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We often ask; what contributions have qualitative methods got to offer well-researched fields such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Perhaps now is the time to ask also: what potential contribution has controversial and subversive fields such as the one mentioned above got to offer a well-established epistemology in return? What contribution can be gained from researchers employing qualitative methods for cases holding unto opposing political backgrounds, and especially of those challenging the very legitimacy of ‘qualitative’ assumptions like multi-culturalism? They bring to the fore questions like: is for example multi-culturalism a valid universal concept or is it merely political and relative? In other words: they bring to the fore the question of hegemony (Gramsci, 2004).
Dedicating research to the empowerment of marginalized voices seems to have become the mainstream in recent decades. Indeed, a huge corpus of literature describes and analyzes the voices of the underprivileged from an essentially empathic perspective. Yet it is my contention that within such a socially and scientifically important and much valued move, some concessions might be resting. Thus biographic and narrative epistemologies can greatly benefit also from a completing move: that of exploring narratives and biographies of the supposedly opposing political perspectives, to which such empathy is not so often directed. Unlike what their small representation in research ostensibly suggests, these structures do thrive “out there”. That summons the question: what is their source of attraction? And what rests behind the difference?
My analysis of the formal Israeli Settlement Discourse detected the claim that Israeli settlers represent a deprived minority as members of both religious and right wing minorities. In both instances multi-culturalism had been thus attacked as political, i. e. as reflecting left-wing pretentions for hegemony.