ABSTRACT
In a nutshell, the research marketplace is a place where research-related products are bought and sold. This buying and selling is symptomatic of the pervasiveness and reach of the logic of the competitive market into all aspects of contemporary life – including research. Individual qualitative researchers embedded in a research marketplace are also selling and buying in that place. The question posed by Edward Said is one that qualitative inquirers need to ask about their affiliations with a research marketplace that is itself derived from affiliations with universities, political parties, and think tanks – a research marketplace that gives the illusion of freedom for individuals to do research in that place, compromises researchers' judgments by market-driven insistence on certain types of research outputs and emphasis on certain types of currency in that marketplace. M. Mainelli and I. Harris reminded that “the real world is messy, circular and aggressive.
