Qualitative Methods - Their History in Sociology and Anthropology

Arthur Vidich and Stanford Lyman teamed up to write a classic essay on the history of qualitative methods in sociology and anthropology.  Published in the Handbook of Qualitative Research - the second edition - the article reviews the history of qualitative methods in sociology building on the author's extensive professional experience with participation observation and years of exposure to the American and European literature. Vidich and Lyman emphasize the importance of being able to "perceive and contextualize the world or his or her own experience," have a "sensitivity and a curiosity about both the visible and what is not visible to immediate perception" and "sufficient self-understanding to make possible an empathy with the roles and values of others." These skills, along with the ability to detach oneself from the values of groups, the authors contend, are essential for the sociologist or anthropologist that pursues a qualitative analysis of social institutions.

Participant observation as a technique has evolved from a  practice developed by colonial administrators reviewing the subjugated cultures of "primitive" societies to one suffused with the progressivist views of modernist anthropologists who sought a teleological perspective for the diversity of world cultures based on theories of cultural evolution. The authors contend that these progressivist ideas explain the application of ethnographic methods to the study of America's urban ghettos reflecting the "moral and communitarian values of protestantism." According to Vidich and Lyman ethnography, as a qualitative research technique, became a secular extension of the Protestant efforts to preach and practice the social gospel." Community studies, like Helen and Robert Lynd's study of Middletown, reflects the adoption of the tools used by social anthropologists to the study of American society.

This essay, written toward the end of their respective careers, represents one of the finest historical assessments of the field of qualitative research methods. Vidich and Lyman argue that no research enterprise is ever a uniquely individual experience since "we are all creatures of our own social and cultural pasts." For qualitative research to make a meaningful contribution to our knowledge, the authors argue, it must be related to the "theories of our predecessors and the research of our contemporaries." Knowledge by this standard is contextual and inevitably must be historical to carry meaning for each generation of readers.