The Location of our Debates: Finding, Fixing, and Enacting Reality

Working in the long historical shadow of what has been taken to be debates between quantitative and qualitative methods, Osatuke and Stiles (2011), Westerman (2011), and Yanchar (2011) seek to move beyond those debates and even the various détentes posed in mixed-methods research. Their projects can be assessed in terms of this seemingly permanent shadow and also within a broader framing of the political, ethical, epistemic, and ontological stakes that abide in methodological decisions. Taking a broad historical and meta-theoretical perspective illuminates both the boldness and the limitations of the three papers. Especially notable are their procedures for abandoning the Archimedean distanced observational stance, replacing it with intersubjective, relational processes of knowledge seeking.