observations made by You-Jin Lee can be thought of as patches, to be sorted in different ways, to be synthesized with photo patches and quotation patches and rumination patches. Different patterns emerge." -- Robert Stake, Qualitative Research (137)

Two of the readings for my qualitative methods course this week focused on literacy and the fear that can often accompany the questions surrounding literacy and textual practices, at both the collegiate and secondary levels. This fear and suspicion is more likely the more insular a cultural group is, and the subject of both of these studies were part of insular Appalachian cultural groups.



Certainly Sohn (whose focus is the amazing women from a small Appalachian town whose college educations prove to be efficacious in different ways) and Moffett (who relates his experiences, as a textbook editor whose book was one of those at the center of the controversy, of the Kanawha County textbook disputes) offer fascinating glimpses into the lives, experiences, and values of a group that remains a mystery to much of the American population. Yet, despite Robert Stakes reassurances about the value of individualistic research that involves the researcher her/himself, I found myself more uncomfortable this week with both of these qualitative works. (Sohn's is an ethnography with accompanying case studies; Moffett calls his a case study.)


The groups these two investigated are products of particular social, cultural, religious, regional, and historical moments, and both researchers have a vested interest in the way the stories they tell are received. Can I trust that their analyses and judgments about the relevance of particular observations and the irrelevance of others doesn't simply reflect their self-interest? (Or as Dr. Moxley put it last week, "Isn't it all just a little too neat?") The answer to that, I think, is found in Stake's identification of "patches." When Stake identifies particular observations as patches that are evaluated and re-evaluated, arranged and rearranged, he is thinking of the researcher's process as she attempts to make sense of what she has observed and perceived. I think, though, that this concept of "patches" is also a useful way to think of entire studies. Each study of a particular group represents one patch; with many (as with North's vision of aggregating ethnogoraphies) patches, we might begin to move toward a fuller picture of that group.


Sohn and Moffett each say something about education and literacy in Appalachian communities, but these two studies (neither individually nor when combined) don't offer a picture of literacy in these communities. Rather, they begin to offer parts of a picture.