Qualitative researcher not an objective neutral observer

The qualitative researcher does not stand outside or above the study, but is situated within the very processes being studied (or entered to study), observes Denzin (2001: 325). There is not "a God's eye view that guarantees absolute methodological certainty", because research reflects (despite the researcher's best intentions) the values and viewpoints of the inquirer and is theory-laden. Denzin further states that "the days of naive realism and naive positivism are over" and add that "the criteria for evaluating research are now relative".

Denzin (2001: 324) cites Thomas Schwandt's (2000) statement that the notion qualitative research is a "reformist movement that began in the early 1970s in the academy". Flick (2005), however, remarks that the "label 'qualitative research' is used as an umbrella term for a series of approaches to research in the social sciences" and refers to Wilhelm Wundt (1928) that "used methods of description and verstehen in his folk psychology". Flicks further indicates that "increasingly 'hard', experimental, standardising and quantifying approaches have asserted themselves against 'soft', understanding, open and qualitative-descriptive strategies". In the 1960s the "critique of standardised, quantifying social research became relevant again" in American sociology context. In the 1970s this critique was taken up in German discussions. These "led to a renaissance of qualitative research in the social sciences", according to Flick. However, "in the middle of the 1980s, problems of validity and the generalisability of findings obtained with qualitative methods attracted broader attention". Flick cites Denzin and Lincoln (2000) that refer to phases, indicated below—seven moments of qualitative research—which is different from the German-speaking area.

United States	Germany
Traditional period (1900 to 1945)	Early studies (end of nineteenth and early twentieth centuries)
Modernist phase (1945 to the 1970s)	Phase of import (early 1970s)
Blurred genres (until the mid 1980s)	Beginning of original discussions (late 1970s)
Crisis of representation (since the mid 1980s)	Developing original methods (1970s and 1980s)
Fifth moment (the 1990s)	Consolidation and procedural questions (late 1980s and 1990s)
Sixth moment (post-experimental writing)	Research practice
Seventh moment (the future)

Denzin (2001: 325) refers to a "circuit of culture" in which meanings are defined by mass (and lately also social) media and in which the rituals and practices of consumption are anchored. Denzin points out four prime goals of mass media, namely:

1. To create audiences that become consumers of the advertised products.
2. Audiences that while engaged in consumption demonstrate individualism endorsed by the capitalist political system.
3. To create a public opinion that is supportive of the strategic polices of the state.
4. To do everything it can to make consumers as audience members think they are not commodities.

Denzin remarks that "human beings live in a second hand world" in which existence is not "solely determined by interaction or by social acts" and cites Mills' (1963) forceful expression:

The consciousness of human beings does not determine their existence; nor does their existence determine their consciousness. Between the human consciousness and material existence stand communications, designs, patterns, and values which influence decisively such consciousness as they have.

Denzin (2001: 325) remarks that within the circuit of culture, each process becomes a nodal point for critical, interpretive consumer research. Critical researchers should according to Denzin "seek to untangle and disrupt the apparently unbreakable economic and ritual links between the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities". Critical researchers should intervene and expose ways in which the mentioned processes excessively establish the meanings cultural commodities have for human beings.

Denzin (2001: 326) proceeds to present the interpretive criteria of the seventh moment for evaluating critical qualitative work.

1. Nothing is value free, knowledge is power and those who have power determine what is aesthetically pleasing and ethically acceptable. Aesthetics, ethics are blended.
2. Ways of knowing (epistemology) are moral and ethical—involving conceptions of who the human being is (ontology), including how matters of difference are socially organized. There is no objective, morally neutral standpoint.
3. It involves a-give-and-take and ongoing moral dialogue, an ethic of care and an ethic of personal and communal responsibility. Beauty and artistry are valued as well as movement, rhythm, colour, and texture. Differences are celebrated, as is the sounds of many different voices. It expresses an ethic of empowerment.
4. Presumes a community that has shared moral values, including the concepts of shared governance, neighborliness, love, kindness, and the moral good. The ethic declares that all persons deserve dignity and a sacred status in the world.
5. The aesthetic enables social criticism. It helps persons imagine how things could be different and imagines new forms of human transformation and emancipation.
6. It is understood that moral criteria are fitted to the contingencies of concrete circumstances. This ethic calls for dialogical research rooted in the concepts of care and shared governance.
7. Consumer research joins the researcher with the researched in an ongoing moral dialogue. This form of consumer research aims to help people recover, and release themselves, from the constraints embedded in the social media. Doing this research means that the researcher learns to take on the identities of consumer advocate and cultural critic.
8. Interpretive work provides the foundations for social criticism and social action. As a cultural critic, the researcher speaks from an informed moral and ethical position. He or she is anchored in a specific community of moral discourse.

Dencin, N.K. 2001. The Seventh Moment: Qualitative Inquiry and the Practices of a More Radical Consumer Research. The Journal of Consumer Research, 28( 2), 324-330, September 2001.

Flick, U. 2005. Qualitative Research in Sociology in Germany and the US—State of the Art, Differences and Developments. Forum: Qualitative Social Research [Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung], 6(3), September 2005.