Précis: This debate article highlights some questions from critics of qualitative research. Planning for proper design, philosophical background, researcher as a research instrument in the study, trustworthiness and application of findings are main debates in this field. One of the issues that have been received little attention is report of qualitative inquiry. A qualified report can an...

This paper analyses the fundamental philosophical assumptions of five “contrasting” information systems development (ISD) approaches: the interactionist approach, the speech act-based approach, the soft systems methodology approach, the trade unionist approach, and the professional work practice approach. These five approaches are selected for analysis because they illustrate alternative philos...

précis: this debate article highlights some questions from critics of qualitative research. planning for proper design, philosophical background, researcher as a research instrument in the study, trustworthiness and application of findings are main debates in this field. one of the issues that have been received little attention is report of qualitative inquiry. a qualified report can answer th...

Many have argued that anthropology, as a four-field discipline, lacks intellectual coherence. Recent developments in the field of biotechnology and the possibility of producing chimeras with recognizable human characteristics make it necessary to think in terms of a new kind of “old” four-field holism. The production of a human/nonhuman chimera raises theoretical questions about the nature of t...

This paper seeks to clarify what is meant by the ‘social construction of nature’, which has become a crude but common term used to describe very different understandings of nature, knowledge and the world. I distinguish two broad varieties of construction talk in the social sciences: construction-as-refutation and construction-as-philosophical-critique. The first uses the construction metaphor ...

Death comes to everyone. However, in our society, due to great advances in medical knowledge and technology over the last few decades, death does not come suddenly or completely unexpectedly to most people. . . . Sophisticated life-sustaining medical technology has made it possible to hold some people on the threshold of death for an indeterminate period of time, "obfuscat[ing] the use of tradi...