Methods of resistance: A new typology for health research within the neoliberal knowledge economy

Abstract

Over the past several decades, the field of health research has been divided according to methodological trajectory: qualitative versus quantitative methodology. However, this division conceptually fails to incorporate the increasing force of the neoliberal knowledge economy. This force has had particularly profound effects on health research that, because of its potential for application, is susceptible to forms of economic rationalization. As such, we argue that health research is a social process in need of theoretical attention, and propose a paradigmatic shift away from the quantitative/qualitative divide and toward a recategorization that accounts for the ways in which the landscape of knowledge production has altered to accommodate these demands. We suggest that health research may best be understood from its political/epistemological underpinnings and thus propose understanding the research process as either ends oriented and driven by the demands of the economized knowledge market (instrumental), or emergent and reflexively interpretive (hermeneutic). Recategorizing health research along political/epistemological lines offers an important means of articulating, and thus critiquing, the impact of neoliberalism on processes of knowledge acquisition, development, generation and translation. This work also holds open a conceptual space open for creative and critical processes of knowledge generation that resist the demands of the neoliberal knowledge economy.