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Discovery, Research (Re)Design, and Theory Building

This piece sketches an approach to research design that hinges on staying open to unforeseen ideas (and even new topics of inquiry) that emerge in the course of interviewing. I use my own study of local people's congresses in the early 1990s (as well as examples drawn from more recent work on village elections, policy implementation and popular resistance) to illustrate how one young fieldworker fumbled his way toward a type of research that aims to speak to both China scholars and disciplinary audiences. The strategy espoused bears some relationship to 'grounded theory' (Glaser and Strauss 1967) and is a form of 'exploratory' analysis (Gerring 2001: 231-32). It is a modest enterprise that accepts (even revels in the fact) that the best generalizations are usually bounded. It encourages us to shop for existing theories and concepts before and after we head to the field, but not to buy much of what we find, especially when interviews make it clear that our preconceived notions have led us to miss the real question or imagine a dilemma that does not exist. This strategy treats research design as an ongoing process and emphasizes discovery rather than verification. It attaches considerable importance to the subjective experience of interviewees and regards shoe-horning evidence into 'ill-fitting a priori categories' (Gerring 2001: 231) to be just about the greatest sin imaginable.