The SAGE handbook of qualitative research

A copy of the 6^th edition of the SAGE Handbook of qualitative research (Denzin et al., 2024) arrived in my mailbox recently. And just like earlier editions, it is big and heavy! Divided into five parts, with 34 chapters, and spanning over 700 pages, the volume provides updated and new chapters.

Parts include:

1. Locating the field
2. Philosophies of inquiry
3. Practices of inquiry
4. Evidence, politics, and knowledge production
5. Into the future

If readers purchase the online edition, three additional “foundational” chapters (published in the 1^st, 4^th and 5^th editions of the Handbook) are included in a 6th section.

Many of the authors and chapters will be familiar to readers who have read earlier editions (e.g., Fred Erickson on the history of qualitative inquiry, Yvonna Lincoln, Susan Lynham and Egon Guba on paradigms, Jamel Donnor and Gloria Ladson-Billings on critical race theory and Bryant Keith Alexander on Queer/Quare theory). The 6^th edition adds new chapters on intersectionality methodology (Chayla Haynes and colleagues), critical disability studies (Emily Nusbaum and Jessica Nina Lester), critical post-intentional phenomenology (Mark Vagle and colleagues), poststructural engagements (Aaron Kuntz), agential realism (Serge Hein), arts-based research (Richard Siegesmund), and betweener autoethnographies (Claudio Moreira and Marcelo Diversi). Unlike earlier editions, the 6^th edition includes discussion questions at the end of all but the first and last chapters, suggesting that SAGE will market this volume as one all-encompassing textbook.

Section 5 takes up the future of qualitative inquiry (in the 5^th edition, futures are featured in Section 6). These appear to be new chapters by Julianne Cheek (“Academic survival: Qualitative researchers in the neoliberal academy”), Mitchell Allen (“Publishing and reviewing qualitative research”), Mirka Koro and Gaile Cannella (“Qualitative inquiry and the posthuman futures: Justice and challenging the human/nonhuman life dichotomy”), and the volume editors (“The future of qualitative research”). I’m looking forward to digging into the new chapters in this volume as well as seeing how chapters featured in earlier editions have been revised.

I recall making extensive use of the first edition of the Handbook of qualitative research as a graduate student learning more about qualitative research (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). Since then, I’ve found the succeeding editions exceedingly helpful in both teaching and research as the field proliferates and new issues emerge. This volume would be a great addition to the collections of scholars who use qualitative research methods, as well as those who teach and advise students of qualitative methods. For newcomers to qualitative research, the volume presents current trends and issues alongside concise histories of the approaches that constitute the Big Tent of qualitative inquiry (Denzin, 2010).

For more information, see the SAGE website.

References

Denzin, N. K. (2010). The qualitative manifesto: A call to arms. Left Coast Press.

Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (1994). The handbook of qualitative research. Sage.

Denzin, N. K., Lincoln, Y. S., Giardina, M. D., & Cannella, G. S. (Eds.). (2024). The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (6th ed.). SAGE.

Disclosure:

I contributed a chapter on interviewing to this volume. Having read and made use of all prior chapters on interviewing published in preceding volumes, I was both excited and honored to see the chapter featured alongside so many esteemed qualitative colleagues.