Qualitative Inquiry in the Present Tense

Book excerpt: In Qualitative Inquiry in the Present Tense, contributors engage with epistemological and philosophical questions concerning the conduct of qualitative inquiry in the present moment, and especially as it relates to various understandings of writing in/as inquiry. Topics addressed include methodological processes, questions of narrative uprootedness, relational inquiry, Indigenous ethico-onto-epistemologies, storytelling, and transformative writing forms and practices. This is a messy, often unruly collection (in the best way possible) of disparate ideas strung tightly together by literal and metaphorical questions of the research act of writing. Contributors from the United States, Australia, Canada, England, and Scotland imaginatively conceive of new qualitative futures—and how we might write ourselves there. This evocative new book is a must-read for faculty and students alike who are interested in and engaged with questions and ideas oriented toward understanding our current historical present in qualitative research—a moment in which the field is perpetually in motion or in flux, with new theories, methods, and orientations arising, competing, and even contradicting one another.