We are all in it!: Phenomenological Qualitative Research and Embeddedness

Abstract

In recent decades, phenomenological concepts and methodological ideals have been adopted by qualitative researchers. Several influential strands of what we will refer to as Phenomenological Research (PR) have emerged. We will call into question whether PR has been sufficiently sensitive to the issue of the prerequisites, or basic conditions, for doing phenomenological research. The practical implementation of phenomenological key concepts is important in working with phenomenology as a research methodology. Core concepts such as “bracketing” seems to be particularly important in PR. The question we would like to raise is not whether “bracketing” is possible, or to what extent, nor how it should be understood. Rather, we wish to illuminate the prerequisites for bracketing itself. We believe that a fuller recognition of the embeddedness of research practices like PR does have some broadly practical implications, which we shall expand upon in the present article.