A new paper by Uwe Flick, which is based on keynote address at the 10th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (May 2014, Urbana–Champaign). The paper, titled ‘Qualitative Inquiry—2.0 at 20?: Developments, Trends, and Challenges for the Politics of Research’ appeared in Qualitative Inquiry. The abstract of the paper provide an overview of the field over 20 years:
After 20 years of Qualitative Inquiry, some current trends and challenges are outlined, which might affect the current state and further development of qualitative research in the near future. A central focus is their impact on the politics of qualitative research. Politics of inquiry addressing problems of societal relevance are challenged by the globalization and internationalization of qualitative enquiry or trends to big data in funding. Other relevant trends are expectations about archiving and reanalysis of qualitative data, the new interest in qualitative inquiry in the context of evidence, limitations coming from ethical reviews, and the limitation to mixed methods research. These trends are discussed here by using examples from current research projects. Locating qualitative inquiry in the future is discussed between being pushed aside by citizen research and taking over some (sub)disciplines.
What is especially pleasing is that towards the end of the paper, Prof Flick reflects on the future of qualitative inquiry, and he suggests that:
In particular, approaches such as “extreme citizen science” will maybe enable and empower the broader audiences and everyday people to take our methods and to do their own research with them. Thus, they will maybe abandon the idea of the experts of research—as methodologists, as researchers, as scientists.”
Extreme Citizen Science blog 