Nancy Nickerson and Qualitative Research

Nancy Nickerson provided a unique one-pager in the form of a poem. 

Here is her written introduction Antjie Krog's article in the Denzin and Lincoln Handbook of Qualitative Research:

Qualitative Research Methods  07.704

Nancy Nickerson

            Antjie Krog is a South African poet and a contributing author  in Denzin and Lincoln’s The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. Penning the chapter “In the Name of Human Rights, she defends the voice of the oppressed constituencies, necessitating their  being heard according to their own genres and terms. The researcher must adapt to the footprints of the people, merging the knowledge with the subjectivity of human relationships and social structures so that we can all hear their voices.

            The discourse between academic researchers and indigenous peoples must be respectful of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. Specifically,

            Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression: this right includes freedom to hold     opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any       media and regardless of frontiers( www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/)

            Krog cites three examples of researchers working in countries with divided histories and cultures. She describes a bushman shaman narrating a story to a philogoist in Xam. Because the researcher did not live with the people he was studying, he missed the bushman’s intricate decoding and contextual signs and symbols used. A second example cited a professor with proliferic writing during an academic year but with none of them peer reviewed. Crucial observations need a theory and valuable experience needed a discipline. The last example involved a professor who had had a paper rejected despite peer reviews. He had not found a link in theory that connected his knowledge with the literature. All three examples spoke of the need of the deep and resounding spoken work within the sentences of the academic discourse. It is only when the writer speaks from within and out of the world he knows intimately that the real voices are heard.

Krog, A. (2011). In the Name of Human Rights. In N. K. Lincoln, The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 381-385). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.

Based on this description you can see why, NOTHING but a poem would do to share Nickerson's conceptualization of the reading experience.