Becoming and Belonging: Learning Qualitative Research Through Legitimate Peripheral Participation

Abstract

Legitimate peripheral participation" (LPP) involves learning as a situated individual engages in socially mediated activity. We report on our attempt to use legitimate peripheral participation as a double normative frame for defining (a) a doctoral program and the struggles that ensued as the two authors produced and reproduced their identities as graduate student and supervisor and (b) a methodology for doing research among environmental activists. This article is fundamentally about the production and reproduction of identity while a graduate student is becoming a member in two communities, that of (qualitative) researchers and that of the researched (environmentalists). We conceptualize struggle as transformative rather than destructive. We argue that this involved personal style of graduate training on research is part of methodologically sound and valid research training. We use individual and collective voice to create a literary structure that is reflexive of its content. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0302355