Chapter 2: Challenging Epistemological Authority in Qualitative Research: An Emancipatory Approach

This chapter argues that critical qualitative research has to consider the epistemological foundations of methodology. The authors investigate the problem of epistemological authority and consider the implications of this problem for the structure of relationships and methods in qualitative research. The chapter proposes a more deeply democratic conception of these relationships, which challenges the assumption that the university is the privileged producer and arbiter of systematic knowledge and argues for the importance of a practical and epistemological collaboration between researchers and participants. The authors illustrate the approach that they propose by describing two university-based studies as well as popular knowledge projects undertaken by a community-based research site. The chapter concludes with a challenge to familiar critical approaches to qualitative methodology to extend their commitments to reflexivity and democratic relationships, and offers an outline of the basic principles of an emancipatory approach to epistemology and qualitative methodology.