Book Review: Qualitative Research in Action
Abstract
TIM MAY, Qualitative Research in Action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002. 416 pp. ISBN 0 7619 6067 8 (hbk) 60; ISBN 0 7619 6068 9 (pbk) 19.99 When I was first asked to review Tim May's edited collection, Qualitative Research in Action, I entered into the project with some trepidation. After all, what could one more qualitative methods text add to the discourse we have swirling around us on methods as it is? Texts both authored and edited have emerged, most likely in record numbers, of late. And they have approached the same subject, qualitative methods, from a variety of angles. For example, Jaber Gubrium and James Holstein's (1997) book, The New Language of Qualitative Method, is not a nuts and bolts guide at all, but con- cerns itself with the discourses of various qualitative approaches. David Silverman (2000) has provided us with a number of books addressing both the nuts and bolts of qualitative research as well as its theoretical and episte- mological foundations. Robert Emerson, Rachel Fretz, and Linda Shaw (1995) take us deep into the sometimes mystical world of fieldwork and the rules and what-fors of the rudimentary task of taking fieldnotes. In another recent