Reviews for The Qualitative Researcher's Companion

The average rating for The Qualitative Researcher's Companion based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-06-11 00:00:00 Cale Armstrong I read part of this book for a special topics environmental studies class in political ecology called "Decolonizing Environmental Politics." This is a critical engagement with environmental politics in BC which examines the social construction of "nature". Braun breaks down the construction of nature by looking at the Clayoquot Sound protests of the early 90's, ENGOs, BC's eco-tourism industry, Emily Carr's work, and the Clayoquot Sound Scientific Panel. Although this book was written 12 years ago, Braun's argument remains relevant today to the ongoing discussions on pipelines, mining, and fracking in BC, as well as the cultural identity of the province and more broadly, the Pacific Northwest. From this work, I presume that Braun aims to break down and displace the romanticization of nature, particularly by those engaged in the struggle against the resource extraction industry. I think that this book could serve as a much-needed awakening to anyone who considers themselves to be an environmentalist in BC/Canada/North America, to show the limits of the environmental discourse, as well as the power imbalances that continue to exist amongst Indigenous peoples and environmentalists today. Definitely worth a read, though this is a very dense book and seems to be targeted at an academic audience, who have some sort of grasp on critical theory. I wonder if the terminology and language used are a hinderance to broader readers of the book. Additionally, this book is also quite expensive. I borrowed someone else's copy in order to read it.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-08-22 00:00:00 Kelly M Williams Focuses on Clayoquot Sound, on Vancouver Island's west coast. Braun is a geographer, but he employs a very wide range of critical techniques to analyze the cultural production of the wild and pristine forests of BC. Each chapter centers on a different way in which this region is mediated to the public: ecotourism, artistic representations (Emily Carr, especially), the logging industry, the environmental movement, the discourses and debates surrounding First Nations identity and rights, etc. I was especially impressed by how Braun makes use of just about every major cultural theorist of the last few decades, from Deleuze and Derrida to Judith Butler and Bruno Latour. He brings all these voices to bear directly on a very particular forested region of BC. Sometimes I think his arguments are stretched too thin -- perhaps he should have narrowed his critical approach -- but it's quite refreshing to see critical theory applied in this way.