ABSTRACT
One of the problems that face us when we try to understand what 'case study' means is that, like a number of other terms used by social scientists ('theory' and 'ideology' are others), it is employed in a wide variety of ways that are often only vaguely charac-terised. Another, and more difficult, problem arises from the widespread tendency to see research method in terms of contrasting approaches or paradigms involving different epistemological assumptions. A variety of terms are used to make such contrasts: most commonly, 'quantitative' versus 'qualitative' method. The term 'case study' is sometimes implicated in this, being used as a partial synonym for 'qualitative research'. Thus, one of the earliest uses of the term, in US sociology in the 1920s and 1930s, contrasted it with the newly emerging statistical method. There was much debate about which of these two methods was scientific (that is, which was closest to the methods of natural science); though many argued that both were legitimate and necessary (Platt 1981; Hammersley 1989a). This was a forerunner of more recent debates about qualitative and quantitative method. Yet, in my view, such simple contrasts are unproductive; even when the different approaches are regarded as complementary. Distinctions between comprehensive alternative research paradigms do not capture the variety of strategies that one finds deployed in social research. Nor are they reasonable philosophically. Epistemological debate among philosophers has not been, and is not today, a dialogue between only two positions; the arguments are more diverse and complex. What this means is that in doing research we are not faced with a fork in the road, with two well-defined alternative routes between which to choose. The research process is more like finding one's way through a maze. And it is a rather badly kept and complex maze; where paths are not always clearly distinct, and also wind back on one another; and where one can never be entirely certain that one has reached the centre. If this is right, then we need a methodological language that gives us rather more guidance about the range of routes that is available at each point in our journey than the conventional dichotomies between alternative approaches provide. 1
