Dialectics As a Living Practice – Reimagining Theory-Empiricism In Qualitative Research

Dialectics is not a method, but a critical way of being with contradiction. This session repositions dialectics not as a fixed framework, but as a dynamic, context-sensitive practice for qualitative research. In an era of escalating social contradictions—climate crisis, digital capitalism, racial and gendered violence—dialectical thinking offers a vital, generative force beyond descriptive accounts or theoretical templates.

This session seeks to explore how dialectical thinking is being reinterpreted and applied in qualitative research and, how can dialectics serve as a bridge between situated empirical inquiry and broader sociological theorizing.

We focus on three interconnected dimensions:
First, dialectics as epistemic practice: the use of contradiction and tension as generative forces in data analysis and theory-building.
Second, dialectics as reflexive praxis: the critical self-awareness required when researchers engage with power, positionality, and knowledge production across cultural and political divides.
Third, dialectics as methodology: the dynamic interplay between lived experience, theoretical concepts, and empathetic understanding—where the universal emerges from the particular, across diverse social realities.

This session aims to foster a transnational dialogue on dialectics as a methodological commitment—one that remains open to difference, contradiction, and the unpredictable emergence of new social forms.
We invite contributions that engage dialectical thinking as a generative force in data analysis, theory-building, and ethical inquiry — without reducing it to techniques or templates. We do not seek to standardize dialectics, but to open it to multiple ways of being, doing, and knowing — across cultures, languages, and traditions.