Advancing Qualitative Entrepreneurship Research: Leveraging Methodological Plurality for Achieving Scholarly Impact

This editorial aims to advance the use of qualitative research methods when studying entrepreneurship. First, it outlines four characteristics of the domain of entrepreneurship that qualitative research is uniquely placed to address. In studying these characteristics, we urge researchers to leverage the plurality of different qualitative approaches, including less conventional methods. Second, to help researchers develop high-level theoretical contributions, we point to multiple possible contributions, and highlight how such contributions can be developed through qualitative methods. Thus, we aim to broaden the types of contributions and forms that qualitative entrepreneurship research takes, in ways that move beyond prototypical inductive theory-building

Meritocratic Discourse: Research Framework

This paper presents a reflection on the process of doing critical meritocratic discourse research. Examples from a current project on the discursive construction of ‘meritocrat’ identity are used to illustrate how major challenges inherent in undertaking meritocratic discourse research can be addressed. These involved initial justifications of discourse theory as a research framework, research design and data collection in order to contribute to broader debates about age, gender and social status

Impossible Thoughts, Alternative Spaces

In this thesis I explore meaning and possibility in the works of Samuel Beckett and Italo Calvino, with emphasis on how the texts refute coherent meaning and use that refutation to re-inscribe the boundaries of the possible

THE THEORETICAL MODEL OF ENGLISH MERITOCRATIC DISCOURSE

This paper presents a reflection on the process of doing critical meritocratic discourse research. Examples from a current project on the discursive construction of ‘meritocrat’ identity are used to illustrate how major challenges inherent in undertaking meritocratic discourse research can be addressed. These involved initial justifications of discourse theory as a research framework, research design and data collection in order to contribute to broader debates about age, gender and social status. Much of the existing research on meritocracy and meritocrats has focused on the content of age-based stereotypes, their cultural meaning and the outcomes or material effects of the marginalisation of meritocrats in the labour market. Yet no research had explicitly addressed the issue of the processes of identity construction and this was the potential contribution of discourse theory: coupled with a critical orientation it would permit an exploration of the processes of constructing social identity and its political implications in relation to the labour marke

Advancing Qualitative Entrepreneurship Research: Leveraging Methodological Plurality for Achieving Scholarly Impact

This editorial aims to advance the use of qualitative research methods when studying entrepreneurship. First, it outlines four characteristics of the domain of entrepreneurship that qualitative research is uniquely placed to address. In studying these characteristics, we urge researchers to leverage the plurality of different qualitative approaches, including less conventional methods. Second, to help researchers develop high-level theoretical contributions, we point to multiple possible contributions, and highlight how such contributions can be developed through qualitative methods. Thus, we aim to broaden the types of contributions and forms that qualitative entrepreneurship research takes, in ways that move beyond prototypical inductive theory-building

Advancing Qualitative Entrepreneurship Research: Leveraging Methodological Plurality for Achieving Scholarly Impact

This editorial aims to advance the use of qualitative research methods when studying entrepreneurship. First, it outlines four characteristics of the domain of entrepreneurship that qualitative research is uniquely placed to address. In studying these characteristics, we urge researchers to leverage the plurality of different qualitative approaches, including less conventional methods. Second, to help researchers develop high-level theoretical contributions, we point to multiple possible contributions, and highlight how such contributions can be developed through qualitative methods. Thus, we aim to broaden the types of contributions and forms that qualitative entrepreneurship research takes, in ways that move beyond prototypical inductive theory-building

Under / Over Looked

Across the stages of migration, I have confronted emotional and social complexities. The farther I am from my roots, the more I want to strengthen my connection to India. Through a process of observation and reflection on every day, grows the desire to house a cultural identity within my work. Here, encounters between past, present and future layer atop history and memories. To reclaim the kindred character of the craft culture of my country, I rediscover those values that resonate within me through recontextualised forms, clay acts as my drawing tool to outline social structures, psychology, traditions and nostalgia

The family snapshot: parental representations of family and children on instagram

This thesis addresses parental identity and the family snapshot in the age of social media, through uses of Instagram. Tracing the socio-historical development of the family snapshot and its visual tropes, the thesis highlights that family photography has never been an endeavour to record a full, accurate record of family life. Instead it represents a complex social artefact embodying understandings regarding socially desirable depictions of parenting, familial harmony and childhood. This work situates these characteristics as representing inherited social knowledge which shape domestic photographic practice. Over 3 phases of work, visual representation of family life on Instagram is investigated. Using qualitative methods, a comparative approach is taken in considering divergence and retention of analogue characteristics. The first phase of work suggests that Instagram sharing has not fundamentally reimagined the family snapshot from its previous format in family photo albums. Images retain the key tropes of positive representation, omission of negative imagery, and depiction of familial harmony that were present in family photo albums. The second phase of work, through an ethnographic study of 20 successful Instagram accounts of mothers, focuses upon family images as part of long-term maternal narrative building. The reported findings present evidence of mothers visually documenting labour in carrying out Hays (1996) ideology of intensive motherhood. However, this is presented as part of highly aesthetically-driven lifestyle imagery. In the third phase of work, the thesis reports a further secondary analysis of the ethnographic data, drawing upon Belk’s (1988) conceptualisation of possessions as pivotal to an extended sense of self. This exploratory work poses that family snapshots contribute significantly towards understandings of contemporary online maternal identity, moving forward sociocultural discourses on family photography and representation. The thesis makes a number of contributions, deepening understanding of the mediating role of digital photography in online maternal self-expression and family representation; developing a deeper understanding of the role of family snapshots as a social artefact; and demonstrating the viability of developing comparative analysis from literature to interrogate snapshot imagery on social media. The thesis work also holds implications for the development of policy around communication strategies for engaging with new mothers, and concludes with discussion of future possibilities for further visual analysis of Instagram communitie