More Metaphors - about QR

I found this bit in a text by Denzin and Lincoln - Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials helpful.  

Metaphors seem to help with my understanding of this complex topic.

Qualitative research is a field of inquiry in its own right.  I crosscuts disciplines, fields, and subject matters.  A complex, interconnected family of terms, concepts, and assumptions surround the term qualitative research.

In North America QR operates in a complex historical field that crosscuts seven historical moments. (pg 3)

Any definition of QR must work within this complex historical field.  QR  means different things in each of these moments.  Nonetheless an initial generic definition can be offered:  QR is a situated activity that locates the observer iin the world.  It consists of interpretive, material practises that make the world visible. (Pg 4

The qualitative researcher may take on multiple and gendered images:  scientist, naturalist, field-worker, journalist, social critic, artist performer, jazz musician, filmmaker, quilt maker, essayist.  

The researcher may in turn be seen as a bricoleur, as  a maker of quilts, or, as in filmmaking, a person who assembles images into montages.

A bricoleur  is a "Jack of all trades or a kind of professional do-it-yourself person.  There are may kinds of bricoleurs - interpretive, narrative theoretical, political.