Critical Qualitative Inquiry: Examining the Influence of Changing Voices and Bodies on Legislative Spaces

Abstract

Gender, race, and ethnic demographics have shifted and emergent policymakers are entering state legislatures. My work seeks to extend the role of critical qualitative research by examining emergent policymaking spaces and the new actors. I illustrate how praxis is witnessed in action in policymaking spaces to create change. I propose critical methodologies can be used as analytic anchors to offer an understanding on how progressive policymakers resist and succeed in policymaking spaces. Critical qualitative methodologies offer ways to explore spaces of praxis, insider/outsider in policymaking spaces, critical consciousness, and actors’ policy ways of knowing.