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**In hopes that listserv discussions will someday (once we all learn more about the characteristics positive and negative of this form of communication) generate more light than heat, let me make a couple of logical clarifications. >Strauss-Corbin (high a-priori). It therefore can be used to justify >theoretical approaches all along that spectrum -- a nice freedom for >researchers. To me this is like recognising Glaser and Strauss as either the bible or Microsoft as the guiding philosphy or operating system within which we base qualitative research. **This equation would only be true if, in Birrell's excerpt, "can" were to be changed to "must". I often wonder why other social scientific philosophy such as Popperian or Feyerabendian (?) principles arent invoked. As Ive said before it often strikes me that G and S have tried to monopolise the basic principles of social research; that it is guided by theory and that stronger theories are built from research (maybe it was novel then but is it now?). **This looks like a confusion of results with intentions (although it would require a close study of the text and the authors to actually determine their intentions). What frequently happens in scholarship is that a particularly clear articulation of a concept or series of concepts, with a particularly clear or multivalent name, becomes a symbolic reference point for people with similar interests to communicate with each other. For example, I use Spradley's domain analysis to work, but often refer to what I do as "grounded theory" because it so nicely captures the idea of a multi-iterated addressing of data with concepts, concepts with data, etc. I think of GT as sort of an easily digestible Popperanism that is simply easier to talk about given resource constrainst: for example time, space in an article, or the attention of an interlocutor. The point here is that this is more likely the result of a process of convergence on a common reference point than imperialistic intentions. The same thing happens with all types of symbols, styles, languages, and an inflated balloon if you prick it (which only pops because all of the air rushes to get out of the same hole). G and S came up with the right idea at the right time, with an elegant name for it, and have rightly benefitted. Our job, and I think this is Rowland's point, is to not get swept away by it but to be able to look into the foundations of it in the more complex work of others such as Popper and Feyerabend, or pragmatism as Joerg has pointed out. << I'd really like to see at least one 'monopolizing' statement of Strauss after the 1967 book. I know some statements of Glaser where he is quite rigid in drawing the line. However, to my knowledge there is no such statement made by Strauss. >> Well, I think titling a 1990 book on grounded theory: "Basics of Qualitative Research" might be considered just slightly monopolizing. **for this response to be correct, the title of the book would require the definite article "The," in other words: "THE Basics of Qualitative Research." As it stands it is a rather modest, non-exclusive title. DS ********************************************* David Smilde University of Chicago Universidad Central de Venezuela Apdo. 60712 Chacao 1060 Caracas Venezuela H. 58-2/237-2457 0. 58-2/753-6854 F. 58-2/753-5750 cel. 58-14/902-8551 e-mail: [log in to unmask]