This book is the first of three paperback volumes taken from The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Fourth Edition. It aims to put the field of qualitative research in context. It offers background on the field, starting with history, then action research and the academy, and the politics and ethics of qualitative research. It then isolates what we regard as the major historical and contemporary paradigms now structuring and influencing qualitative research in the human disciplines. The chapters move from competing paradigms (positivist, postpositivist, constructivist, critical theory) to specific interpretive perspectives, feminisms, racialized discourses, cultural studies, sexualities, and queer theory. It concludes with consideration for the future of qualitative research.