Book Review: Lazy, Crazy, and Disgusting: Stigma and the Undoing of Global Health

Abstract

findings. Although O’Reilly and Kiyimba easily earn accolades for the organizational structure of their book, they do appear to signify that the future of qualitative research is tightly bound to a more evidence-based framework that could lead to a more formulized research structure. This may not be a bad thing; but as Simovska et al. (2019) wrote, the field of qualitative research might do better to promote more innovative approaches reminiscent of Max Weber’s concept of Verstehen. The importance of the book cannot be overestimated. Each chapter offers sufficient examples and exercises to keep class discussions moving forward. While O’Reilly and Kiyimba argue that whatever method the researcher applies, there remains an embedded subjectivity that should be explained, their argument appears at cross purposes when they seek a compromise between quantitative and qualitative methods. I suspect that the key contributions they make throughout the book far outweigh their epistemological lapses and concerns with two fields that are likely to represent two poles on a methodological continuum concerned with investigating the human experience.