The Idea of Equality and Qualitative Inquiry

With his path-breaking The Qualitative Manifesto. A Call to Arms (2010), Norman Denzin calls for qualitative inquiry to be carried out with the aim of contributing to the empowerment of subjects involved in the research. He pleads passionately and vehemently in favor of a research process that is led by the ideal of social justice. My contribution wants to plead for making radical equality between researchers and research subjects a core element of qualitative inquiries as well. For this purpose, I will turn to the work of the French philosopher Jacques Ranciere, who has been largely ignored in qualitative inquiry. His work, though, is of central importance for critical qualitative research. The idea of equality opens up a new and more profound understanding of politics that would allow us to specify the political meaning of qualitative studies in late capitalism more accurately.