ABSTRACT
The notion of hermeneutics remains extraordinarily pervasive in qualitative research, often being used interchangeably with that of interpretation. Jurgen Habermas (1972) is largely responsible for this ever since his widely used categorization of three types of knowledge (analytic, hermeneutic, and critical) roughly equated hermeneutics with the philosophic project of subjective understanding or verstehen. At the same time, hermeneutics is often identified with a form of textual interpretation concerned mainly with the methodical analysis of different forms of texts. Is hermeneutics a philosophy, a set of methodological protocols, or a broad spirit informing qualitative inquiry? Prasad's (2002) discussion of a "weak" and "strong" sense of hermeneutics may be useful in addressing this question. According to Prasad (2002), hermeneutics may be understood as being employed in a weak sense when researchers use it to denote the interpretive and phenomenological dimensions of qualitative inquiry. When used in a "strong" sense, hermeneutics refers more precisely to research that actively engages in the interpretation of texts, and that is informed by the epistemological insights of hermeneutic philosophy. Working in the hermeneutic tradition implies the use of hermeneutics in its strong rather than its weak sense.
