The power of constructivist grounded theory for critical inquiry

The pragmatist roots of constructivist grounded theory make it a useful method for pursuing critical qualitative inquiry.
Pragmatism offers ways to think about critical qualitative inquiry; constructivist grounded theory offers strategies for
doing it. Constructivist grounded theory fosters asking emergent critical questions throughout inquiry. This method also
encourages (a) interrogating the taken-for-granted methodological individualism pervading much of qualitative research
and (b) taking a deeply reflexive stance called methodological self-consciousness, which leads researchers to scrutinize
their data, actions, and nascent analyses. The article outlines how to put constructivist grounded theory into practice and
ends with where this practice could take us.

p. 36.  Park and Lunt “Social research methods are in fact typically ontologically and epistemologically individualistic. The methods have been developed to study particular ‘social’ settings (western, industrialized, capitalist) but in so doing, a broader methodological veil is drawn across all cultures and situations” (p. 5).

P 39 Methodological Self-consciousness:  Grounded theorists who forgo subjecting their privileges and positions to rigorous scrutiny are unlikely to take their research into critical inquiry.

P 40. Adopting a stance of doubt helps us to sharpen our analyses and, as a result, to increase the influence of our work

P 41. Constructivist grounded theory brings people and their perspectives into the foreground.