From ‘Snowball’ to ‘Rhizome’: A Rethinking of Method

Abstract

One of the research challenges confronting those who live and work in regional and rural environments is undertaking qualitative research which enables recognition of multiple, interpretive communities. In 1998, a unique two-year study of the social impact of drought on farm families in Central Queensland and New South Wales was completed. The purpose of the study was to develop a ‘social construction of drought’ and the methodology adopted used a strategy of ‘snowballing’ - re-named here as ‘rhizomatic convergence’ – to seek out potential respondents. Our experience in this project challenges the apparent lack of status and supposed lack of validity of such sampling in the social sciences. This paper argues that rhizomatic sampling and rhizomatic validity do have the capacity to enable a constructivist methodology and thus a capacity to incorporate multiple perspectives. The paper concludes with some reflections on our experience.