Challenges for a New Critical Qualitative Inquiry: Introduction to the Special Issue

Discussions around constructing a new critical qualitative inquiry need to reflect challenges on three levels: (a) Inquiry can be critical about the issues under studya social or political problem to be addressed in a critical perspective; (b) critical approaches to methods and approaches in current researchother forms (e.g., quantitative research) or parts of the mainstream of qualitative research; and (c) a major challenge is to remain able to really do empirical qualitative research addressing social problems and to remain reflexive. Articles in this special issue address these to make a contribution to constructing a new critical qualitative inquiry.