This book offers a rich and detailed empirical account of children's play and interaction in the school playground. Drawing on the approaches of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, 'Talk and Social Interaction in the Playground' examines the organisation of membership and social action in a game created by a group of children. It offers rich insights into the methods and practices used by children to produce play and social order, making a significant and substantial contribution to the study of talk-in-interaction, as well as to studies of children's play, competencies, and social interaction. The book demonstrates the importance of putting aside preconceived assumptions about how children talk and interact in order to reveal the situated methods and practices that children use - not because they are children, but because they are social beings. As well as appealing to scholars of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, 'Talk and Social Interaction in the Playground' will be of interest to students and researchers in a range of disciplines, including child studies, developmental psychology, education, applied linguistics, and sociology.

Drawing on several years of research with grief support organizations and the families and friends of murdered children, this book examines the emotional experience of families in the aftermath of a homicide. It examines the politics of sorrow, offering a comparative analysis of White and African-American families as they navigate the experience of homicide, shedding light on the ways in which the class location or ethnicity of mourners affects their experience. Analyzing the manner in which police and other authorities differentially extend emotional support to bereaved families, notify them of a homicide, or assign blame, The Politics of Sorrow reveals how 'disenfranchised grief' comes to be an institutionalized outcome of their practice. The book further examines the effects of 'announcement shock' and the importance to the family of the moral career of the deceased, as they seek to manage his or her identity, often dealing with their grief through an active pursuit of justice in court, or through political involvement with a grief support organization, which mobilizes families in pursuit of its political ends. A rigorous study of stigma, identity, and stratified experiences of grief, The Politics of Sorrow will appeal to sociologists interested in interactionist methods, race, class, and emotion.

Presenting original research studies by leading scholars in the field, Orders of Ordinary Action considers how ethnomethodology provides for an 'alternate' sociology by respecifying sociological phenomena as locally accomplished members' activities. Following an introduction by the editors and a seminal statement of ethnomethodology's analytic stance by its founder, Harold Garfinkel, the book then comprises two parts. The first introduces studies of practical action and organization, whilst the second provides studies of practical reasoning and situated logic in various settings. By organizing the book in this way, the collection demonstrates the relevance of ethnomethodological investigations to established topics and issues and indicates the contribution that ethnomethodology can make to the understanding of human action in any and all social contexts. Both individually and collectively, these contributions illustrate how taking an ethnomethodological approach opens up for investigation phenomena that are taken for granted in conventional sociological theorizing.

The death of Peter Winch in 1997 sparked a revived interest in his work with this book arguing his work suffered misrepresentation in both recent literature and in contemporary critiques of his writing. Debates in philosophy and sociology about foundational questions of social ontology and methodology often claim to have adequately incorporated and moved beyond Winch's concerns. Re-establishing a Winchian voice, the authors examine how such contentions involve a failure to understand central themes in Winch's writings and that the issues which occupied him in his Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy and later papers remain central to social studies. The volume offers a careful reading of the text in alliance with Wittgensteinian insights and alongside a focus on the nature and results of social thought and inquiry. It draws parallels with other movements in the social studies, notably ethnomethodology, to demonstrate how Winch's central claim is both more significant and more difficult to transcend than sociologists and philosophers have hitherto imagined.

This book introduces the methodology of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to the study of participatory planning. CDA uses linguistic analysis to elucidate social issues and processes and is particularly suited to institutional practices and how they are changing in response to changing social conditions. Illustrated by two case studies from Australia, it examines the talk between the various participants in a formal stakeholder committee context over five years, during which time they went through several phases of changing power dynamics, conflict and reconciliation. The book demonstrates the value of CDA to this field of research and develops specific techniques and conceptual tools for applying the methodology to the 'formal talk' context of collaborative planning committees. It also sheds light on the dynamics of interaction between 'stakeholders' and bureaucracies - particularly with respect to inherent communicative barriers, power inequalities, and the development of new discursive practices.

The dominant social theory used by archaeologists has tended to focus on either small scale agency or large-scale cultural patterns and processes of change. The authors of this volume argue that archaeologists should use nonlinear models to more accurately model the connections between scales of analysis, and show how micro-scale variation can lead to macro-scale cultural change. This work examines the applications of nonlinear systems models within archaeology and evaluates the range of approaches currently encompassed within Complexity Theory.

How do children get their own way in arguments? What is the most effective way of pursuing one's own goals in preschool? 'Use your words' is an instruction frequently heard in nurseries and pre-schools encouraging young children to resolve the situation through verbal rather than physical means. Discourse is seen as the solution, yet, what words are the children supposed to use, and how do they go about resolving disputes? This fascinating book offers a conversation analysis of children's arguments, revealing disputing as a highly ordered, rule-governed activity, even amongst very young children. The author provides a rich theoretical discussion of the work in speech acts and conversational analysis, whilst offering a sophisticated review in relation to children's culture. It will be of great interest to conversation analysts within sociology and linguistics, as well as to educationalists and scholars of childhood.

In an era of rapid technological change, are qualitative researchers taking advantage of new and innovative ways to gather, analyse and share community narratives? Sharing Qualitative Research presents innovative methods for harnessing creative storytelling methodologies and technologies that help to inspire and transform readers and future research. In exploring a range of collaborative and original social research approaches to addressing social problems, this text grapples with the difficulties of working with communities. It also offers strategies for working ethically with narratives, while also challenging traditional, narrower definitions of what constitutes communities. The book is unique in its cross-disciplinary spectrum, community narratives focus and showcase of arts-based and emerging digital technologies for working with communities. A timely collection, it will be of interest to interdisciplinary researchers, undergraduate and postgraduate students and practitioners in fields including anthropology, ethnography, cultural studies, community arts, literary studies, social work, health and education.

Imaginative Methodologies in the Social Sciences develops, expands and challenges conventional social scientific methodology and language by way of literary, poetic and other alternative sources of inspiration, as sociologists, social workers, anthropologists, criminologists and psychologists all rethink, provoke and reignite social scientific methodology. Challenging the mainstream orthodoxy of social scientific methodology, which closely guards the boundaries between the social sciences and the arts and humanities, this volume reveals that authors and artists are often engaged in projects parallel to those of the social sciences and vice versa, thus demonstrating that artistic and cultural production does not necessarily constitute a specialist field, but is in fact integral to social reality. As such, it will be of interest to scholars and students in the social sciences and across the arts and humanities working on the philosophy of social science, methodology, social theory, creativity, poetics, pedagogy and other related topics.

Sociologists have long noted that dynamism is an essential part of the urban way of life. However, walking as a significant social activity and crucial research method (in spite of its ubiquity as part of urban life) has often been overlooked. This volume considers walking in the city from a variety of perspectives, in a variety of places and with a variety of methods, to engage with the question of how walking can contribute to the sociological imagination and reveal sociological knowledge. Bringing together new research on sites across Europe, Walking in the European City addresses the nature of everyday mobility in contemporary urban settings, shedding light not only on the ways in which walking relates to other social institutions and practices, but also as a method for studying urban life. With attention to intersections of race and ethnicity, gender and class, as well as the manner in which processes of gentrification transform urban space, this book examines questions of access to public places, exploring the ways in which urban dwellers' use of and relation to neighbourhood spaces are shaped by inequalities of status and power. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography and anthropology with interests in urban studies, mobility and research methods.

Exploring the value of photography and video as legitimate forms of social enquiry, An Applied Visual Sociology: Picturing Harm Reduction constitutes a guidebook for conducting applied visual sociology within health related or social science research projects, providing a full account of the visual research journey and presenting a tested template for conducting theoretically-driven, sociologically-informed research. Against the background of the growing popularity of visual methods, this book goes beyond using photographs for illustrative and descriptive purposes, to emphasise the importance of sociological, epistemological and analytical theory, together with methods of data collection and the presentation of images for applied purposes. As such, An Applied Visual Sociology: Picturing Harm Reduction offers a template for considering visual data as applied research, providing a full account of the manner in which visual methods can inform research and specific interventions, together with opportunities for students and practitioners to consider applied visual sociology in a series of practical or self-study tasks . It will therefore appeal not only to students and researchers involved in social and health-related qualitative research, or those seeking to conduct innovative visual projects within the social sciences, but also to scholars interested in research methods, visual ethnography and harm reduction approaches to drug use.

Adjudication in Action describes the moral dimension of judicial activities and the judicial approach to questions of morality, observing the contextualized deployment of various practices and the activities of diverse people who, in different capacities, find themselves involved with institutional judicial space. Exploring the manner in which the enactment of the law is morally accomplished, and how practical, legal cognition mediates and modulates the treatment of cases dealing with sexual morality, this book offers a rich, praxeological study that engages with 'living' law as it unfolds in action. Inspired by Wittgenstein's later thought and engaging with recent developments in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, Adjudication in Action challenges approaches that reduce the law to mere provisions of a legal code, presenting instead an understanding of law as a resource that stands in need of contextualization. Through the close description of people's orientation to and reification of legal categories within the framework of institutional settings, this book constitutes the first comprehensive study of law in context and in action.

The cultural and narrative turn has had a considerable impact upon research in the social sciences as well as in the arts and humanities, with Ken Plummer's Documents of Life constituting a central text in the turn towards to narrative, biographical and qualitative methodologies, challenging and changing the nature of research in sociology and further afield. Bringing together the latest research on auto/biographical and narrative methods, Documents of Life Revisited offers a sympathetic yet critical engagement with Plummer's work, exploring a range of different kinds of life documents and delineating a critical humanist methodology for researching and writing about these. A rich examination of the methods and methodologies associated with contemporary research in the social sciences and humanities, this book will be of interest to those concerned with the use and importance of biographical and narrative sources and documents of life investigations. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, social anthropologists and geographers, as well as scholars of cultural studies and cultural history, literary studies and library, archive and cultural management, social policy and medical studies.

This book outlines the specific character of the ethnomethodological approach to 'play'; that is, to everyday sport and leisure activities that people generally engage in for enjoyment, at home or as a 'hobby'. With chapters on cooking, running, playing music, dancing, rock climbing, sailing, fly fishing and going out for the day as a family, Ethnomethodology at Play provides an introduction to the key conceptual resources drawn upon by ethnomethodology in its studies of these activities, whilst exploring the manner in which people 'work' at their everyday leisure. Demonstrating the breadth of ethnomethodological analysis and showing how no topic is beyond ethnomethodology's fundamental respecification, Ethnomethodology at Play sets out for the serious reader and researcher the precise contribution of ethnomethodology to sociological studies of sport and leisure and ordinary domestic pastimes. As such this groundbreaking volume constitutes a significant contribution to both ethnomethodology and sociology in general, as well as to the sociology of sport and leisure, the sociology of domestic and daily life and cultural studies.

The challenges and opportunities that are presented to both small and medium-sized enterprises have changed dramatically in recent decades as the world's economy becomes more globalised. The policies of open borders, a decrease in protectionism and the demise of the nation-state, have enabled small and large firms to engage in international activity from the outset. Understanding the Born Global Firm, combines the many different theoretical perspectives on born globals that have been previously researched, providing a unified framework to connect the antecedents, types and outcomes of entrepreneurial activities pursued by such new ventures. A central case study of an international fashion firm which operates in over nine countries, runs through the text, highlighting the formation and success of born globals and the importance of cultural competence. This book will be invaluable to post-graduate students in the field of international business; entrepreneurship; ethnic entrepreneurs; global entrepreneurship, and international networks.

Developing Metrics for Equity, Diversity and Competition is a groundbreaking book in the field of educational research. Equity, diversity and competition are critical to our understanding of social justice and the provision of effective education for everyone, and this book develops a new coherent scientific approach to measuring them. New theory and methodologies based on previous research by the author are introduced in school and university settings. They are mathematical in nature, but have a wide range of applications within mixed-methods approaches and include: warranted weighting systems for constructing league tables game theoretic approaches to analysing power and influence indices for measuring equity in student attainment indices for measuring competition modelling the educational awards market calculating the optimal size of research groups measuring diversity. The book is an ideal resource for educational researchers, policy-makers and high-level practitioners, and those who want to explore the possibilities of using novel approaches to address the problems faced by schools, colleges and universities in the new education landscape.

The book tackles a number of challenging questions: How can we conceptualize architectural objects and practices without falling into the divides architecture/society, nature/culture, materiality/meaning? How can we prevent these abstractions from continuing to blind architectural theory? What is the alternative to critical architecture? Mapping controversies is a research method and teaching philosophy that allows divides to be crossed. It offers a new methodology for following debates surrounding contested urban knowledge. Engaging in explorations of on-going and recent controversies and re-visiting some well-known debates, the analysis foregrounds, traces and maps the changing sets of positions triggered by design: the 2012 Olympics stadium in London, the Welsh parliament in Cardiff, the Heathrow airport runway extension, the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower. By mobilizing digital technologies and new computational design techniques we are able to visualize the variety of factors that impinge on design and track actors' trajectories, changing groupings, concerns and modalities of action. The book places architecture at the intersection of the human and the nonhuman, the particular and the general. It allows its networks to be re-established and to run between local and global, social and technical. Mapping controversies can be extrapolated to a wide range of complex phenomena of hybrid nature.

This practical guide addresses the challenges for building and maintaining a college research program in an environment that does not focus on supporting research activity and for those with a heavy teaching load. The challenges faced by teacher-researchers and solutions to issues are reviewed. The steps for maximizing research productivity are outlined: time management, obtaining research space and equipment and funding, recruiting and managing human subjects, and overcoming bureaucratic stumbling blocks. Chapters feature opening vignettes, examples, cases, figures, tables, summaries, suggested readings, and research references which provide a scientific grounding. Highlights include coverage of: -The latest time saving digital resources including automatic literature search alerts, Zotero for managing literature, Dropbox for sharing files, Open Science for managing workflow, and OpenSesame and OpenStax Tutor. -Strategies for recruiting subjects such as flyers and posting lab meeting minutes on a web page. - How to increase research productivity while still engaging in effective teaching. -The problems of the availability of human subjects and strategies for recruiting from classes, offering extra credit for research participation, and participation as a course requirement. - Using students as volunteer research assistants and strategies for recruiting and managing volunteers along with ethical considerations. -Bureaucratic stumbling blocks and strategies for overcoming those challenges. - How to use browser/word processor add-ons that store and organize literature in a searchable library and produce citations and reference lists. -The use of free open source software to design experiments and collect data and free cloud based resources to store electronic research files. The steps for maximizing research productivity are outlined in chapter 1: time management, obtaining research space and equipment and funding, recruiting and managing human subjects, and overcoming bureaucratic stumbling blocks, along with impediments and solutions for establishing a research program. Strategies to overcome time constraints including automatic literature searches, Zotero for managing your literature, Dropbox for sharing files, and the Open Science Framework for managing workflow are provided in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 provides tips on obtaining funding. Chapters 4 and 5 provide strategies for recruiting and managing research participants such as ad hoc recruiting from classes, offering extra credit for research participation, and participation as a course requirement. The book concludes with a review of other items to consider when developing a research program. Intended for professional development or teacher training courses offered in masters and doctoral programs in colleges and universities or as a supplement in graduate level research methods courses, this book is also an invaluable resource for faculty development centers and university administrators. Designed for both early career and veteran teacher-researchers looking to enhance their research productivity, this book appeals to college teachers of all levels and disciplines.

Engaging with the question of the extent to which the so-called human, economic or social sciences are actually sciences, this book moves away from the search for a criterion or definition that will allow us to sharply distinguish the scientific from the non-scientific. Instead, the book favours the pursuit of clarity with regard to the various enterprises undertaken by human beings, with a view to dissolving the felt need for such a demarcation. In other words, Read pursues a 'therapeutic' approach to the issue of the status and nature of these subjects. Discussing the work of Kuhn, Winch and Wittgenstein in relation to fundamental question of methodology, 'Wittgenstein among the Sciences' undertakes an examination of the nature of (natural) science itself, in the light of which a series of successive cases of putatively scientific disciplines are analysed. A novel and significant contribution to social science methodology and the philosophy of science and 'the human sciences', this book will be of interest to social scientists and philosophers, as well as to psychiatrists, economists and cognitive scientists.

With an increasing proportion of migration and mobility field studies being conducted by migrants and members of ethnic minorities in 'home' contexts, the implications of 'insider research' are increasingly subject critical scrutiny. Researchers who may share migration experiences or cultural, ethnic, linguistic or religious identities with their participants are exploring the means, ethics and politics of mobilizing 'insider capital' for the purpose of gaining access to and representing research participants. Bringing together the latest international scholarship in the sociology and anthropology of migration, this volume explores the complexities, joys and frustrations of conducting 'insider' research. The book offers analyses of key methodological, ethical and epistemological challenges faced by migration researchers as they question the ways in which they come to identify with their research topic or their participants. Addressing questions of identity and categorization, ethics and methodology, epistemology and situated knowledge, Insider Research on Migration and Mobility will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in migration, mobilities, diaspora studies and ethnic and racial identities, as well as those interested in qualitative research design and analysis.

After widespread neglect over many years, the study of human sexuality has recently come to the forefront of many of the most important debates in contemporary society and culture. This book addresses seriously the issue of how to improve the methodological basis of research into non-heterosexual sexualities, exploring the key question of what different methodological and theoretical uses of intersectionality contribute to our understandings of non-heterosexual sexualities. Bringing together research from the UK, USA, Europe and Australasia, this innovative collection rethinks traditional methodologies, creating new epistemologies and applying new approaches, whilst critically examining key issues, including communities, identities, relationships, sexualities, homosexual parenthood, fostering, civil marriage, and politics. As such, it will be of interest to researchers, scholars and students across the social sciences and health professionals.

Recent scholarship on archival research has raised questions concerning the character and impact of 'the archive' on how the traces of the past are researched, the use and analysis of different kinds of archived data, methodological approaches to the practicalities involved, and what kind of theory is drawn on and contributed to by such research. The Archive Project: Archival Research in the Social Sciences builds on these questions, exploring key methodological ideas and debates and engaging in detail with a wide range of archival projects and practices, in order to put to use important theoretical ideas that shed light on the methods involved. Offering an overview of the current 'state of the field' and written by four authors with extensive experience in conducting research in and creating archives around the world, it demonstrates the different ways in which archival methodology, practice and theory can be employed. It also shows how the ideas and approaches detailed in the book can be put into practice by other researchers, working on different kinds of archives and collections. The volume engages with crucial questions, including: What is 'an archive' and how does it come into existence? Why do archival research and how is it done? How can sense be made of the scale and scope of collections and archives? What are the best ways to analyse the traces of the past that remain? What are helpful criteria for evaluating the knowledge claims produced by archival research? What is the importance of community archives? How has the digital turn changed the way in which archival research is carried out? What role is played by the questions that researchers bring into an archive? How do we deal with unexpected encounters in the archive? A rigorous and accessible examination of the methods and choices that shape research 'on the ground' and the ways in which theory, practice and methodology inform one another, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in archival and documentary research.

Phenomenology originated as a novel way of doing philosophy early in the twentieth century. In the writings of Husserl and Heidegger, regarded as its founders, it was a non-empirical kind of philosophical enquiry. Although this tradition has continued in a variety of forms, 'phenomenology' is now also used to denote an empirical form of qualitative research (PQR), especially in health, psychology and education. However, the methods adopted by researchers in these disciplines have never been subject to detailed critical analysis; nor have the methods advocated by methodological writers who are regularly cited in the research literature. This book examines these methods closely, offering a detailed analysis of worked-through examples in three influential textbooks by Giorgi, van Manen, and Smith, Flowers and Larkin. Paley argues that the methods described in these texts are radically under-specified, and suggests alternatives to PQR as an approach to qualitative research, particularly the use of interview data in the construction of models designed to explain phenomena rather than merely describe or interpret them. This book also analyses, and aims to develop, the implicit theory of 'meaning' found in PQR writings. The author establishes an account of 'meaning' as an inference marker, and explores the methodological implications of this view. This book evaluates the methods used in phenomenology-as-qualitative-research, and formulates a more fully theorised alternative. It will appeal to researchers and students in the areas of health, nursing, psychology, education, public health, sociology, anthropology, political science, philosophy and logic.

"Methodological Issues in Aging Research" is the first volume in the "Notre Dame Series on Quantitative Methodology." This new series provides practical training on the latest quantitative methods used in social and behavioral research. Each volume features contributions from leading experts in state-of-the-art techniques applicable to a selected substantive topic.
The first series volume provides researchers with innovative techniques for the collection and analyses of data focusing on aging and lifespan development. The book addresses such techniques as structural equation modeling, latent class analysis, hierarchical linear growth curve modeling, dynamical systems analysis, multivariate Rasch models, survival analysis, multilevel modeling, and quantitative genetic methods. These new techniques provide:
*better estimates of the direct effect of environmental or treatment effects and the dynamic pattern of genetic and environmental influences on adult development;
*more precise predictions of outcomes which in turn increase the diagnostic power of test instruments; and
*the potential for developing new treatments that take advantage of the intrinsic dynamics of the course of a disease or age-related change to enhance treatment.
"Methodological Issues in Aging Research" appeals to advanced students and researchers in lifespan development, gerontology, health psychology, and other fields related to human development. It can be used as a main or supplemental text for advanced courses related to developmental research methods.

This volume contains a collection of essays and discussions which serve as an introduction and guide to current research in the area of drawing inferences from self-selected samples. This topic is of direct interest to a professional audience of survey researchers, pollsters, market researchers, policymakers, statisticians, demographers, economists, and sociologists. The essays themselves and their associated critical discussions are clear and careful; the contributors are among the foremost experts in the field.