Douglas Ezzy

Pranee Liamputtong

Qualitative Research Methods: A Health Focus is a practical guide to conducting qualitative research, with an emphasis on health-related examples. Methodological issues confronting qualitative researchers are dealt with in general chapters on sampling and rigour, the use of theory, dataanalysis, and writing research proposals and reports. Established qualitative methods such as in-depth interviewing, focus groups, and ethnography are reviewed alongside chapters on more innovative and complex methods such as narrative methods, memory work, and participatory-action research.Detailed examples of each method are provided to illustrate the research process. It is increasingly being accepted that qualitative methods play an important role in health-related research. This book is a comprehensive and accessible guide to qualitative methods for health care students and health professionals.

A Health Focus

Qualitative Research Methods

Offering a detailed introduction to the practice of data analysis, this book is both user-friendly and theoretically grounded. Drawing on his extensive experience of qualitative research, Douglas Ezzy reviews approaches to data analysis in established research traditions including ethnography, phenomenology and symbolic interactionism, alongside the newer approaches informed by cultural studies and feminism. He explains the difference between inductive, deductive and abductive theory building, provides a guide to computer-assisted analysis and outlines techniques such as journal writing, team meetings and participant reviews. This text is one of the first to treat computer assisted data analysis as an integral part of qualitative research. Exceptionally well written, this is a valuable reference for research students and professional researchers in the social sciences and health.

Qualitative Analysis

Practitioners with many years of experience describe what real Witches actually do.

Practising the Witch's Craft

Helen Berger

A popular new image of Witches has arisen in recent years, due largely to movies like The Craft, Practical Magic, and Simply Irresistible and television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Charmed. Here, young sexy Witches use magic and Witchcraft to gain control over their lives and fight evil. Then there is the depiction in the Harry Potter books: Witchcraft is a gift that unenlightened Muggles (everyday people) lack. In both types of portrayals, being a Witch is akin to being a superhero. At the other end of the spectrum, wary adults assume that Witches engage in evil practices that are misguided at best and dangerous at worst. Yet, as Helen A. Berger and Douglas Ezzy show in this in-depth look into the lives of teenage Witches, the reality of their practices, beliefs, values, and motivations is very different from the sensational depictions we see in popular culture. Drawing on extensive research across three countries--the United States, England, and Australia--and interviews with young people from diverse backgrounds, what they find are highly spiritual and self-reflective young men and women attempting to make sense of a postmodern world via a religion that celebrates the earth and emphasizes self-development. The authors trace the development of Neo-Paganism (an umbrella term used to distinguish earth-based religions from the pagan religions of ancient cultures) from its start in England during the 1940s, through its growing popularity in the decades that followed, up through its contemporary presence on the Internet. Though dispersed and disorganized, Neo-Pagan communities, virtual and real, are shown to be an important part of religious identity particularly for those seeking affirmation during the difficult years between childhood and adulthood.

Magical Youth and the Search for the Self

Teenage Witches

Bronwyn Fielder

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Christians details the processes through which LGBT Christians resolve the fraught tensions between their religious, sexual and gendered identities, and examines the associated changes to their religious practice in the pursuit of "authenticity.†? The book moves between richly described first-person accounts and clear theoretical analysis, contextualising the disucssion within contemporary theories of religion and same-sex attraction. Through careful qualitative research with LGBT Christians in the Australian Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), and the Uniting Church, Bronwyn Fielder and Douglas Ezzy show that although painful self-questioning and struggle is experienced by some LGBT Christians, many people ultimately find a resolution and a sense of peace with their sexual identity as LGBT Christians. The pursuit of authenticity is shown to be driven by participants' essentialist understanding of sexuality and gender, and the centrality of religiosity to their sense of self. Offering insight into how participants transform their relationships, emotions, beliefs, and ritual practices in order to make this authentic life possible, this study is an important contribution to the field of religion and sexuality.

Queer Christians, Authentic Selves

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Christians

Faunalia is a controversial Pagan festival with a reputation for being wild and emotionally intense. It lasts five days, 80 people attend, and the two main rituals run most of the night. In the tantalisingly erotic Baphomet rite, participants encounter a hermaphroditic deity, enter a state of trance and dance naked around a bonfire. In the Underworld rite participants role play their own death, confronting grief and suffering. These rituals are understood as "shadow work" - a Jungian term that refers to practices that creatively engage repressed or hidden aspects of the self. Sex, Death and Witchcraft is a powerful application of relational theory to the study of religion and contemporary culture. It analyses Faunalia's rituals in terms of recent innovations in the sociology of religion and religious studies that focus on relational etiquette, lived religion, embodiment and performance. The sensuous and emotionally intense ritual performances at Faunalia transform both moral orientations and self-understandings. Participants develop an ethical practice that is individualistic, but also relational, and aesthetically mediated. Extensive extracts from interviews describe the rituals in participants' own words. The book combines rich and evocative description of the rituals with careful analysis of the social processes that shape people's experiences at this controversial Pagan festival.

Douglas Ezzy

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