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Naturalistic inquiry is about studying people in everyday circumstances

Beuving & de Vries

by ordinary means. It strives to blend in, to respect people in their daily
lives, to take their actions and experiences seriously, and to build on these
carefully. Doing Qualitative Research: The Craft of Naturalistic Inquiry
offers guidance, combining thoughtful reflection with practical tips.
It is written for undergraduate and graduate students in social science; for
practitioners in social work, healthcare, policy advice, and organizational
consultancy; and for all who have a genuine interest in society and its
members.

Joost Beuving teaches anthropology at Radboud University Nijmegen.

He has a special interest in everyday economic life. He has studied car
dealers in the second-hand car trade between Europe and West Africa,
and fishermen in the Nile perch export business on Lake Victoria, East
Africa.
Geert de Vries teaches sociology at VU University Amsterdam and

Doing Qualitative Research

Amsterdam University College. He specializes in historical sociology.
He has studied educational expansion, schools, the life-worlds of young-
sters, and social problems and social change in the Netherlands.

‘One of the best methodological treatments in contemporary social science

literature. It is the type of book that students will remember as the text that
moved them to serious study. I am a flat out admirer of this book.’
− Professor Michael Lewis, University of Massachusetts

Joost Beuving and

Geert de Vries

Doing
Qualitative
Research
The Craft of
ISBN:978-90-8964-765-8

Naturalistic
AUP. nl
9 789089 647658 Inquiry
Doing Qualitative Research
Doing Qualitative Research
The Craft of Naturalistic Inquiry

Joost Beuving and Geert de Vries

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: © Ed van der Elsken / Nederlands Fotomuseum, Courtesy Annet Gelink
Gallery

Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden

Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout

Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by
the University of Chicago Press.

isbn 978 90 8964 765 8

e-isbn 978 90 4852 552 2 (pdf)
e-isbn 978 90 4852 553 9 (ePub)
nur 740

© Joost Beuving and Geert de Vries / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2015

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
 Contents

List of boxes 9

List of figures 11

Acknowledgements 13

Introduction: The arc of naturalistic inquiry 15

Naturalistic inquiry and qualitative research 19
Genesis and audience of the book 20
Outline 23

1. On naturalistic inquiry: Key issues and practices 27

1.1. Positivism and interpretivism: Auguste Comte versus Max
Weber 28
1.2. Describing, understanding, and explaining 29
1.3. Definitions of situations and social facts 31
1.4. Positivist and naturalistic designs 36
1.5. Qualitative versus quantitative methods? 39
1.6. Validity and reliability in naturalistic inquiry 42

2. Theorizing society: Grounded theory in naturalistic inquiry 47

2.1. Dissatisfaction with structural functionalism and grand
theory 49
2.2. The intellectual pedigree of symbolic interactionism 51
2.3. Grounded theory in naturalistic inquiry: The problem of
generalization and inference 57
2.4. Conclusion 63

3. Looking at society: Observing, participating, interpreting 65

3.1. Enlightenment roots 66
3.2. Observations in social research: Positivism and
naturalistic inquiry 68
3.3. Naturalistic observations: Looking at everyday life 73
3.4. The observer as participant 76
3.5. Practical methodology in looking at society 79
3.6. Conclusion 87
4. Talking about society: Interviewing and casual conversation 89
4.1. From workers’ inquiry to social survey 90
4.2. The open interview 92
4.3. The life history interview 97
4.4. The creative or active interview 103
4.5. Practical methodology in interviewing 105
4.6. Conclusion: Casual conversation 110

5. Reading society: Texts, images, things 113

5.1. Texts 114
5.2. Images: Drawings, paintings, maps, photographs, film 122
5.3. Things 127
5.4. Practical methodology in reading society 129
5.5. Conclusion 133

6. Disentangling society: The analysis of social networks 135

6.1. The analysis and theory of social networks 136
6.2. A note on key thinkers: Roles, sociogenesis, and transactions 140
6.3. Applications of social network analysis in naturalistic
inquiry 147
6.4. Practical methodology in disentangling society 150
6.5. Conclusion 156

7. Not getting lost in society: On qualitative analysis 157

7.1. Text and interpretation 158
7.2. Practical methodology: Qualitative analysis in six steps 162
7.3. Conclusion 171

8. Telling about society: On writing 173

8.1. Thick description and social theory 174
8.2. Writing as Verstehen 178
8.3. Contested issues: The ‘I’, literary technique, composite cases 182
8.4. Practical methodology in telling about society 187
8.5. Conclusion 188

Epilogue: Present and future of naturalistic inquiry 191

Naturalistic inquiry in social research 193
Accountability in naturalistic inquiry 195
The future 198
References 201

Index of names 213

Index of subjects 215

 List of boxes

Box 1 Naturalistic inquiry: art, craft, or recipe? 24

Box 2 The Heider-Simmel experiment 30
Box 3 Positivism and interpretivism as academic social facts 33
Box 4 The problem of terminology 45
Box 5 Grounded theory in practice: A didactic case study 54
Box 6 The case of Senegalese boat migrants 58
Box 7 Observation broadly defined 66
Box 8 Observational categories for the study of primates 71
Box 9 The student, the fish, and Agassiz 79
Box 10 Applying Merton and Kendall’s four criteria 97
Box 11 Mass observation in Great Britain 117
Box 12 Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller 120
Box 13 An example of naturalistic social network analysis 138
Box 14 Coding example: The lady in red 164
Box 15 The use of coding software 169
 List of figures

Figure 1 The arc of naturalistic inquiry 17

Figure 2 Place of naturalistic inquiry in social research 20
Figure 3 Description, interpretation, and explanation 30
Figure 4 A still from the Heider-Simmel experiment 31
Figure 5 Definitions of the situation and social facts 33
Figure 6 Observation in social research 68
Figure 7 Textual levels within field notes 86
Figure 8 Domains and stages in a life course and focus of
interviewer 101
Figure 9 Non-fiction image: young child at work 123
Figure 10 Still from Yasujiro Ozu, Tokyo Story 126
Figure 11 Example of a simple social network 137
Figure 12 Thin description, thick description, and theory writing 180
Figure 13 The arc of naturalistic inquiry, with hermeneutic steps 192
 Acknowledgements

This book builds on our own substantive research in Africa and in the
Netherlands. Methodological reflection (re)asserted itself when we started
co-teaching the craft of naturalistic inquiry in various academic contexts.
When Jan-Peter Wissink of Amsterdam University Press (AUP), prompted
by David Bos, asked us for a book, we realized that the core of our joint
teaching was indeed a message worth writing down. Social science must
make society transparent to its members, and naturalistic inquiry is the
best way to do just that.
Charlotte Baarda, Andreas Bolz, Gabriëlle Davelaar, Matthias Härter,
Karen Hlaba, John Steinmark, and Marlene Werner were our students in
the very first course in Advanced Qualitative Research Methods ever taught
at Amsterdam University College. The course was tailor-made for them,
and we have very fond memories of their enthusiasm, openness, creativity,
and intelligence. By taking one another seriously, they and we laid the
foundation of the present book.
Michael Lewis (University of Massachusetts) and Hans Marks (Radboud
University Nijmegen) were academic reviewers of the draft manuscript.
They took time off from their busy schedules to evaluate and comment on
our work. We are grateful for their courteous yet incisive remarks. They
made us rethink and rephrase some fundamental issues and encouraged
us to be more outspoken on others. Jacomijn Prins, John Schuster and Peer
Smets (VU University Amsterdam) gave important feedback on the practical
teachability of the book.
At AUP, Jan-Peter Wissink was persuasive in his invitation and Rixt
Runia was professional in her editorship. At an early stage, Saskia Gieling
and Marjolijn Voogel made valuable contributions. Jaap Wagenaar, Sarah
de Waard and Rob Wadman saw us safely through the production stages.
The linguistic editing of the final manuscript was done in Dublin, Ireland,
by Catherine O’Dea. She corrected mistakes, ironed out differences in style
between the two of us, detected obscure passages, and advised us on various
other matters.

Many thanks to all of you.

Amsterdam and Utrecht, October 2014.

 Introduction: The arc of naturalistic
inquiry

Be a good craftsman. Let every man be his own methodologist; let every man be his
own theorist; let theory and method again become part of the practice of a craft.
– C. Wright Mills

Humans are an inquisitive social species. We habitually survey the world

around us, looking at our fellow human beings, wondering what makes them
do what they do. Think of a close friend at university who unexpectedly
drops her course work to dash on a trip around the world. Or consider an
older colleague in a seemingly stable marriage who begins an affair with a
much younger man. In addition to asking questions of a personal nature,
we ask questions of a social nature, pertaining to situations with which
we are confronted and societies in which we live our lives. How come that
ever more yuppies seem to move into my neighbourhood? How will the
newcomers and we, the established, manage to live together? How does
our society change and evolve?
Asking these questions is part of everyday life but it is also at the heart
of social research. This book is concerned with one particular – and we will
argue: a very productive – way that social researchers study the world, called
‘naturalistic inquiry’. An initial definition of naturalistic inquiry is: studying
people in everyday circumstances by ordinary means. This includes observ-
ing how people go about their daily business and how they interact, listening
to what they have to tell, considering what they accomplish and produce,
understanding what their stories, interactions and accomplishments mean,
and reporting back to them. Inquiring naturalistically by ordinary means in
social research is like playing on authentic instruments according to original
practices in classical music or like using biological ingredients according
to local recipes in cooking. It is an effort to get back to what has been lost
through mechanization, standardization, digitalization, and other forces of
modernization. ‘Social research’ nowadays too often consists of conducting
surveys via the Internet, transforming answers of so-called respondents into
‘data’, applying advanced statistical techniques to those data, and reporting
the outcomes in specialist journals that few ordinary people can read.
Naturalistic inquiry aims to bridge the gulf that has emerged between social
scientists on the one hand and the rest of humanity on the other hand.
16  Doing Qualitative Research

As we will argue, naturalistic inquiry can result in surprising and

important insights into the working of society – insights that cannot
be gained from surveys or experiments. It can also make these insights
understandable and fruitful for many people. Of course, it has its own
problems. The naturalistic social researcher studies society as it presents
itself naturally. She does not control the situation like researchers using
surveys do. Naturalistic inquiry also is an unobtrusive strategy. It cannot
– nor does it want to – dissect or manipulate a situation like experimenters
can. This confronts the naturalistic social researcher with a special set of
challenges. How to choose the situations and the people to be studied?
How to combine different research tools (such as interviewing, observing,
and reading biographies or poems) in a single research project? How do the
meanings people give to their lives compare to the meanings the naturalistic
researcher is inclined to attribute to them? Is the outcome of a particular
naturalistic inquiry representative? And if so: representative of what?
In the spirit of naturalistic inquiry, this book does not present a cookbook
approach to resolving these challenges. This is not a book of recipes. Instead,
it aims to stimulate your ingenuity and creativity in coming to terms with
the challenges by presenting experiences and solutions, both from key
thinkers and from field practitioners. In doing so, it will hopefully help you
to become a better cook.
The book builds on the idea that naturalistic inquiry is not something
special: it is something that we do all the time. As competent members of
society, we routinely interact with a diversity of different persons; we watch
them carrying out their business; and, by talking to them, we gain a broad
understanding of their points of view. In this sense, we are all ‘naturals’ at
doing research. The challenge of naturalistic inquiry for social research is to
draw on our natural understandings with a particular ambition in mind: to
consciously develop a deeper, theoretical understanding of society. ‘Theory’
is a charged concept, evoking a world of painstaking and esoteric reflection
that seems to be accessible only to a small circle of specialists; but that
is not at all what the book intends to say. We look at social theory as one
form of ‘telling about society’ (Becker, 2007), representing that society in a
condensed, scientifically informed, yet accessible narrative. To be a credible
academic narrative, that story must be both well connected to a body of
existing knowledge and carefully grounded in empirical facts.
To be a credible public narrative, both the story and the facts must reflect
the lived realities of ordinary people. Such facts can be presented in standard-
ized and quantified units, e.g. in tables and graphs. More often, though, the
naturalistic researcher will employ a more diverse empirical register, includ-
Introduc tion: The arc of natur alistic inquiry 17

Figure 1 The arc of naturalistic inquiry

n Saturation(empirical)
mmersio Inducti
work/I fe ve an
Field everyday li • variety/diversity • open c alysi
s
lem/ in etworks oding
prob ept r v ation • n /cate
gorie The
ed se oriz
ow g con
c • ob • visual etc. • theoretical sampling • consta
nt com s • gro ing
had izin tic rview paris u
res sit s • inte on • ma nded t
Fo sen • heuri able king heo
test cate a ry
in
t s g gor bstrac Wr
lem ula ies t • te
ob rm idea llin itin
/pr tur
e • fo ga g
pic litera se • na bout
To io en rra so
o c n s t
de ive/ cie
•s mo scr thi ty
om ipt
•c ion ck

ing statements of his or her informants, ethnographic descriptions of their

social interactions, selections from documents, photographs or other cultural
artefacts, and historical reflections on the circumstances under which all
of these emerged. Usually, the naturalistic inquirer will draw on all of them
at the same time. This book gives guidance in making use of these various
registers and explores their place in academic discussions about social theory.
Because of its non-standardized nature, naturalistic inquiry cannot be
learned by reading books or by following specialized classes. It is a craft
(see also textbox 1). Developing that craft first of all requires hands-on
training of skills in the field. These skills start with selecting a problem
and asking questions. A naturalistic research project usually begins with
a relatively open question that merely points at a particular problematic
or ‘foreshadowed problem’ (Malinowski, 1978). As you proceed, questions
tend to become more focused up to a point that you reach saturation: new
questions do not result in additional understanding. The process itself is
done by making observations of everyday-life social practices; by carry-
ing out qualitative interviews based on asking open or semi-structured
questions; by collecting and studying available texts, images and things
people produce; by exploring networks (of kinship, friendship, work, sex);
by systematically comparing various interpretations and explanations; and
last but not least by writing a text that ties everything together and solves
the initial problem in a convincing way – the most convincing way, given
the materials gathered. As a whole this process may be viewed as an arc:
18  Doing Qualitative Research

the arc of naturalistic inquiry, see Figure 1. In the course of the book, we
repeatedly refer back to this arc.
On the one hand, the arc symbolizes the distance the naturalistic
inquirer travels. Beginning with a mere problem, she ponders on what
questions best to ask. She immerses herself in fieldwork by exposing herself
both at length and in depth to the everyday life of people. Gradually, her
questions become focused and her experience becomes saturated. Often,
she explores the various meanings and possible explanations of her findings
several times. She gradually distils them into a theory that is grounded
in those findings. And she then writes in order to make her findings and
conclusions available to others – ‘telling about society’ – including the
people her inquiry was about.
On the other hand, the arc symbolizes that the naturalistic inquirer
returns to her initial problem, but not at the same spot upon which she
started. She has carried the problem further and she has provided new,
deeper insight into it.1
We have drawn the arc of naturalistic inquiry as being one enlargement
out of a whole canopy or mosaic of inquiries. This is to remind us that each
separate scientific study is just one of a much larger number of studies, being
conducted both simultaneously and consecutively by other researchers. It
is a contribution to that canopy or mosaic. Apart from providing the most
convincing explanation of her own problem (her own facet), the naturalistic
researcher must ask herself how her contribution relates to the canopy as
a whole, how it fits in with the larger mosaic.
The key difference between participating in society naturally and
researching society naturalistically is that, while participating, the natural-
istic inquirer makes a sustained effort to reflexively understand both society
and her own participation in it. Reflexive understanding may be described
as the capacity to think about one’s own thinking. The arc of naturalistic
inquiry represents the road towards this reflexive understanding and the
competences required at each stage. Taken together, these competences
constitute the craft of naturalistic inquiry.
It is important to stress that the arc, as we have drawn it in Figure 1, rep-
resents in a stylized and simplified way what naturalistic inquirers actually

1 Conventionally, this is referred to as the empirical cycle. It is often visualized as a circle,

suggesting that the researcher eventually returns to the same spot. The image of an arc better
represents the progress that is being made, the insight gained. A next logical step would be to
visualize the process as a spiral, moving forward. For clarity of exposition, we have chosen the
image of an arc.
Introduc tion: The arc of natur alistic inquiry 19

do. As usual, reality is more complex and messy than the way it is officially
portrayed. Typically, a naturalistic researcher regularly shuttles back and
forth along the arc. After having explored initial concepts by asking broad
questions of her informant, she may return to her initial problem: ‘Is high
school dropout really the problem, or should I delve deeper and focus on
the underlying problem of youth unemployment?’ Or: ‘Is sex work a health
problem, as it is often presented, or should I also look at it as a symbolic
issue for politicians and moral entrepreneurs?’ While already coding and
analysing her material, she may decide to return to the field once more and
do some additional in-depth interviewing among a specific set of people.
‘I cannot fully understand the situation without also taking into account
the viewpoint of truancy officers.’ Or: ‘I must go back and interview a few
more police officers from the red light district precinct in order to be able to
fully factor in their perspective.’ And so forth. Naturalistic inquiry is often
described as an ‘iterative’ process, rather than a linear one. Still, the overall
movement is a steady one from left to right along the arc.

Naturalistic inquiry and qualitative research

How to situate naturalistic inquiry in the field of qualitative research and of

social research in general? Broadly speaking, qualitative research in social
science aims to describe, interpret, and explain social reality through the
medium of language (as opposed to quantitative research, which aims to
do so through the medium of mathematics). Qualitative research thus is a
generic approach in social research covering ethnography, anthropologi-
cal fieldwork, qualitative sociology, organizational fieldwork, interpretive
research, oral history, narrative research, and so on (see Figure 2). Although
each of these has its own tradition, usually linked with the history of a
particular social-scientific discipline (anthropology, sociology, organiza-
tional and administrative science, social history, linguistics), we feel that
they all belong to the same family. As we emphasize in the figure, they are
branches of the same tree of qualitative research. Naturalistic research is
qualitative research by ordinary means into everyday situations, aiming to
disturb these situations as little as possible. It strives to blend in, respect-
ing people in their everyday lives, taking their actions and experiences
seriously, and building on these carefully. As a craft, naturalistic inquiry
may be considered the artisanal core of qualitative research and hence of
ethnography and all the other varieties of qualitative research.
20  Doing Qualitative Research

Figure 2 Place of naturalistic inquiry in social research

social research
qualitative quantitative
ethnography
anthropological fieldwork
qualitative sociology
organizational fieldwork
interpretive research
oral history
narrative research
…et cetera
⎬

naturalistic inquiry

Genesis and audience of the book

This book grew out of teaching social research methods to a variety of under-
graduate and graduate students in anthropology, sociology, political science,
communication science, liberal arts, and management and organization
studies. The authors, the one trained as a social anthropologist (Beuving)
and the other as a historical sociologist (de Vries), co-designed and co-taught
several research methods courses at the VU University and the Amsterdam
University College. In the process, we explored our shared interests in
naturalistic inquiry and gradually began to formulate what we feel are its
basic principles. We searched for ways to better share these principles with
our students, and this book is one attempt to do so. Our ideas crystallized
in an orderly way when we designed and co-taught the course ‘Advanced
Qualitative Research Methods’ at the Amsterdam University College. The
structure of that course found its way into the chapter organization that
forms the backbone of this book.
Because it originates in teaching to a diverse audience, the book aims to
speak to a broad readership of non-specialist readers. It does not depend on
specific background knowledge, and its use in teaching is not confined to a
Introduc tion: The arc of natur alistic inquiry 21

particular discipline. Examples from the full breadth of the social sciences
hopefully contribute to this. The book intends to resonate with the questions
and queries of both the novice and the more seasoned student of social
research. Thus, it can be used for teaching at both undergraduate and (post)
graduate level. Perhaps the sole requirement for fruitfully using the book is
a genuine interest in both empirical and theoretical questions. In the spirit
of naturalistic inquiry, the book approaches the ‘grand theories’ (Mills, 1959)
taught in many of the social science curricula not as revealed truths but rather
as interesting propositions for empirical inquiry, to be further explored in
a naturalistic setting. In the same spirit, the book considers the ‘abstracted
empiricism’ (Mills, ibid.) taught or implied in many of the methods tracks
of the same curricula – measurement models; scale construction; survey
interviewing – as distracting from serious theoretical thinking. As Peter
Berger has remarked: ‘In science as in love, a concentration on technique is
likely to lead to impotence’ (Berger, 1963). Naturalistic inquiry has a distinct
and important place in social research, which is usually done in faculties
of social sciences and institutes for social research. Its use is not limited to
that however. In medicine, for example, there is an increasing interest in
exploring the life worlds of patients in order to better understand the impact
of medical treatments, the use of prescribed medicines, the consumption
of illegal drugs, the family constellations of psychiatric patients, the social
networks of elderly and very old people, and so forth.
Beyond the world of social science and medicine, naturalistic inquiry is
practiced in management consultancy. When asked to advise on the future
of a company or organization, serious consultants often negotiate the oppor-
tunity to first do a round of naturalistic inquiry that includes all stakeholders
– including at shop floor level. This allows them to gain in-depth insight
into the company or organization and to come up with solutions that are
supported by that organization as a whole (instead of only by its shareholders
or board). This is one reason why naturalistic inquiry has an affinity with the
field of organizational studies and organizational anthropology.
More informally and even more widely, students who have been trained
in naturalistic inquiry benefit from it in the various professional environ-
ments that they encounter after graduating from university. Many of our
students, for instance, reported that they could understand company meet-
ings better because they had come to appreciate their symbolic aspects – a
point to which naturalistic inquiry draws attention (Barry & Slocum, 2003).
Outside such meetings, what is often negatively stereotyped as ‘gossip’ in
fact turned out to be an important vehicle for the background rehearsal of
views expressed in meetings. Also, our students began to see how seemingly
22  Doing Qualitative Research

innocuous encounters at the coffee machine unveil important information

about the network of interpersonal contacts at work; and they appreciated
better the ritual aspects of encounters at the work place, for instance seeing
how the yearly appraisal with the supervisor is a public way to reaffirm a
difference in social status (see also Down & Reveley, 2004).
But even beyond the pragmatic considerations relating to manoeuvring
in a work environment, naturalistic inquiry isessential in helping to under-
stand the world around us better. Consider, for instance, the consequences
of contemporary globalization. Because of globalizing migration, more and
more people from different cultural backgrounds and walks of life live
together. Initially applauded by cosmopolitan elites as denoting the success
of the ‘multicultural’ society (Friedman, 2002), its more grim consequences
are nowadays a popular topic for public conversation. The experience of
cultural difference underpins this: living in close proximity with others
whose customs and cultural practices are experienced as foreign, sometimes
as alien. Through their ability to understand various life worlds ‘from the
inside’, students trained in naturalistic inquiry may develop a special
competence in making understandable cultural difference, a major step
towards mitigating social tensions resulting from that. This book subscribes
to the viewpoint that universities must foster public social science. Armed
with the apparatus of naturalistic inquiry, social scientists can understand
the life world of both those who are experienced as ‘different’ and those
who feel threatened by them (Burawoy, 2005). They can offer the empirical
antidote that is much needed to steer the overheated public debate around
‘multiculturalism’ and ‘the other’ into calmer waters.
Last but not least, the careers of many social research graduates will
veer towards public office. They will work in the sphere of policy­making
and implementation, and their decisions will affect the daily lives of con-
siderable numbers of ordinary people. Thus, policymakers have a special
responsibility in understanding the society in which they seek to intervene.
Their interventions are routinely structured by the mass of statistical data
that are available to them. Yet training in naturalistic inquiry can help them
to look beyond mere numbers and imagine the real problems with which
the members of society struggle. Naturalistic inquiry has a verstehende
ambition, seeking to understand the problems of society from within; i.e.
in terms of the viewpoints of its members. The world of policymaking is
often far removed from that. Receiving training in naturalistic inquiry
makes you more sensitive to the existence of multiple viewpoints on what
seems from a distance to be a singular policy problem. This is a valuable
capability which can, hopefully, contribute to a better world.
Introduc tion: The arc of natur alistic inquiry 23

Outline

The book is divided into a sequence of eight chapters, roughly correspond-

ing to the stages of the arc of naturalistic inquiry. As already touched upon,
distinctions between the successive stages are to some extent artificial.
Thinking about naturalistic inquiry, carrying it out in the field, and re-
flecting on the significance of the collected information for the problem
of interest are interconnected practices. The book is thus critical of an
idea of social research that looks at research as a linear trajectory from
design through verification to established propositions. This is a normative
simplification of what actually happens in the practice of doing naturalistic
research (Kaplan, 1964; Feyerabend, 2002). Qualitative or naturalistic
inquiry ‘is designed in the doing’ (Becker, 1993: 219). It entails a constant
going back and forth, or iteration, between problem, questions, evidence,
and theoretical ideas. Naturalistic inquiry entails a special commitment
to ‘thinking with data’ instead of ‘thinking about data’ (Wuyts, 1993: 7). It
revolves around the formulation and reformulation of essential concepts
and relationships between these concepts as these emerge from empirical
realities.
Chapter 1 carves out more securely than has been done in this introduc-
tion the outlines of naturalistic inquiry by contrasting it with positivism, a
view that currently prevails in social research. It questions the often-made
distinction between qualitative and quantitative research methods, arguing
that both approaches to data collection have their place in naturalistic
inquiry. Chapter 2 explores the role of social theory in naturalistic in-
quiry, advocating an iterative view on the relation between theoretical
concepts and empirical findings, known as grounded theory. Chapters 3
to 6 explore different strategies in finding out about society, respectively:
making focused observations; carrying out interviews and having casual
conversations; studying texts, images, and things; looking at social net-
works. Chapter 7 is concerned with the analysis of qualitative information,
propagating a procedure known as open coding: identifying small building
blocks of data and creating abstract categories from them. This procedure
logically flows into Chapter 8, which talks about writing in naturalistic
inquiry. Writing about society and thinking about society are intertwined
mental processes, mediated by data, and together they tell a story about
society. In the Epilogue, we look back on the arc of naturalistic inquiry; we
discuss problems of ethics and accountability; and we look ahead into the
future – or futures – of naturalistic inquiry.
24  Doing Qualitative Research

Box 1 Naturalistic inquiry: art, craft, or recipe?

Naturalistic inquiry may be viewed as an art, as an intellectual craft, or as a

collection of techniques or recipes (Hammersley, 2004). Exemplary specimens
of naturalistic inquiry, like William Foote Whyte’s study of an American-Italian
slum (Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum, 1993 but first
published in 1943), Clifford Geertz’s study of the Balinese cock-fight (‘Deep play:
Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’, in Geertz, 1993) or Lila Abu-Lughod’s study of
the culture and poetry of North-African nomads (Veiled Sentiments: Honour and
Poetry in a Bedouin Society, 1986), strike us as great works of art. Only a person
well-versed in all aspects of her trade, having a deep knowledge of her subject-
matter, being highly experienced in all matters of fieldwork, and being an ac-
complished and subtle writer, could have produced such a work.
Obviously, much artistry has gone into each one of them. Yet, like in Rem-
brandt van Rijn, Pablo Picasso, or Alexander Calder, the artistry of Whyte, Geertz,
and Abu-Lughod is deeply rooted in craftsmanship. The idea of ‘pure’ artistry,
descending from heaven and endowing the receiver with an effortless capacity
to produce great works, is a romantic myth. It is an unfortunate myth, precisely
because it obscures the role of learning, practicing, appropriating, exercising,
fine-tuning, and combining the various competences that together make up a
craft. Only as a result of extensive practice and exercise of all of these aspects
may a craft eventually engender what we call art.
Nor, on the other hand, is naturalistic inquiry (or painting, or sculpting) solely
a matter of technique. From a technical point of view, there may perhaps have
been better painters – even better painters – than Rembrandt or Picasso in their
respective days, and better sculptors than Calder. In a narrow sense of the word,
there may have been better observers than Whyte; better describers of cultural
artefacts than Geertz; or better interviewers than Abu-Lughod. However, there
were no better interpreters of what is important than they were. And their sense
of what is important was based on their simultaneous mastery of all the various
aspects of their craft: being aware of the literature in their discipline; intuiting a
problematic without prematurely narrowing down the focus of their research;
having the stamina to hang around for prolonged periods of time; establishing
rapport with those studied, having casual conversations with them and inter-
viewing them at length; being alert to the meaning of images and things (ob-
jects, artefacts); being able to make sense out of the sum total of all the some-
times confusing materials gathered; and last but not least being able to write it
all up. Each single aspect may be considered under the heading of ‘technique’; of
qualitative analysis; and so forth. Yet only the mastery of all of them, the ability
Introduc tion: The arc of natur alistic inquiry 25

to mobilize them in combination at the appropriate time, and the courage to

deviate if need be from routines that may be ‘technically’ correct, mark the true
craftsman or craftswoman. This goes for naturalistic inquiry as it goes for paint-
ing and sculpting.
It also goes for cooking. One cannot become a cook by rote learning recipes
from a cookbook. Recipes are necessary: for chicken broth; for pizza dough; for
basic tomato sauce; for omelette fines herbes. Cooks know these by heart and
can prepare them blindly. What makes them good cooks, however, is that they
know how and why these various recipes work; that they can combine them;
that they can create new recipes for new dishes; and (most of all) that they
can create courses from fortunate combinations of dishes and dinners from a
stimulating series of courses. A good naturalistic study is like a good dinner. It
may require various techniques; it may make strike you as a work of art; but its
quality ultimately depends on craftsmanship.
1. On naturalistic inquiry: Key issues and
practices

Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of

significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis
of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive
one in search of meaning.
– Clifford Geertz

After our first acquaintance with naturalistic inquiry in the Introduction,

this chapter goes into more depth. It begins with a discussion on interpretiv-
ism – the intellectual home of naturalistic inquiry – and positivism – which
currently prevails in social research. It is shown that positivism, analogous
to the natural world, looks for universal social laws in society, whereas
interpretivism sees society as emerging from the actions and perspectives
of its members. To study that emergent aspect of society, practitioners
of naturalistic inquiry usually make a distinction in their work between
describing, understanding, and explaining what people say and do, sub-
sequently showing how in daily practice acts and meanings continuously
interact. It is shown how this dialectical nature of the facts of society raises
serious questions about proper – or useful – strategies in the collection
of information. Moving into a discussion about research design, we pay
specific attention to an often-used distinction between quantitative and
qualitative research methods. We argue that the distinction between them,
although often reiterated and even reified in scientific discourse, is a weak
one if one considers a more fundamental difference between positivism
and interpretivism. That is, in positivism, the researcher seeks to control
the research situation, which from the viewpoint of naturalistic research
is problematic because it engenders the creation of an artificial situation.
Naturalistic inquiry, on the other hand, begins and ends with situations
as they naturally occur and unfold in people’s lives. That difference in
viewpoint has obvious consequences for ideas about the validity and reli-
ability of social research, a concluding point that the chapter addresses by
offering practical suggestions.
28  Doing Qualitative Research

1.1. Positivism and interpretivism: Auguste Comte versus Max

Weber

Positivism – or to be precise: ontological positivism1 – is the epistemological

assumption that the natural world and the social world are ordered by
similar principles (Turner & Roth, 2003). These principles are thought to
take the form of law-like regularities – not unlike the law of gravity or the
laws of motion as proposed by Isaac Newton. From this position, it follows
that the social world can be studied with methods developed in the study
of the natural world, and that they can be described in the same language.
Because major advances have been achieved in describing the natural world
in mathematical terms, mathematical formulae and propositions have
become the preferred syntax of those advocating positivism in the study of
human societies. The genesis of this position in social science is associated
with the work of the French philosopher Auguste Comte. Once freed from
the obscurities of religion and metaphysics, or so he felt, the empirical or
‘positive’ study of society would develop into a ‘social physics’, unveiling to
humanity the laws of its own existence and showing it the path towards an
enlightened future (Comte, 1975; Collins & Makowsky, 1998: 21 ff.).
Interpretivism or naturalistic inquiry represents a fundamentally dif-
ferent position. It is also concerned with the order of the social world, but
it rejects the prevalent idea in positivism that this order follows law-like
patterns as they operate in the natural world. Instead, it adopts the view
that social order follows from how humans understand their situation and
act upon that (Athens, 2010). In that sense, it is heir to Verstehen2 (literally:
understanding) – a hermeneutic viewpoint coined by the German social
thinker Wilhelm Dilthey but theorized by Max Weber, which holds that
society is best understood in the mental categories of its members (Outh-
waite, 1986).3 Weber’s ideal was ‘a science which attempts the interpretive
understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explana-

1 As opposed to logical positivism, which does not necessarily attribute an objective status
to reality but merely stipulates that statements about reality should be capable of empirical
verification. See Kaplan (1964: 36 ff.). Hereafter, we use ‘positivism’ as shorthand for ontological
positivism.
2 Following the convention in German, we use a capital letter for the noun Verstehen (to
understand) and a lower case letter for the adjective verstehende (understanding).
3 This is not the same as defending a subjectivist position in which my view on society is
as valid and valuable as yours. That is the position associated with postmodernism, which,
reasoned to its radical extreme, cannot distinguish between knowledge that is arrived at after
numerous rounds of careful research during which various rival interpretations were tested
(and rejected) and a private opinion (Ritzer, 1996).
On natur alistic inquiry: Key issues and pr ac tices 29

tion of its course and effects’ (Weber, 1947: 88). Note that Weber does not
construct an opposition between understanding and explaining but rather
sees the first as a necessary step towards the second. Understanding is a
prerequisite to explaining. In order to explain human actions, we first have
to understand what those actions mean to those who perform them. The
same physical exercise in a yoga class may be part of a spiritual experience
to one participant, and healthy gymnastics to another.

1.2. Describing, understanding, and explaining

First of all, of course, we have to observe the physical exercise, to describe

the very actions we wish to understand and explain. Arguably, social
science does not two but three things: it describes or reports what people
say and do; it understands (or interprets) what the things people say and
do mean to them; and it explains both the things said and done and their
meanings. To elaborate the brief yoga example above: an ethnographer or
sociologist or anthropologist would first of all observe what was going on
in a particular yoga class, making notes and elaborating these notes into a
careful description. He would also speak, probably at length, with various
participants, asking them why they practiced yoga and what yoga meant
to them. He might find that some participants have spiritual aims; others
have health concerns; and again others are worried about their figure.
Eventually, our researcher might try to explain all of these concerns of
the yoga students (and therefore their participation, i.e. their behaviour)
from a broad theory of modernity – perhaps along the lines of: traditional
religion is waning; governments stress individual responsibility for your
health; beauty is an important asset in the marriage market. Note that
the social-scientific explanation (the social conditions of modernity) is
an extra layer of meaning – social-scientific meaning or significance –
that is added by the social researcher to the meanings people provide.
The participants in the yoga class may themselves be unaware that their
various motivations and behaviours may all be viewed as reactions to
the condition of modernity. Also note that the social researcher could
never have explained their doing yoga if he had not first asked for their
motivations. To paraphrase Max Weber: only by f irst attempting the
interpretive understanding of the yoga student’s actions could he arrive
at a causal explanation of these actions. Figure 3 provides a summary of
the epistemological distinctions just introduced and adds to them two
terms often used: emic and etic.
30  Doing Qualitative Research

Figure 3 Description, interpretation, and explanation

explanation etic
arc of naturalistic inquiry

analysis of meaningful action

through the eyes of the social scientist

interpretation emic
Verstehen of acts plus their
meaning in the eyes of the actor

description observational
observation of acts, behaviour,
and cultural artefacts

Emic is the meaning of things (acts, behaviour, human products) to the

people involved, the insiders – here: the spiritual, health, or sexual meaning
of yoga to various practitioners (see Box 2 for how meaning can also pertain
to things). Etic is the meaning or significance attributed by those studying
them, the social scientists, the outsiders – here: seeing it as a reaction to
modernity4 . Typically, the social researcher moves from description to
understanding to explanation, along the arc of naturalistic inquiry.

Box 2 The Heider-Simmel experiment

The term understanding applies to the behaviour of our fellow humans and
other animals, but is not limited to that. As the famous Heider-Simmel experi-
ment (1944) shows, this facility even encompasses the behaviour of seemingly
inanimate objects. In the experiment, a short animation clip was shown to a
selected audience in which three geometrical figures (a large triangle, a small
triangle, and a circle) move in various directions and at various speeds. The only
other figure in the field is a rectangle, a portion of which could be opened and
closed like a door. A still from the clip is shown in Figure 4.
The experimenters then asked their audience to describe what they observed
in the short clip. Strikingly, very few of the participants told their story about the
clip in entirely geometrical terms (‘A large solid triangle is shown entering a

4 The twin terms were coined by Pike (1954). For a history of their use in anthropology, see
Harris (1968: 568 ff.). An amusing report of how the spiritual meaning of yoga is felt to undermine
established religion (a clash between different emic meanings) is provided in Kramer (2013).
On natur alistic inquiry: Key issues and pr ac tices 31

rectangle’, and so on). Instead, most participants began to tell lively stories
about the geometrical figures as if these were humans. They imputed motives
and character traits to the figures, and offered complicated plots explaining
their movements. For instance: ‘The larger triangle tries to attract the attention
from the circle, who appears to be not interested in it’.
On the basis of their intriguing experiment, Heider and Simmel concluded
that we attach meaning to the behaviour of other people by attribution, much
in the way that the audience attributed motives and so on to the geometrical
figures. As ordinary members of society, we do that constantly, intuitively and
routinely. In naturalistic inquiry, becoming familiar with these tacit attributions –
both of those whom we see behaving and our own – is seen as an essential part
of the research process. (Source: Heider & Simmel, 1944.)

Figure 4 A still from the Heider-Simmel experiment

(full clip at www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZBKer6PMtM)

1.3. Definitions of situations and social facts

How do acts (behaviour, talk, cultural products or artefacts) and meanings

relate to one another? Naively, we often seem to assume that meanings are
imputed to acts: first, there are acts, and second, meaning is added to them.
Yet these very acts must also be considered as following from meanings. This
insight has been formulated by William Isaac Thomas: ‘If people define situ-
ations as real, they are real in their consequences’ (Thomas & Thomas, 1928:
32  Doing Qualitative Research

571-572).5 People act according to the meaning they impute in situations.

Once enacted, these behavioural consequences or social formations have an
impact on how people define new situations, on how they continue to think
and act. If two people fall in love, they may marry. (With marriage of course
being a tradition available to them, an institutionalized consequence of
actions of earlier generations.) This will have consequences for their future
selves. In fact, they may form a family and have children. These children
will then be the very real, biological consequences of the earlier definition
of the situation by their (then: future) parents. The consequences of defini-
tions of situations of older generations appear to younger generations as
established institutions, or as Émile Durkheim had it: as social facts.6 Social
facts can be as objective and sometimes even as hard – e.g. in the form of
buildings, or bullets from a gun – as a rock or any other physical fact – hence
Émile Durkheim’s admonition that in the study of society, ‘the first and
fundamental rule is to consider social facts as things’. Note that Durkheim
did not write that social facts are things (in the sense of physical objects),
but rather that for the purpose of research they should be considered as
things, as equivalent to things – precisely because people experience them
as realities. A model of this dynamic relation between definitions of the
situation and their consequences as social facts is presented in Figure 5.
What we can learn from Thomas and Durkheim is that acts and meaning
continuously interact – there is a dialectical relationship between them
(which applies to university departments too, as Box 3 shows). Therefore
we should think of them in a time-perspective, as a process or as processes.
Today’s definitions of situations are tomorrow’s social facts; and tomorrow’s
social facts precondition the-day-after-tomorrow’s definitions of situations –
perhaps not to eternity but surely as long as humans live and interact on earth.
To summarize: human understandings, and the actions that they spawn,
interlock into social formations. The sum total of social formations we call
societies. The force of the social is phenomenal: it works via the experiences
of individuals. To understand how it works, you have to understand and
interpret these experiences – therefore the label ‘interpretivism’.
Interpretivism does not, however, imply voluntarism: the erroneous
idea that the force of the social can be willed or wished away (Berger &

5 Thomas in fact wrote: ‘If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences
(italics ours). ‘Men’ in those days and in such a context meant ‘people’. Today, the word ‘men’
tends to be read as denoting male persons. We have therefore replaced ‘men’ by ‘people’.
6 Durkheim (1982). Cf. Goudsblom (1977: 149): ‘In the development of human societies, yester-
day’s unintended social consequences [of intentional human actions] are today’s unintended
social conditions of intentional human actions.’
On natur alistic inquiry: Key issues and pr ac tices 33

Figure 5 Definitions of the situation and social facts

definitions of
the situation

consequences/
social facts

Luckmann, 1991). Once crystallized, societies exert pressures on people

which may be infinitely stronger than their individual wills. As Karl Marx
famously observed: ‘The tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp
upon the brain of the living’ (Marx, 1897: 12). That explains why people do
indeed often experience social facts as things. When asked, they will say:
‘That is how it is.’ And for good reason: each one of us is born in a ‘second-
hand world’ (Mills, 1958: 71), i.e. in a world that has been shaped and that
has crystallized before we were born. As we shall see, naturalistic inquiry
tries to lift this veil from thing-like social facts; it tries to uncover how and
why things have come to look as though they are what they are.

Box 3 Positivism and interpretivism as academic social facts

Merely identifying the presence of the two opposing positions of ontological

positivism versus interpretivism or naturalistic inquiry risks caricaturizing them.
Unfortunately, this happens all too often. Entire social research departments are
sometimes locked in battles over which academic position should prevail in re-
search and teaching. Those advocating either position often find it hard to find a
shared language for meaningful communication. Such battles tend to culminate
around the appointment of professorial chairs and departments which are in the
process of new appointments (or renewing old ones) present fertile ground to
see this in action. Also, most (if not all) academic curricula in social research are
designed on the basis of either one of these positions. Very few professional aca-
demics have been groomed in both. Further, few funding boards are of a mixed
nature, and research proposals must therefore confess to either position, or the
proposal is likely to bounce – its possible brilliance or originality notwithstand-
ing. In short, what may at first seem merely philosophical Spielerei (academic
discussion about various definitions of a situation) has in social fact (Durkheim)
– or in its consequences (Thomas) – a tendency to solidify in a particular organi-
zation of the social sciences that can make and break academic careers.
34  Doing Qualitative Research

Nonetheless, we feel that positivism and interpretivism (and therewith

naturalistic inquiry) are not necessarily incommensurable positions. This
book subscribes to social pragmatism: the idea that social research should
be evaluated by how effectively it explains social phenomena. Pragmatism
advocates that the problems of society (including our intellectual struggles
to come to terms with them) rather than a philosophical position adopted
a priori should determine the selection of our research strategies (Mead,
2007: 21-36). Some social problems lend themselves to being studied in a
positivist manner, whereas others may be tackled more successfully with
naturalistic inquiry or some other interpretive approach. Generally speak-
ing, positivism is useful when you are interested in properties of a society at
a particular moment, as sedimented into social facts. If you are interested
in information about, say, poverty figures at a given moment in time, then
you could devise a scale that is taken to indicate poverty – perhaps monthly
income or material attainment. Next, you can ask individual members of
society how much money they earn, whether or not they own a car, and
if so, what type of car. You can then rank them on the poverty scale and
compute statistical indicators, such as the calculated mean or the standard
deviation. In theory, you could include all members of a society, but usually
a statistically representative sample is used, saving costly research effort.
If you are interested in the historical development of poverty, the same
questionnaire may be applied at different moments in time among the same
sample: this is then called a longitudinal study. That allows you to identify
particular trends in poverty and its distribution in society. If these trends
are sufficiently robust, they can even be extrapolated for future prediction.
This type of study, although valuable in its own right, is usually not of
central interest in naturalistic inquiry. The research problem there would be
of a different nature. Rather than investigating the statistical distribution of
poverty, you would be interested in poverty as a social phenomenon and as
a social process; in other words, as a property not of individual attainment
per se, but of the quality of social relations. Thus, you would be interested
in appreciating the societal conditions under which poverty arises and
under which it is experienced. For instance, are particular groups in society
more vulnerable to becoming poor than others? And once they have been
classified as poor, does this classification perhaps function as marker, or
stigma, which contributes to reproducing the poverty status, for instance
by limiting chances of the poor entering the labour market to get good jobs?
That of course raises the question of what poverty actually ‘is’ – or rather:
what poverty is understood to be by those involved (both the poor and the
rich). The naturalistic inquirer would be inclined not to devise a scale based
On natur alistic inquiry: Key issues and pr ac tices 35

on outside criteria for that, but instead to depend on native classifications

of the phenomenon. Which definitions of ‘the poor’ figure in a particular
society, and how do these definitions gain clout in daily interaction? Also,
social policies with regard to poverty would be of interest to the researcher.
Liberal governments usually want to limit poverty and they intervene in
society with their policies to alleviate it; but who defines the parameters
of these policies, how do they work out in the daily practice of poverty
alleviation, and how are their consequences appraised?
From the above-noted difference in the formulation of the research
problem, it follows that positivism and naturalistic inquiry look for different
types of information about society. Positivism regards the social world as
a collection of individuals who are defined by particular properties like
age, income, and educational attainment. These properties are measured
as scores on a scale, as variables. This has two important advantages for
social research. First, it allows abstraction from individuals and their
personal situations. There is no need to collect information about them
other than how they score on a scale. This greatly reduces the volume of the
information to be collected and subsequently analysed. Second, collecting
the same information about all those who are included in the research
project allows data collection methods to be standardized. This reduces the
costs per research unit, making it possible to carry out large-scale research
projects, especially with the enhanced data storage and analysis capabilities
of modern computers.
In naturalistic inquiry, attention is focused less on individuals and
their properties and more on persons and their situation. Looked at from
a macroscopic viewpoint, the term ‘situation’ refers to the position that
a person occupies in a society – think of socio-economic status or ethnic
affiliation or engagement with the prevailing value orientation. Equally
important, however, are the microscopic considerations: a person’s social
network, past experiences, their propensities. Key in naturalistic inquiry is
that the situation in which a person finds herself is thought to depend on
her understandings of that situation. The first part of the Thomas theorem
is highlighted here: ‘If people define situations as real, they are real in their
consequences’ (italics ours). Such understandings are not considered to
be peripheral aspects, as merely individual quirks that diverge from one
person to another and stand in the way of a clear view of the hard facts.
Instead, it is believed that such definitions of the situation have very real
consequences for action (see also Figure 4). Whether or not this defining is
done continuously or only occasionally in case of a dramatic event; whether
it has philosophical depth or remains of a practical nature; or whether it
36  Doing Qualitative Research

is manifested discursively or remains tacit – all this is open to academic

debate (and naturalistic research). Innumerable studies have pointed out
major historical and cultural differences between people’s definitions of
situations and between their consequences (Giddens, 1990). From a natural-
istic inquiry point of view, a major task, therefore, is to establish the precise
relation between definition and action.

1.4. Positivist and naturalistic designs

Positivism and naturalistic inquiry do not only look for different types of
information, they also hold diverging ideas about the collection of that
information. A major characteristic of positivist methods is that they seek
to control the research situation. The term ‘control’ has a specific meaning
here: it refers to reducing and standardizing the properties under study – for
example by devising scales – in order to make them suited for statistical
analysis and modelling. By thus looking for a great degree of control in
the research design, the researcher in fact constructs her information.
She specifies the properties to consider and devises the scales used to
measure these properties. Further, the researcher devises criteria to select
the representative sample and makes many other a priori decisions about
who is to be included in the research and how. Thus, a major consequence
of seeking to control data is the creation of an artificial situation (Mosse,
1994). As Nietzsche has said: ‘Facta! Ja Facta ficta!’ (‘Facts! Yes, facts are
made!’) (Nietzsche, 1988: 224.) This may be justifiable from the viewpoint
of data processing and analysis, but it inevitably has a substantive impact
on the findings of the research. For instance, if a question is phrased in
a vocabulary that is not familiar to the research participant, this will
influence her or his answer. It must further be considered that a positivist
research situation engenders a set of expectations about how to behave.
Some have argued that participants – routinely called ‘respondents’ – see
their participation in research as a task or performance for which they must
prepare in advance (Morris, 2009). Rather than being objective modes of
data collection, positivist methods are social constructions. This must be
acknowledged in order to better understand how they impact on social
research outcomes.
The wish to control the research situation requires a high degree of stand-
ardization. Identical questions must be asked to all of the participants in
the research, and their answers must fit in previously set answer categories.
This standardization must be constructed before the data collection takes
On natur alistic inquiry: Key issues and pr ac tices 37

place. A substantial part of the research preparation, therefore, goes into

calibrating the questions and their answers, as there is no room to make
changes to them after the data collection phase has begun. Doing so would
compromise the ideal of standardization, for instance making it difficult
for the researcher to compare questions asked before and after the changes
were made. The same can be said about research designs which depend on
observations. In psychological experiments and animal behaviour studies,
observational categories are usually constructed prior to the data collection
phase. This has the advantage that research assistants can be trained to
apply these categories to a population with which they hold no special
relation, making it possible to scale up to very large research projects. The
disadvantage is that only those behaviours will be observed that have been
imagined and conceptualized in advance.
Interpretive or naturalistic methods do not share this concern for
standardization. Rather than controlling the research situation, they seek
to study social life as it presents itself to the members of a society under
ordinary, everyday circumstances. Typically, they do this by carrying out
fieldwork, i.e. by participating in the very social life they are studying. An
important naturalistic ambition is that no a priori boundaries are set for the
properties under study. Although the researcher begins the research with
some preliminary conceptions about properties and their relations – the
idea of a researcher entering the field as a tabula rasa is not only unrealistic
but also discredits the fruits of academic training – these are intentionally
not very well specified. The researcher instead formulates ‘foreshadowed
problems’ – issues that she expects to be important in the studied society
(Malinowski, 1978: 8-9). In the course of the research, these issues come
more clearly into focus, enabling the researcher to gradually conceptualize
more precisely the nature of the properties under study. In a sense, whereas
a concern for standardization drives positivist methods, a readiness for
constant adjustment is what characterizes naturalistic methods.7
The choice of research participants presents another distinction between
positivist and naturalistic designs. In naturalistic inquiry, specifying cri-
teria for the sampling of participants is expected to be part of the research
process, rather than to precede the data collection. As indicated above, this
has to do with the limited interest in statistical distributions. Naturalistic

7 Of course, naturalistic inquiry ‘constructs’ data too, if only by jotting down observations and
by transcribing interviews and conversations that otherwise would have remained unnoticed.
However, contrary to the often highly artificial experiments of positivism, those constructions
stay close to the life worlds of the people under study. They aim to be unobtrusive or ‘unreactive’.
38  Doing Qualitative Research

inquiry looks for other things, such as native classifications and their rela-
tion with social action, or for factors driving changes in the configuration
of social relations. Consequently, a sampling procedure must be adopted
that does justice to this ambition. Typically, it does not follow the rules of
statistical sampling, in which informants from a previously delineated
population are selected based on a known probability in order to later be
able to extrapolate from the sample to estimate parameters in the popula-
tion. In naturalistic inquiry, identifying informants usually takes the form
of what is known as ‘theoretical sampling’. This means that you first look for
instances or situations that are relevant for the topic under study and only
then select individual informants based on their relation with that instance
or situation (Glaser & Strauss, 2012; Ragin, 1994). Drawing on the case of
poverty, if you want to study the stigma that is associated with poverty, it
means looking at a situation in which you can see relations between poor
and wealthy persons in action, say a homeless beggar at the gate of a fancy
shopping mall. Then you can observe what goes on in their social interaction
that shapes and reproduces poverty-related stigma.
Thus, in a naturalistic design, the researcher responds to whatever pieces
of information the research situation presents to her. These function as
evidence in resolving the research puzzle, the contours of which come into
focus gradually as more evidence is collected. Questions are raised as they
seem appropriate or useful in furthering the researcher’s understanding of
the society under study. It means abandoning the ideal of asking identical
questions to different, randomly chosen research participants, which is so
central in positivist methods. This shift in approach builds on received so-
ciological insights. It is increasingly accepted that societies present dynamic
configurations of social relations that inform the experiences and projects
of individual persons. To accommodate that meaningfully, it is a fruitful
strategy to try to align the questions to the particular persons engaged in
the research. Using naturalistic methods requires the researcher to subject
herself to a process of learning to ask the right questions to different types
of persons.
This means that meticulous planning in the sense that can be achieved
with a positivist design is not of much use when adopting a naturalistic
design. That is not to discredit the great value of preparation: naturalistic
methods are not an excuse to adopt a sloppy laissez-faire attitude to social
research. It has been suggested that a lot of time goes into thinking through
the universe of possibilities encountered during the collection of informa-
tion (Mills, 1959). That is frustrating work, especially at the beginning of a
research project when it is difficult to distinguish this from making pure
On natur alistic inquiry: Key issues and pr ac tices 39

speculations. The management of a naturalistic inquiry rather revolves

around a mental preparedness. A metaphor that comes to mind is that of
a shopkeeper on a slow business day. The shop has to be kept open even
without a customer in sight. The shop must look attractive, and so must
the shopkeeper, in order to make sure that, once a customer shows up, she
receives a favourable impression of it. Of course, this does not guarantee
that the customer will make a purchase. Even when she does not, leaving
the shopkeeper empty-handed, the shopkeeper, rather than showing disap-
pointment, will wave her customer goodbye with a friendly smile. She never
knows whether the customer will return and make a purchase after all.

1.5. Qualitative versus quantitative methods?

A conventional idea about social research suggests that naturalistic

designs exclusively make use of so-called qualitative research methods,
whereas those adhering to positivism invariably depend on quantitative
methods (e.g. Ritchie & Lewis, 2003). However, that is not the stance of
this book. Whereas it may be true that nowadays naturalistic researchers
have developed a preference for applying qualitative methods and their
colleagues from positivism feel drawn to quantitative methods, this is not
a necessary relation. Nor is it a logical one. Quality and quantity are two
logically independent dimensions of empirical research: one is about the
qualities or properties or attributes of the object under study – like age,
social class, or the colour of someone’s dress – whereas the other is about
the scale on which these properties are measured – like number of years;
lower-middle-higher class; blueness. It is well to remember that the sentence
‘She wore a blue dress’ can be translated into ‘Her dress scored value 4 on
a scale of blueness ranging from 1 to 5’, and vice versa. The first sentence,
however, is often part of a more extensive description, like: ‘She was young.
She wore a fashionable blue dress with matching stockings, a Louis Vuiton
handbag and high-heeled shoes. A pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses were
carefully arranged on top of her hair, which had blonde highlights. She
clearly aimed to make an impression on us.’ The latter description mentions
at least twelve different attributes or qualities (young, fashionable, blue,
stockings, matching, handbag, Louis Vuiton, high heels, sunglasses, Dolce
& Gabbana, carefully arranged, blonde highlights) and one imputation of
motive (aiming to make an impression). Theoretically, you could translate
these into a series of quantitative statements. Practically, these would be
difficult to handle. Also, they would not convey the surplus meaning that
40  Doing Qualitative Research

is provided by the extensive description as a whole: that we are looking at

a particular type of person. It is for this reason – not a logical one – that
qualitative and quantitative methods tend to diverge into two different
practices. On the one hand, there are those researchers who try to take
into account as many attributes as possible of the people, the situations,
and the worlds they study. Often, they satisfy themselves with low levels of
quantitative measurement, like absent versus present (so-called nominal
scale of measurement) or less versus more (ordinal scale). Typically, they
use words, i.e. language, to report their findings. On the other hand, there
are those researchers who limit the number of attributes under study – for
example to: sex, age, social class, and fashion preference – but who go to
great lengths in order to measure these attributes or variables precisely
(with gender necessarily on a nominal scale and fashion preference perhaps
on an ordinal scale, but age in years, months, or even days, i.e. on a ratio
scale, and social class in terms of income, equally on a ratio scale). Typically,
they use both words (language) and numbers (mathematics) to report their
findings. That these two practices have grown apart over time is a matter
of academic division of labour – and perhaps of discussions on methods
figuring as markers of distinction – but not a fundamental point in itself.
As stated, practitioners of qualitative research often use statements that,
explicitly or not, do refer to statistical distributions, such as ‘some argue’,
or ‘many agreed that’, or ‘it was frequently observed that’. Vague as they
may seem from a mathematical viewpoint, they have some use in shedding
light on the problem under study. In quantitative reports, one can observe a
related phenomenon. Here, numbers and their relations and trends are often
discussed in a narrative in which broader meaning is given to numbers.
Numbers do not speak for themselves, but they acquire meaning in a process
of interpreting evidence (Wuyts, 1993). This is not limited to social research.
Studies on the world of stockbrokerage, another occupational category
specialized in dealing with figures, show that stockbrokers treat the figures
on their computer screens as if they possess human agency: they can be
‘hot’, ‘swift’, ‘unpretty’, and so on (Zaloom, 2003).
From this follows a point relevant for this book: quantitative methods can
contribute to Verstehen, and their usage is not in fundamental contradiction
with the unobtrusive ambition of naturalistic inquiry. It is perfectly con-
ceivable, for instance, that several months of making patient observations
in the field will result in a matrix with figures. This then constitutes a
quantification of information that was collected in a naturalistic research
setting – a practice that appears to have been common among classical
anthropologists. Take the following example from a study of British an-
On natur alistic inquiry: Key issues and pr ac tices 41

thropologist Audrey Richards, a former student of the important early

ethnographer and anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. She made a study
of the dietary practices in an area of the country today known as Zambia,
East Africa. For a selected sample of informants in the villages that she
studied, she kept track of what they ate during the day, from day to day.
Next, she converted the food intake into calories and could thus establish
that rural Zambians structurally face several hunger months before the
harvest ripens. She also noted individual differences in calorie intake, which
she could link to the status hierarchy that she had identified earlier. More
prominent figures went less hungry than marginal ones. This then led her
to formulate new questions about the meaning of hunger in the African
countryside (Richards, 1939).
On the other hand, applying qualitative methods is not a guarantee
that the principles of naturalistic inquiry will be respected. It is possible,
and indeed sometimes the case, that a social researcher doing fieldwork
resorts to asking leading questions, or to giving strong clues, thus steering
the conversation in a particular direction, or to addressing the informant
in a vocabulary that is not intelligible to this person, thus creating a sense
of estrangement or even embarrassing this person. In extreme cases, field
research can degenerate into an interrogation that yields little beyond
mutual irritation and suspicion. Of course, there is a crucial difference
between a researcher who uncritically superimposes her view of the world
on the participants in the research hence generating a research outcome,
and one who brings into the conversation insights acquired earlier on in
the research. If all goes well, a naturalistic researcher gradually develops
a tacit understanding about what can and cannot be asked and said in an
everyday setting. As elaborated in the previous chapter, developing this
‘practical sense’ (Bourdieu, 1976) may be seen as a central aspect in the
craft of naturalistic inquiry.
To wrap up this discussion, what seems to be an obvious distinction be-
tween qualitative and quantitative research methods becomes problematic
when looked at more closely. Quantitative methods, i.e. those associated
with numbers, can have their place in a naturalistic research design so long
as deploying them does not contradict the ambition of naturalistic inquiry:
to study a society as it presents itself to its members in everyday life. In the
practice of social research, there is not, therefore, a fundamental distinction
between recording information in words or as figures. Both are symbolic
representations that can serve in the pursuit of uncovering the mental
categories by which a society functions. The discussion above also advocates
caution about claims that equate the use of qualitative methods with the
42  Doing Qualitative Research

pursuit of a naturalistic approach. It has been shown that this depends

primarily on how the researcher engages with the members of the society
under study: as individuals representing a score on a scale or as persons in
a social situation whose point of view is worth exploring.

1.6. Validity and reliability in naturalistic inquiry

Measured against positivist criteria, the claim that naturalistic inquiry

is a form of (social) science may seem difficult to credibly sustain. The
reverse is also true: measured against interpretive criteria, the claim that
positivist research is a form of social science may seem difficult to credibly
sustain. Since this book is about naturalistic inquiry, we discuss only the
claim of naturalistic inquiry here. The findings collected in a naturalistic
inquiry are usually presented to the reader as a narrative; as a story about
society. This raises the question of whether your story may be different
from my story; in other words, naturalistic inquirers are frequently accused
of subjectivism that bears more resemblance to fiction than to (social)
science (compare Guba & Lincoln, 1982). The term ‘subjectivism’ must be
read as synonymous to violating the principles of validity and reliability.
Validity refers to the question: does the research measure what it claims to
measure? Reliability refers to the question: can the results of the research be
checked independently, i.e. will repeating it yield similar outcomes? These
are reasonable questions with which naturalistic inquiry should come to
terms if it wants to claim its place in the scientific Pantheon – albeit not
necessarily in the way advocated by the canons of positivism.
This book adopts the position that naturalistic inquiry commands four
powerful tools which, when best practices are adopted, can help to steer
clear of subjectivism. These tools are further developed in the course of
the following chapters, but to aid the discussion it can help to introduce
them briefly here.
First, naturalistic inquiry builds on the principles of grounded theory
(see also Chapter 2). Grounded theory is a systematic procedure to develop
theoretical concepts about society from empirical research (Strauss &
Corbin, 1998). The system in grounded theory revolves around the twin
procedure of constant comparison and open coding. It is a comparative
method, meaning that each piece of evidence (an observation, or an inter-
view fragment, or some other shred of information) is compared to material
already collected. This forces the researcher to make explicit statements
about how these compare and, if not, how the new material should be clas-
On natur alistic inquiry: Key issues and pr ac tices 43

sified. The comparison itself is given shape by attributing codes to empirical

information, which is subsequently grouped into more abstract categories.
In this way, a chain of evidence is maintained from raw empirical material
via codes and categories to theoretical statements about the material. Such
statements take the form of proposed relations between abstract categories,
and, to further scientific debate, these can then be likened to existing
theories. Pursuing this procedure consistently, naturalistic inquiry opens
up to exposure to a broader academic community – and thus to outside
verification.
Second, naturalistic inquiry promotes the simultaneous use of different
data collection methods. In this way, empirical material is triangulated
through various data collection procedures (Denzin, 1970). Triangulation
means here: confronting the same empirical situation with different
research methods. Triangulation is twinned to iteration: asking questions
to already collected material, formulating these as new propositions in a
new phase of data collection, which is then contrasted with propositions
formulated earlier. In this way, the naturalistic researcher shuttles back
and forth from description, via interpretation to explanation, gradually
moving forward along the arc of naturalistic inquiry. At each step, the
naturalistic researcher seeks the research method with the closest fit to
the propositions at hand. Thus, at the beginning of a research project, the
naturalistic researcher might identify important themes in a round of
casual conversations, which are then checked against observations. The
new questions following from that may then be developed into a structured
questionnaire, which is complemented with a number of formal interviews.
Thus, a strategy is developed as the research unfolds, wherein different
research methods have their place and speak meaningfully (ideally) to the
same research problem.
Third, to coordinate the iteration between the collection of empirical
data and making theoretical reflections about those data, note taking, and
diary keeping is essential. This has several functions, including the release
of psychological pressure resulting from your presence as an outsider (Bleek,
1978). However, in the context of the validity and reliability of naturalistic
inquiry, an important function of note taking and diary keeping is to
confront your own predispositions and inclinations with what you have
observed or heard in the field. You must consistently adopt a self-critical
stance, also known as a reflexive attitude (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012).
It is increasingly accepted that social researchers are not impartial, outside
observers of society. They are ordinary members of society and as such
hold particular views about that society – views often informed by the
44  Doing Qualitative Research

elite circles to which many academically trained naturalistic researchers

belong. Rather than ignoring this point, the naturalistic researcher must
make these views explicit and treat them – in the vocabulary of positiv-
ism! – as testable hypotheses. Such testing is key to note making and diary
keeping. In principle, only after this testing has been done and the process
of self-reflection has become saturated, i.e. when new reflexive questions do
not yield new insights in the position adopted in the field, has the moment
arrived when you may safely consider telling others about society.
Fourth, naturalistic inquirers are in the privileged position, contrary to
positivist researchers, of being able to check – and constantly do check –
both their findings and their interpretations with the people about whom
they are writing. This ‘member check’ happens countless times in the course
of the research itself, when you check your progressive understanding of
situations against the understandings of the people involved in them (Guba,
1981; Erlandson, Harris, Skipper, & Allen, 1993).
An additional, overall test of the validity of your findings can be carried
out at the end of the research process by explicitly discussing your find-
ings and conclusions with your informants (for a short discussion on our
choice of vocabulary – ‘member’, ‘informant’, and so forth – see Box 4). In
a comparative study of six schools, one of us discussed the draft portrait of
each separate school with key figures in that school before publishing the
overall study. At every school, people recognized their own draft portrait
(de Vries, Monsma, & Mellink, 1990; de Vries, 1993).
This does not mean that members’ agreement or consent is the sole
criterion for validity. Angry dismissal of a picture drafted may indicate
that you have struck a raw nerve and that, although unwelcome, there is
validity in your interpretation. Of course, the decision to uphold a particular
interpretation against the overt denial of it by people may only be made
with great care and for very good reasons. The more damaging, negative
outcome of a member check may be a lukewarm reaction or no reaction at
all from the people involved. If your findings do not speak to them at all,
or if they find them irrelevant, you must seriously question the validity
of your findings.8 Positivist social research is sometimes accused of being
irrelevant or merely proving the obvious; this may be because it lacks the
possibility of member checking.

8 The same applies in a psychotherapist’s consulting room: a patient must feel understood,
challenged, or shocked by a therapist’s interpretation, but not remain unaffected by it. The
interpretation must make a difference. This is the pragmatist criterion of truth (Kaplan, 1964:
311-322).
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Turkish fairy tales
and folk tales
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Turkish fairy tales and folk tales

Compiler: Ignácz Kúnos

Illustrator: Celia Levetus

Translator: R. Nisbet Bain

Release date: March 13, 2021 [eBook #64807]

Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

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Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURKISH FAIRY

TALES AND FOLK TALES ***
TURKISH FAIRY TALES
Turkish Fairy Tales
AND FOLK TALES

Collected by Dʳ. Ignácz Kúnos

Translated from the Hungarian version

By
R.Nisbet.Bain.
Illustrated by
Celia Levetus

London
A. H. Bullen
18 Cecil Court, W.C.
1901
 PREFACE

T HESE stories were collected from the mouths of the Turkish peasantry
by the Hungarian savant Dr. Ignatius Kunos, during his travels through
Anatolia,[1] and published for the first time in 1889 by the well-known
Hungarian Literary Society, “A Kisfaludy Társaság,” under the Title of
Török Népmések (“Turkish Folk Tales”), with an introduction by Professor
Vámbery. That distinguished Orientalist, certainly the greatest living
authority on the primitive culture of the Turko-Tartaric peoples, who is as
familiar with Uzbeg epics and Uiguric didactics as with the poetical
masterpieces of Western Europe, is enthusiastic in his praises of these folk-
tales. He compares the treasures of Turkish folk-lore to precious stones
lying neglected in the byways of philology for want of gleaners to gather
them in, and he warns the student of ethnology that when once the
threatened railroad actually invades the classic land of Anatolia, these
naively poetical myths and legends will, infallibly, be the first victims of
Western civilization.
The almost unique collection of Dr. Ignatius Kunos may therefore be
regarded as a brand snatched from the burning; in any case it is an
important “find,” as well for the scientific folk-lorist as for the lover of
fairy-tales pure and simple. That these stories should contain anything
absolutely new is, indeed, too much to expect. Professor Vámbery himself
traces affinities between many of them and other purely Oriental stories
which form the bases of The Arabian Nights. A few Slavonic and
Scandinavian elements are also plainly distinguishable, such, for instance,
as that mysterious fowl, the Emerald Anka, obviously no very distant
relative of the Bird Mogol and the Bird Zhar, which figure in my Russian
Fairy Tales and Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales respectively, while the
story of the Enchanted Turban is, in some particulars, curiously like Hans
Andersen’s story, The Travelling Companion. Nevertheless, these tales have
a character peculiarly their own; above all, they are remarkable for a vivid
imaginativeness, a gorgeous play of fancy, compared with which the
imagery of the most popular fairy tales of the West seem almost prosaically
jejune, and if, as Professor Vámbery suggests, these Népmések provide the
sort of entertainment which beguiles the leisure of the Turkish ladies while
they sip their mocha and whiff their fragrant narghilies, we cannot but
admire the poetical taste and nice discrimination, in this respect, of the
harem and the seraglio.
I have Englished these tales from the first Hungarian edition, so that this
version is, perhaps, open to the objection of being a translation of a
translation. Inasmuch, however, as I have followed my text very closely,
and having regard to the fact that Hungarian and Turkish are closely
cognate dialects (in point of grammatical construction they are practically
identical), I do not think they will be found to have lost so very much of
their original fragrance and flavour.
I have supplemented these purely Turkish with four semi-Turkish tales
translated from the original Roumanian of Ispirescu’s Legende sau Basmele
Românilorŭ. Bucharest, 1892. This collection, which I commend to the
notice of the Folk-Lore Society, is very curious and original, abounding as
it does in extraordinarily bizarre and beautiful variants of the best-known
fairy tales, a very natural result of the peculiar combination in Roumanian
of such heterogeneous elements as Romance, Slavonic, Magyar, and
Turkish.
R. Nisbet Bain.
July 1896
 CONTENTS
PAGE
THE STAG-PRINCE 1
THE THREE ORANGE-PERIS 12
THE ROSE-BEAUTY 30
MAD MEHMED 42
THE GOLDEN-HAIRED CHILDREN 53
THE HORSE-DEVIL AND THE WITCH 74
THE CINDER-YOUTH 84
THE PIECE OF LIVER 97
THE MAGIC TURBAN, THE MAGIC WHIP, AND THE MAGIC
CARPET 102
THE WIND-DEMON 112
THE CROW-PERI 134
THE FORTY PRINCES AND THE SEVEN-HEADED DRAGON 143
THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTEOUS DAMSEL 154
THE PADISHAH OF THE FORTY PERIS 166
THE SERPENT-PERI AND THE MAGIC MIRROR 176
STONE-PATIENCE AND KNIFE-PATIENCE 188
THE GHOST OF THE SPRING AND THE SHREW 196
ROUMANIAN FAIRY TALES
PAGE
THE STORY OF THE HALF-MAN-RIDING-ON-THE-WORSE-
HALF-OF-A-LAME-HORSE 209
THE ENCHANTED HOG 222
BOY-BEAUTIFUL, THE GOLDEN APPLES, AND THE WERE-
WOLF 244
YOUTH WITHOUT AGE, AND LIFE WITHOUT DEATH 260
 TURKISH FAIRY TALES

THE STAG-PRINCE
Once upon a time, when the servants of Allah were many, there lived a
Padishah[2] who had one son and one daughter. The Padishah grew old, his
time came, and he died; his son ruled in his stead, and he had not ruled very
long before he had squandered away his whole inheritance.
One day he said to his sister: “Little sister! all our money is spent. If
people were to hear that we had nothing left they would drive us out of
doors, and we should never be able to look our fellow-men in the face
again. Far better, therefore, if we depart and take up our abode elsewhere.”
So they tied together the little they had left, and then the brother and sister
quitted their father’s palace in the night-time, and wandered forth into the
wide world.
They went on and on till they came to a vast sandy desert, where they
were like to have fallen to the ground for the burning heat. The youth felt
that he could go not a step further, when he saw on the ground a little
puddle of water. “Little sister!” said he, “I will not go a step further till I
have drunk this water.”
“Nay, dear brother!” replied the girl, “who can tell whether it be really
water or filth? If we have held up so long, surely we can hold up a little
longer. Water we are bound to find soon.”
“I tell thee,” replied her brother, “that I’ll not go another step further till I
have drunk up this puddle, though I die for it,”—and with that he knelt
down, sucked up every drop of the dirty water, and instantly became a stag.
The little sister wept bitterly at this mischance; but there was nothing for
it but to go on as they were. They went on and on, up hill and down dale,
right across the sandy waste till they came to a full spring beneath a large
tree, and there they sat them down and rested. “Hearken now, little sister!”
said the stag, “thou must mount up into that tree, while I go to see if I can
find something to eat.” So the girl climbed up into the tree, and the stag
went about his business, ran up hill and down dale, caught a hare, brought it
back, and he and his sister ate it together, and so they lived from day to day
and from week to week.
Now the horses of the Padishah of that country were wont to be watered
at the spring beneath the large tree. One evening the horsemen led their
horses up to it as usual, but, just as they were on the point of drinking, they
caught sight of the reflection of the damsel in the watery mirror and reared
back. The horsemen fancied that perhaps the water was not quite pure, so
they drew off the trough and filled it afresh, but again the horses reared
backwards and would not drink of it. The horsemen knew not what to make
of it, so they went and told the Padishah.
“Perchance the water is muddy,” said the Padishah.
“Nay,” replied the horsemen, “we emptied the trough once and filled it
full again with fresh water, and yet the horses would not drink of it.”
“Go again,” said their master, “and look well about you; perchance there
is some one near the spring of whom they are afraid.”
The horsemen returned, and, looking well about the spring, cast their
eyes at last upon the large tree, on the top of which they perceived the
damsel. They immediately went back and told the Padishah. The Padishah
took the trouble to go and look for himself, and raising his eyes perceived in
the tree a damsel as lovely as the moon when she is fourteen days old, so
that he absolutely could not take his eyes off her. “Art thou a spirit or a
peri?”[3] said the Padishah to the damsel.
“I am neither a spirit nor a peri, but a mortal as thou art,” replied the
damsel.
In vain the Padishah begged her to come down from the tree. In vain he
implored her, nothing he could say would make her come down. Then the
Padishah waxed wroth. He commanded them to cut down the tree. The men
brought their axes and fell a-hewing at the tree. They hewed away at the
vast tree, they hewed and hewed until only a little strip of solid trunk
remained to be cut through; but, meanwhile, eventide had drawn nigh and it
began to grow dark, so they left off their work, which they purposed to
finish next day.
Scarcely had they departed when the stag came running out of the forest,
looked at the tree, and asked the little sister what had happened. The girl
told him that she would not descend from the tree, so they had tried to cut it
down. “Thou didst well,” replied the stag, “and take care thou dost not
come down in future, whatever they may say.” With that he went to the tree,
licked it with his tongue, and immediately the tree grew bigger round the
hewed trunk than before.
 The Damsel and the Old Witch.—p. 5.

The next day, when the stag had again departed about his business, the
Padishah’s men came and saw that the tree was larger and harder round the
trunk than ever. Again they set to work hewing at the tree, and hewed and
hewed till they had cut half through it; but by that time evening fell upon
them again, and again they put off the rest of the work till the morrow and
went home.
But all their labour was lost, for the stag came again, licked the gap in
the tree with his tongue, and immediately it grew thicker and harder than
ever.
Early next morning, when the stag had only just departed, the Padishah
and his wood-cutters again came to the tree, and when they saw that the
trunk of the tree had filled up again larger and firmer than ever, they
determined to try some other means. So they went home again and sent for
a famous old witch, told her of the damsel in the tree, and promised her a
rich reward if she would, by subtlety, make the damsel come down. The old
witch willingly took the matter in hand, and bringing with her an iron
tripod, a cauldron, and sundry raw meats, placed them by the side of the
spring. She placed the tripod on the ground, and the kettle on the top of it
but upside down, drew water from the spring and poured it not into the
kettle, but on the ground beside it, and with that she kept her eyes closed as
if she were blind.
The damsel fancied she really was blind, and called to her from the tree.
“Nay but, my dear elder sister! thou hast placed the kettle on the tripod
upside down, and art pouring all the water on the ground.”
“Oh, my sweet little damsel!” cried the old woman, “that is because I
have no eyes to see with. I have brought some dirty linen with me, and if
thou dost love Allah, thou wilt come down and put the kettle right, and help
me to wash the things.” Then the damsel thought of the words of the little
stag, and she did not come down.
The next day the old witch came again, stumbled about the tree, laid a
fire, and brought forth a heap of meal in order to sift it, but instead of meal
she put ashes into the sieve. “Poor silly old granny!” cried the damsel
compassionately, and then she called down from the tree to the old woman,
and told her that she was sifting ashes instead of meal. “Oh, my dear
damsel!” cried the old woman, weeping, “I am blind, I cannot see. Come
down and help me a little in my affliction.” Now the little stag had strictly
charged her that very morning not to come down from the tree whatever
might be said to her, and she obeyed the words of her brother.
On the third day the old witch again came beneath the tree. This time she
brought a sheep with her, and brought out a knife to flay it with, and began
to jag and skin it from behind instead of cutting its throat. The poor little
sheep bleated piteously, and the damsel in the tree, unable to endure the
sight of the beast’s sufferings, came down from the tree to put the poor
thing out of its misery. Then the Padishah, who was concealed close to the
tree, rushed out and carried the damsel off to his palace.
The damsel pleased the Padishah so mightily that he wanted to be
married to her without more ado; but the damsel would not consent till they
had brought her her brother, the little stag: until she saw him, she said, she
could have not a moment’s rest. Then the Padishah sent men out into the
forest, who caught the stag and brought him to his sister. After that he never
left his sister’s side. They lay down together, and together they rose up.
Even when the Padishah and the damsel were wedded, the little stag was
never far away from them, and in the evening when he found out where
they were, he would softly stroke each of them all over with one of his front
feet before going to sleep beside them, and say—

“This little foot is for my sister,

That little foot is for my brother.”

But time, as men count it, passes quickly to its fulfilment, more quickly
still passes the time of fairy tales, but quickest of all flies the time of true
love. Yet our little people would have lived on happily if there had not been
a black female slave in the palace. Jealousy devoured her at the thought that
the Padishah had taken to his bosom the ragged damsel from the tree-top
rather than herself, and she watched for an opportunity of revenge.
Now there was a beautiful garden in the palace, with a fountain in the
midst of it, and there the Sultan’s damsel used to walk about. One day, with
a golden saucer in her hand and a silver sandal on her foot, she went
towards the great fountain, and the black slave followed after her and
pushed her in. There was a big fish in the basin, and it immediately
swallowed up the Sultan’s pet damsel. Then the black slave returned to the
palace, put on the golden raiment of the Sultan’s damsel, and sat down in
her place.
In the evening the Padishah came and asked the damsel what she had
done to her face that it was so much altered. “I have walked too much in the
garden, and so the sun has tanned my face,” replied the girl. The Padishah
believed her and sat down beside her, but the little stag came also, and when
he began to stroke them both down with his fore-foot he recognized the
slave-girl as he said—

“This little foot is for my sister,

And this little foot is for my brother.”

Then it became the one wish of the slave-girl’s heart to be rid of the little
stag as quickly as possible, lest it should betray her.
So after a little thought she made herself sick, and sent for the doctors,
and gave them much money to say to the Padishah that the only thing that
could save her was the heart of the little stag to eat. So the doctors went and
told the Padishah that the sick woman must swallow the heart of the little
stag, or there was no hope for her. Then the Padishah went to the slave-girl
whom he fancied to be his pet damsel, and asked her if it did not go against
her to eat the heart of her own brother?
“What can I do?” sighed the impostor; “if I die, what will become of my
poor little pet? If he be cut up I shall live, while he will be spared the
torments of those poor beasts that grow old and sick.” Then the Padishah
gave orders that a butcher’s knife should be whetted, and a fire lighted, and
a cauldron of water put over the fire.
The poor little stag perceived all the bustling about and ran down into
the garden to the fountain, and called out three times to his sister—

“The knife is on the stone,

The water’s on the boil,
Haste, little sister, hasten!”

And thrice she answered back to him from the fish’s maw—
 “Here am I in the fish’s belly,
In my hand a golden saucer,
On my foot a silver sandal,
In my arms a little Padishah!”

For the Sultan’s pet damsel had brought forth a little son in the fish’s belly.
Now the Padishah was intent on catching the little stag when it ran down
into the garden to the fountain, and, coming up softly behind it, heard every
word of what the brother and sister were saying to each other. He quietly
ordered all the water to be drained off the basin of the fountain, drew up the
fish, cut open its belly, and what do you think he saw? In the belly of the
fish was his wife, with a golden saucer in her hand, and a silver sandal on
her foot, and a little son in her arms. Then the Padishah embraced his wife,
and kissed his son, and brought them both to the palace, and heard the tale
of it all to the very end.
But the little stag found something in the fish’s blood, and when he had
swallowed it, he became a man again. Then he rushed to his sister, and they
embraced and wept with joy over each other’s happiness.
But the Padishah sent for his black slave-girl, and asked her which she
would like the best—four good steeds or four good swords. The slave-girl
replied: “Let the swords be for the throats of my enemies, but give me the
four steeds that I may take my pleasure on horseback.” Then they tied the
slave-girl to the tails of four good steeds, and sent her out for a ride; and the
four steeds tore the black girl into little bits and scattered them abroad.
But the Padishah and his wife lived happily together, and the king’s son
who had been a stag abode with them; and they gave a great banquet, which
lasted four days and four nights; and they attained their desires, and may ye,
O my readers, attain your desires likewise.

THE THREE ORANGE-PERIS

In the olden times, when there were sieves in straws and lies in
everything, in the olden times when there was abundance, and men ate and
drank the whole day and yet lay down hungry, in those olden, olden times
there was once a Padishah whose days were joyless, for he had never a son
to bless himself with.
 One day he was in the path of pleasure with his Vizier, and when they
had drunk their coffee and smoked their chibooks, they went out for a walk,
and went on and on till they came to a great valley. Here they sat down to
rest a while, and as they were looking about them to the right hand and to
the left, the valley was suddenly shaken as if by an earthquake, a whip
cracked, and a dervish, a green-robed, yellow-slippered, white-bearded
dervish, suddenly stood before them. The Padishah and the Vizier were so
frightened that they dared not budge; but when the dervish approached them
and addressed them with the words, “Selamun aleykyum,”[4] they took
heart a bit, and replied courteously, “Ve aleykyum selam.”[5]
“What is thy errand here, my lord Padishah?” asked the dervish.
“If thou dost know that I am a Padishah, thou dost also know my
errand,” replied the Padishah.
Then the dervish took from his bosom an apple, gave it to the Padishah,
and said these words: “Give half of this to thy Sultana, and eat the other
half thyself,” and with these words he disappeared.
Then the Padishah went home, gave half the apple to his consort, and ate
the other half himself, and in exactly nine months and ten days there was a
little prince in the harem. The Padishah was beside himself for joy. He
scattered sequins among the poor, restored to freedom his slaves, and the
banquet he gave to his friends had neither beginning nor end.
Swiftly flies the time in fairy tales, and the child had reached his
fourteenth summer while yet they fondled him. One day he said to his
father: “My lord father Padishah, make me now a little marble palace, and
let there be two springs under it, and let one of them run with honey, and
the other with butter!” Dearly did the Padishah love his little son, because
he was his only child, so he made him the marble palace with the springs
inside it as his son desired. There then sat the King’s son in the marble
palace, and while he was looking at the springs that bubbled forth both
butter and honey, he saw an old woman with a pitcher in her hand, and she
would fain have filled it from the spring. Then the King’s son caught up a
stone and flung it at the old woman’s pitcher, and broke it into pieces. The
old woman said not a word, but she went away.
But the next day she was there again with her pitcher, and again she
made as if she would fill it, and a second time the King’s son cast a stone at
her and broke her pitcher. The old woman went away without speaking a
word. She came on the third day also, and it fared with her pitcher then as
on the first two days. Then the old woman spoke. “Oh, youth!” cried she,
“ ’tis the will of Allah that thou shouldst fall in love with the three Orange-
peris,” and with that she quitted him.
From thenceforth the heart of the King’s son was consumed by a hidden
fire. He began to grow pale and wither away. When the Padishah saw that
his son was ill, he sent for the wise men and the leeches, but they could find
no remedy for the disease. One day the King’s son said to his father: “Oh,
my dear little daddy Shah! these wise men of thine cannot cure me of my
disease, and all their labours are in vain. I have fallen in love with the three
Oranges, and never shall I be better till I find them.”
“Oh, my dear little son!” groaned the Padishah, “thou art all that I have
in the wide world: if thou dost leave me, in whom can I rejoice?” Then the
King’s son slowly withered away, and his days were as a heavy sleep; so his
father saw that it would be better to let him go forth on his way and find, if
so be he might, the three Oranges that were as the balsam of his soul.
“Perchance too he may return again,” thought the Padishah.
So the King’s son arose one day and took with him things that were light
to carry, but heavy in the scales of value, and pursued his way over
mountains and valleys, rising up and lying down again for many days. At
last in the midst of a vast plain, in front of the high-road, he came upon her
Satanic Majesty the Mother of Devils, as huge as a minaret. One of her legs
was on one mountain, and the other leg on another mountain; she was
chewing gum (her mouth was full of it) so that you could hear her half-an-
hour’s journey off; her breath was a hurricane, and her arms were yards and
yards long.
“Good-day, little mother!” cried the youth, and he embraced the broad
waist of the Mother of Devils. “Good-day, little sonny!” she replied. “If
thou hadst not spoken to me so politely, I should have gobbled thee up.”
Then she asked him whence he came and whither he was going.
“Alas! dear little mother,” sighed the youth, “such a terrible misfortune
has befallen me that I can neither tell thee nor answer thy question.”
“Nay, come, out with it, my son,” urged the Mother of Devils.
“Well then, my sweet little mother,” cried the youth, and he sighed worse
than before, “I have fallen violently in love with the three Oranges. If only I
might find my way thither!”
 “Hush!” cried the Mother of Devils, “it is not lawful to even think of that
name, much less pronounce it. I and my sons are its guardians, yet even we
don’t know the way to it. Forty sons have I, and they go up and down the
earth more than I do, perchance they may tell thee something of the matter.”
So when it began to grow dusk towards evening, ere yet the devil-sons had
come home, the old woman gave the King’s son a tap, and turned him into a
pitcher of water. And she did it not a moment too soon, for immediately
afterwards the forty sons of the Mother of Devils knocked at the door and
cried: “Mother, we smell man’s flesh!”
“Nonsense!” cried the Mother of Devils. “What, I should like to know,
have the sons of men to do here? It seems to me you had better all clean
your teeth.” So she gave the forty sons forty wooden stakes to clean their
teeth with, and out of one’s tooth fell an arm, and out of another’s a thigh,
and out of another’s an arm, till they had all cleaned their teeth. Then they
sat them down to eat and drink, and in the middle of the meal their mother
said to them: “If now ye had a man for your brother, what would ye do with
him?”
“Do,” they replied, “why love him like a brother, of course!”
Then the Mother of Devils tapped the water-jar, and the King’s son stood
there again. “Here is your brother!” cried she to her forty sons.
The devils thanked the King’s son for his company with great joy,
invited their new brother to sit down, and asked their mother why she had
not told them about him before, as then they might all have eaten their meal
together.
“Nay but, my sons,” cried she, “he does not live on the same sort of meat
as ye; fowls, mutton, and such-like is what he feeds on.”
At this one of them jumped up, went out, fetched a sheep, slew it, and
laid it before the new brother.
“Oh, what a child thou art!” cried the Mother of Devils. “Dost thou not
know that thou must first cook it for him?”
Then they skinned the sheep, made a fire, roasted it, and placed it before
him. The King’s son ate a piece, and after satisfying his hunger, left the rest
of it. “Why, that’s nothing!” cried the devils, and they urged him again and
again to eat more. “Nay, my sons,” cried their mother, “men never eat more
than that.”
 “Let us see then what this sheep-meat is like,” said one of the forty
brothers. So they fell upon it and devoured the whole lot in a couple of
mouthfuls.
Now when they all rose up early in the morning, the Mother of Devils
said to her sons: “Our new brother hath a great trouble.”—“What is it?”
cried they, “for we would help him.”
“He has fallen in love with the three Oranges!”—“Well,” replied the
devils, “we know not the place of the three Oranges ourselves, but
perchance our aunt may know.”
“Then lead this youth to her,” said their mother; “tell her that he is my
son and worthy of all honour, let her also receive him as a son and ease him
of his trouble.” Then the devils took the youth to their aunt, and told her on
what errand he had come.
Now this Aunt of the Devils had sixty sons, and as she did not know the
place of the three Oranges, she had to wait till they came home. But lest any
harm should happen to this her new son, she gave him a tap and turned him
into a piece of crockery.
“We smell man’s flesh, mother,” cried the devils, as they crossed the
threshold.
“Perchance ye have eaten man’s flesh, and the remains thereof are still
within your teeth,” said their mother. Then she gave them great logs of
wood that they might pick their teeth clean, and so be able to swallow down
something else. But in the midst of the meal the woman gave the piece of
crockery a tap, and when the sixty devils saw their little human brother,
they rejoiced at the sight, made him sit down at table, and bade him fall to if
there was anything there he took a fancy to. “My sons,” said the Mother of
the Devils to her sixty sons when they all rose up early on the morrow, “this
lad here has fallen in love with the three Oranges, cannot you show him the
way thither?”
“We know not the way,” replied the devils; “but perchance our old great-
aunt may know something about it.”
“Then take the youth thither,” said their mother, “and bid her hold him in
high honour. He is my son, let him be hers also and help him out of his
distress.” Then they took him off to their great-aunt, and told her the whole
business. “Alas! I do not know, my sons!” said the old, old great-aunt; “but
if you wait till the evening, when my ninety sons come home, I will ask
them.”
Then the sixty devils departed and left the King’s son there, and when it
grew dusk the Mother of the Devils gave the youth a tap, turned him into a
broom, and placed him in the doorway. Shortly afterwards the ninety devils
came home, and they also smelt the smell of man, and took the pieces of
man’s flesh out of their teeth. In the middle of their meal their mother asked
them how they would treat a human brother if they had one. When they had
sworn upon eggs that they would not hurt so much as his little finger, their
mother gave the broom a tap, and the King’s son stood before them.
The devil brothers entreated him courteously, inquired after his health,
and served him so heartily with eatables that they scarcely gave him time to
breathe. In the midst of the meal their mother asked them whether they
knew where the three Oranges were, for their new brother had fallen in love
with them. Then the least of the ninety devils leaped up with a shout of joy,
and said that he knew.
“Then if thou knowest,” said his mother, “see that thou take this son of
ours thither, that he may satisfy his heart’s desire.”
On arising next morning, the devil-son took the King’s son with him,
and the pair of them went merrily along the road together. They went on,
and on, and on, and at last the little devil said these words: “My brother, we
shall come presently to a large garden, and in the fountain thereof are the
three. When I say to thee: ‘Shut thine eye, open thine eye!’ lay hold of what
thou shalt see.”
They went on a little way further till they came to the garden, and the
moment the devil saw the fountain he said to the King’s son: “Shut thine
eye and open thine eye!” He did so, and saw the three Oranges bobbing up
and down on the surface of the water where it came bubbling out of the
spring, and he snatched up one of them and popped it in his pocket. Again
the devil called to him: “Open thine eye and shut thine eye!” He did so, and
snatched up the second orange, and so with the third also in the same way.
“Now take care,” said the devil, “that thou dost not cut open these oranges
in any place where there is no water, or it will go ill with thee.” The King’s
son promised, and so they parted, one went to the right, and the other to the
left.
 The King’s son went on, and on, and on. He went a long way, and he
went a short way, he went across mountains and through valleys. At last he
came to a sandy desert, and there he bethought him of the oranges, and
drawing one out, he cut it open. Scarcely had he cut into it when a damsel,
lovely as a Peri, popped out of it before him; the moon when it is fourteen
days old is not more dazzling. “For Allah’s sake, give me a drop of water!”
cried the damsel, and inasmuch as there was no trace of water anywhere,
she vanished from the face of the earth. The King’s son grieved right sorely,
but there was no help for it, the thing was done.
Again he went on his way, and when he had gone a little further he
thought to himself, “I may as well cut open one more orange.” So he drew
out the second orange, and scarcely had he cut into it than there popped
down before him a still more lovely damsel, who begged piteously for
water, but as the King’s son had none to give her, she also vanished.
“Well, I’ll take better care of the third,” cried he, and continued his
journey. He went on and on till he came to a large spring, drank out of it,
and then thought to himself: “Well, now I’ll cut open the third orange also.”
He drew it out and cut it, and immediately a damsel even lovelier than the
other two stood before him. As soon as she called for water, he led her to
the spring and gave her to drink, and the damsel did not disappear, but
remained there as large as life.
Mother-naked was the damsel, and as he could not take her to town like
that, he bade her climb up a large tree that stood beside the spring, while he
went into the town to buy her raiment and a carriage.
While the King’s son had gone away, a negro servant came to the spring
to draw water, and saw the reflection of the damsel in the watery mirror.
“Why, thou art something like a damsel,” said she to herself, “and ever so
much lovelier than thy mistress; so she ought to fetch water for me, not I for
her.” With that she broke the pitcher in two, went home, and when her
mistress asked where the pitcher of water was, she replied: “I am much
more beautiful than thou, so thou must fetch water for me, not I for thee.”
Her mistress took up a mirror, held it before her, and said: “Methinks thou
must have taken leave of thy senses; look at this mirror!” The Moor looked
into the mirror, and saw that she was as coal-black as ever. Without another
word she took up the pitcher, went again to the spring, and seeing the
damsel’s face in the mirror, again fancied that it was hers.
 “I’m right, after all,” she cried; “I’m ever so much more beautiful than
my mistress.” So she broke the pitcher to pieces again, and went home.
Again her mistress asked her why she had not drawn water. “Because I am
ever so much more beautiful than thou, so thou must draw water for me,”
replied she.
“Thou art downright crazy,” replied her mistress, drew out a mirror, and
showed it to her; and when the Moor-girl saw her face in it, she took up
another pitcher and went to the fountain for the third time. The damsel’s
face again appeared in the water, but just as she was about to break the
pitcher again, the damsel called to her from the tree: “Break not thy
pitchers, ’tis my face thou dost see in the water, and thou wilt see thine own
there also.”
The Moor-girl looked up, and when she saw the wondrously beautiful
shape of the damsel in the tree, she climbed up beside her and spake
coaxing words to her: “Oh, my little golden damsel, thou wilt get the cramp
from crouching there so long; come, rest thy head!” And with that she laid
the damsel’s head on her breast, felt in her bosom, drew out a needle,
pricked the damsel with it in the skull, and in an instant the Orange-Damsel
was changed into a bird, and pr-r-r-r-r! she was gone, leaving the Moor all
alone in the tree.
Now when the King’s son came back with his fine coach and beautiful
raiment, looked up into the tree, and saw the black face, he asked the girl
what had happened to her. “A nice question!” replied the Moor-girl. “Why,
thou didst leave me here all day, and wentest away, so of course the sun has
tanned me black.” What could the poor King’s son do? He made the black
damsel sit in the coach, and took her straight home to his father’s house.
In the palace of the Padishah they were all waiting, full of eagerness, to
behold the Peri-Bride, and when they saw the Moorish damsel they said to
the King’s son: “However couldst thou lose thy heart to a black maid?”
“She is not a black maid,” said the King’s son. “I left her at the top of a
tree, and she was blackened there by the rays of the sun. If only you let her
rest a bit she’ll soon grow white again.” And with that he led her into her
chamber, and waited for her to grow white again.
Now there was a beautiful garden in the palace of the King’s son, and
one day the Orange-Bird came flying on to a tree there, and called down to
the gardener.
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