ABSTRACT
Qualitative research exists in a time of global uncertainty. Around the globe governments are attempting to regulate scientifi c inquiry by defi ning what good science is. Conservative regimes are enforcing evidence, or scientifi cally based biomedical models of research (SBR). These regulatory activities raise fundamental philosophical, epistemological, political, and pedagogical issues for scholarship and freedom of speech in the academy. These threats constitute the conservative challenge to qualitative inquiry, the topic of this volume.
