Originality and Knowledge Reproduction in Interdisciplinary Qualitative Research

Doing Cross-Cultural Ethnography of East Asian Students in South-Central Appalachia

Bibliographic Data

ID19479121
AuthorsBenjamin H Nam (0000-0001-9969-4783, Shanghai International Studies University), Qingshun Bai (0000-0001-9487-2296, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume25
Publication date2026-01-19
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Qualitative Methods (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1609-4069 • E-ISSN: 1609-4069
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/16094069261458979
OpenAlexW7165045952
LanguageEN
References cited39

Despite growing concerns about originality and knowledge production in interdisciplinary qualitative research (IQR), persistent challenges to publishable scholarship have been associated with the deferral of research projects, alongside rapid shifts in research trends, paradigms, and agendas. Notable concerns include ethnographers’ temporal cessations of fieldwork, dissatisfaction with the inconclusive results, and potentially limited theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications during the COVID-19 pandemic and the transition to the post-pandemic era. The two co-authors from the United States and China in this paper also encountered these challenges. Thus, they revisited their data from a long-term cross-cultural ethnographic project on East Asian students in South-Central Appalachia in the U.S. as an exemplar. The authors consider liberal practicality, pragmatism, and co-constructivism, as well as transnational identity, positionality, and knowledge reproduction, as philosophical assumptions and interpretive frameworks. They present specific procedures for adding a missing chapter to their long-term IQR. They contemplate ways to bolster cross-cultural ethnography, promoting scholarly conversations about the roles of reflexivity, reciprocity, and layered accounts, alongside available data sources, recontextualization, and emergent themes. Overall, this paper offers methodological implications for adding the missing chapter in publishable scholarship. The authors also suggest actionable agendas for follow-up research that culminate in the most overarching findings by recontextualizing their ethnographic data

Appalachia · East Asia · Ethnography · Originality · Qualitative research · Reproduction · Scholarship · Focus Groups and Qualitative Methods · Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics

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