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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Communication studies > Research methods
In the study of European politics and society ever-greater importance is attached to the role of ideational factors such as identity and discourse. The editor brings together specialists from critical discourse analysis and critical approaches to communications, history, literature, cultural studies, media, sociology, politics and International Relations to discuss the discursive construction of ethnic, national and regional identities and analyse how specific identity discourses condition and constrain knowledge and action with regard to various socio-political issues in Europe.
This book explores how, why and when hermeneutic phenomenology can be used as a methodology in health and social research. Providing actual examples of doing robust hermeneutic phenomenology and a focus on praxis, the book demonstrates how philosophical or theoretical notions can inform, enrich and enhance our research projects. The chapters offer examples of many different research designs and interpretive decisions in order to illustrate the unbounded and creative nature of this type of inquiry, whilst also demonstrating the trustworthiness of the scientific processes adopted. The chapter authors invite the reader on a unique journey that highlights how they made individual and tailored decisions throughout their projects, emphasising the challenges and joys they encountered. This book is a valuable resource for all students and academics who wish to explore the meaningfulness of human lived experiences across the multitude of phenomena in health and social care.
This book offers qualitative researchers an entree into the world of working with archival repositories and special collections. It serves as a primer for students and researchers who might not be familiar with these sorts of collections, but with an interest in what has become known asthe "archival turn," in which the use of archival materials and artifacts in contemporary research has increased dramatically since the 1990s. Suited to novice researchers seeking a general introduction into how special collections are created and how they can be used, the book offers useful, clear guidance on using different types of archives, developing topics for research within the archives, assessing materials available, how to work with archivists and curators, documenting the research process, and writing up an archival study. Archival records and material culture (including manuscripts, documents, audio- and video-recordings, and visual and material culture) housed in special collections provide a wealth of resources for qualitative researchers seeking to conduct research in the social sciences. Perfect for courses in: Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods, Research Methods in Higher Education, Exploring Archival Collections, Family Studies, Community Research, Introduction to Special Collections Research.
This volume is an essential reference for designing, analysing and reflecting on field research. It advances the literature on gender by taking a specific focus on masculinities. The book is organised into four sections: hegemonic and heteronormative masculinities, performing heteronormative masculinities, situated masculinities and paternal masculinities. The chapters explore the question of what it means to be a 'man' and definitions of masculinities. These reflexive accounts of gendered field experiences further the call for gender positionality in research and will aid tourism researchers and other transdisciplinary scholars. It is a useful tool for supervisors, ethics committee members and researchers (male and female).
A step-by-step guide to crafting a compelling scholarly book proposal-and seeing your book through to successful publication The scholarly book proposal may be academia's most mysterious genre. You have to write one to get published, but most scholars receive no training on how to do so-and you may have never even seen a proposal before you're expected to produce your own. The Book Proposal Book cuts through the mystery and guides prospective authors step by step through the process of crafting a compelling proposal and pitching it to university presses and other academic publishers. Laura Portwood-Stacer, an experienced developmental editor and publishing consultant for academic authors, shows how to select the right presses to target, identify audiences and competing titles, and write a project description that will grab the attention of editors-breaking the entire process into discrete, manageable tasks. The book features over fifty time-tested tips to make your proposal stand out; sample prospectuses, a letter of inquiry, and a response to reader reports from real authors; optional worksheets and checklists; answers to dozens of the most common questions about the scholarly publishing process; and much, much more. Whether you're hoping to publish your first book or you're a seasoned author with an unfinished proposal languishing on your hard drive, The Book Proposal Book provides honest, empathetic, and invaluable advice on how to overcome common sticking points and get your book published. It also shows why, far from being merely a hurdle to clear, a well-conceived proposal can help lead to an outstanding book.
This book introduces the notion of culinary capital to investigate socialisation and school mealtime experiences in an academy school based in the UK. Drawing on interviews collated from children, teachers and staff within the school, the text sheds light on food insecurity in society and schools as being major issue in educational policy. The book examines schools as a microcosm for society with school food space being the playground for socialisation. It shows how forms of culinary capital can be extended in the school dining hall where social space is negotiated with notions of inclusion and exclusion during mealtime. The book uses gender, class and race to understand the school dining hall as a space where culinary capital can be exchanged and learnt. Thorough research accompanied by ethnographic visuals, field notes and observations, it also explores the sensory impact of school gardens. As such the book will be of interest to students, teachers, school leaders, educators and policy makers in the fields of Education, Sociology, Social Policy and Food Studies.
In recent years, crucial questions have been raised about anthropology as a discipline, such as whether ethnography is central to the subject, and how imagination, reality and truth are joined in anthropological enterprises. These interventions have impacted anthropologists and scholars at large. This volume contributes to the debate about the interrelationships between ethnography and anthropology and takes it to a new plane. Six anthropologists with field experience in Egypt, Greece, India, Laos, Mauritius, Thailand and Switzerland critically discuss these propositions in order to renew anthropology for the future. The volume concludes with an Afterword from Tim Ingold.
With a triadic perspective, this autoethnographic narrative explores the temporal, situated nature of interactions between the author as an adoptee with her adult adopted children as well as those between herself and her birth father and mother. The epiphanic adoptive family narratives that are foregrounded seek to deepen and challenge understanding of how kinship affinities are experienced. The autoethnographic narratives are written in a critical, evocative style which is valuable for two reasons. Firstly, the processes of reflexive self-introspection, self-observation and dialogue with relational others have established a critical connection between recognising and responding to kinship affinities and personal growth. Secondly, lying at the intersection of the self and other this narrative contributes to deepening insights around epistemic in/justice in adoptive kinship. This book will be of interest to educators and scholars of adoption in offering an insider perspective on unique family relationships as well as how the author undertakes critical evocative autoethnography. Adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents will also find the narratives in Part II of this book of particular interest in informing an understanding of kin relationships and how these may be subject to change over time.
Participatory Case Study Work shows academic co-researchers how to adapt and implement their methods so that data collection and analysis is authentically participatory. At the heart of this text is advocating a participatory approach to case study work, with co-construction as a catalyst for shared understanding and action in advancing ageing studies. Whilst case study research has a relatively long tradition in the canon of research methodologies, little attention has so far been paid to the importance and value of participatory case study work. This is surprising as its egalitarian and democratic value-base naturally lends itself to the co-production and co-creation of personal and collective theory drawn directly from lived experience. The book brings together over 15 years' worth of participatory case study work in ageing studies in which the editors have been actively involved as either front-line researchers or as supervisors to PhD and MPhil studies adopting the methodology, and from where each of the contributors is selected. Real-life case examples are shared in the main chapters of the book and they provide direction as to how learning can be applied to other settings. The chapters also contain key references and recommended reading. This volume will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as research methods, qualitative methods, ageing studies and mental health studies.
This book is devoted to the reintroduction of the remarkable approach to sociological inquiry developed by Harvey Sacks. Sacks's original analyses - concerned with the lived detail of action and language-in-interaction, discoverable in members' actual activities - demonstrated a means of doing sociology that had previously seemed impossible. In so doing, Sacks provided for highly technical, detailed, yet stunningly simple solutions to some of the most trenchant troubles for the social sciences relating to language, culture, meaning, knowledge, action, and social organisation. In this original collection, scholars working in a range of different fields, including sociology, human geography, communication and media studies, social psychology, and linguistics, outline the ways in which their work has been inspired, influenced, and shaped by Sacks's approach, as well as how their current research is taking Sacks's legacy forward in new directions. As such, the collection is intended to provide both an introduction to, and critical exploration of, the work of Harvey Sacks and its continued relevance for the analysis of contemporary society.
Doing Statistical Analysis looks at three kinds of statistical research questions - descriptive, associational, and inferential - and shows students how to conduct statistical analyses and interpret the results. Keeping equations to a minimum, it uses a conversational style and relatable examples such as football, COVID-19, and tourism, to aid understanding. Each chapter contains practice exercises, and a section showing students how to reproduce the statistical results in the book using Stata and SPSS. Digital supplements consist of data sets in Stata, SPSS, and Excel, and a test bank for instructors. Its accessible approach means this is the ideal textbook for undergraduate students across the social and behavioral sciences needing to build their confidence with statistical analysis.
Mixed Methods Perspectives on Communication and Social Media Research addresses the need for a discipline-cum-methodology-tailored book that navigates the current research spectrum of communication and social media ("CommSocMed"). It examines contemporary and relevant issues that intertwine the expansive spheres of CommSocMed. Authored by professionals with extensive academic and in-depth research and industry experience, the book highlights research-based themes that mirror qualitative and quantitative methodologies vis-a-vis socio-cultural, political, educational, and organisational issues and challenges. The first two sections present the mutually interwoven disciplines of CommSocMed where research works cover a comprehensive range of designs such as narrative analysis, case study, recombinant memetics, discourse analysis, visual semiotics, ethnography, content analysis, feminist theory, descriptive-survey, descriptive-correlational, model-building/testing, experimental, and mixed methods. The third section is a concluding segment which synthesises all the scholarly contributions in this volume. This book will serve as an authoritative reference for mixed methods research in CommSocMed and will be highly relevant reading for academics, researchers, postgraduate students and undergraduates in communication (for example, instructional communication, marketing communication, organisational communication, political communication, strategic communication), social media, and social sciences.
This book examines how and to what extent academic research in politics and international studies has had 'impact' - in doing so, it also considers what might characterise 'world-leading' research impact. International Relations was always meant to have impact - it was intended to make a difference in the world, when the subject was formally founded to understand and prevent war in 1919. This volume addresses the concept of 'impact' and offers a typology of the term - instrumental, conceptual, capacity building and procedural. The authors examine 111 impact case studies in the UK Research Excellence Framework (2014) that were classified as having achieved the highest level of evaluation, and they identify eight characteristics that mark 'world-leading' impact. The book concludes that process and public and media engagement are previously underestimated aspects of impact in official approaches. It further demonstrates that achieving the top levels of impact in international relations is possible, but that factors such as the nature of the subject, the approach of researchers and mean-spiritedness in the peer review process inhibited this. This book will be of much interest to students of politics and international studies, as well as educational research and policy makers, and anyone interested in, or working on, research impact.
Vampires and Vampirism (1914) is a work from another era, a time when belief and wonder led some to travel down pathways of knowledge in search of truth and terror, not knowing what they would find. Written in response to an "awakened [popular] interest in supernormal phenomena" in the early twentieth century, Dudley Wright's Vampires and Vampirism traces the history of vampirism around the world, from ancient Babylonia, Assyria, and Greece, to Great Britain, Germany, and Eastern Europe. Beginning with the question "What is a vampire?", Wright seeks to first define the term before moving into an analysis of how belief in vampirism emerged from various and distant religious and cultural traditions. Each chapter uses a scholarly mix of ancient and modern sources to enlighten the reader, and the book culminates in a chapter titled "Fact or Fiction?", which allows the reader to hear from believers and skeptics alike. The book includes harrowing personal accounts of outbreaks of vampirism in British India and Mexico, as well as a lengthy bibliography. In a world where matters of occult nature, such as astrology, have reentered the popular consciousness, Vampires and Vampirism is sure to be of interest. It is also a fascinating document of a time when Europeans-faced with spiritual doubt and inspired by religious traditions and myths from the outer reaches of empire-sought to establish new systems of belief, new orders they hoped could replace those they feared were quickly becoming lost. At times despicable, and always controversial, Dudley Wright was a tireless searcher whose life included conversions to Islam and Catholicism, forays into anti-Semitism-later retracted-and a deep, spiritual involvement with organizations dedicated to matters both visible and invisible, true and beyond belief. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this new edition of Dudley Wright's Vampires and Vampirism is a classic of history and horror reimagined for modern readers.
This book addresses the functioning of financial markets, in particular the financial market model, and modelling. More specifically, the book provides a model of adaptive preference in the financial market, rather than the model of the adaptive financial market, which is mostly based on Popper's objective propensity for the singular, i.e., unrepeatable, event. As a result, the concept of preference, following Simon's theory of satisficing, is developed in a logical way with the goal of supplying a foundation for a robust theory of adaptive preference in financial market behavior. The book offers new insights into financial market logic, and psychology: 1) advocating for the priority of behavior over information - in opposition to traditional financial market theories; 2) constructing the processes of (co)evolution adaptive preference-financial market using the concept of fetal reaction norms - between financial market and adaptive preference; 3) presenting a new typology of information in the financial market, aimed at proving point (1) above, as well as edifying an explicative mechanism of the evolutionary nature and behavior of the (real) financial market; 4) presenting sufficient, and necessary, principles or assumptions for developing a theory of adaptive preference in the financial market; and 5) proposing a new interpretation of the pair genotype-phenotype in the financial market model. The book's distinguishing feature is its research method, which is mainly logically rather than historically or empirically based. As a result, the book is targeted at generating debate about the best and most scientifically beneficial method of approaching, analyzing, and modelling financial markets.
Comparative Case Studies: New Designs and Directions extends the comparative case study methodology established by Bartlett and Vavrus and employed in many areas of social research, especially in education. This volume unites a diverse, international group of education scholars whose work exemplifies the affordances and constraints of the comparative case study (CCS) approach and offers new theoretical and empirical directions for researchers. In 11 engaging chapters, experts in comparative education, early childhood education, peace education, refugee education, special education, and teacher education discuss their use of the CCS approach to produce new ways of knowing and to address challenges of multi-scalar and multi-sited research. The first section, Conceptualizing Cases and Case Selection, emphasizes the importance of carefully selecting cases during different phases of research while continuously reflecting on how these choices influence the findings. The second section, Balancing Specificity and Generalizability, addresses the challenge of balancing the need for rich, deep data while including multiple sites. The third section, Enabling Processual Analysis across Sites and Scales, demonstrates the fit between the CCS approach and qualitative research that unfolds over time and space. Addressing the Transversal Axis, the fourth section, showcases research with a strong temporal dimension. The final section, New Directions, suggests inspiring and innovative methods. Offering rich methodological examples and provocative discussion questions, this volume will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students in education and research design courses, and to scholars and policymakers in diverse fields seeking to design studies of complex phenomena at different sites and scales.
This newly revised and updated second edition of the Research Handbook on International Law and Terrorism provides a comprehensive overview of international counter-terrorism law and practice from the perspectives of human rights, the law of armed conflict, the law on use of force, and international criminal law. Brand new and revised chapters provide critical commentary on the law from leading scholars and practitioners in the field. Major controversies in the global legal response to terrorism are examined, including up-to-date analyses of the war on terror, drone strikes and targeted killings, torture and rendition, indefinite detention, military trials, and UN Security Council measures and sanctions. New topics for this edition are assessed, focusing on foreign terrorist fighters, the nexus between organized crime and terrorism, and the prevention of violent extremism. Exploring developments from before and after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Research Handbook also includes new analysis of contemporary threats such as Islamic State, and discusses the law of regional organizations and selected national practice. International law scholars and practitioners, as well as government and United Nations legal advisers, will find this an invaluable reference on a complex area of legal inquiry. It will also prove a critical read for academics and students in international relations, terrorism studies, security studies, war studies, and human rights.
In competitive and contested democratic elections, insuring integrity is critical. Evaluating Elections shows why systematic analysis and reporting of election performance is important and how data-driven performance management can be used by election officials to improve elections. The authors outline how performance management systems can function in elections and their benefits for voters, candidates and political parties. Journalists, election administrators and even candidates often ask whether recent elections were run well, whether there were problems in the administration of a particular state's elections and how well elections were run across the country. The authors explain that such questions are difficult to answer because of the complexity of election administration and because there is currently no standard or accepted framework to assess the general quality of an election.
This book explores the fertility and enigma of Erving Goffman's sociological reasoning and its capacity to shed fresh light on the fundamental features of human sociality. Thematically arranged, it brings together the work of leading scholars of Goffman's work to explore the concepts and themes that define Goffman's analytical preoccupations, examining the ways these ideas have shaped significant fields of study and situating Goffman's sociology in comparison to some eminent thinkers often linked with his name. Through a series of chapters informed by the same inventive and imaginative spirit characteristic of Goffman's sociology, the book presents fresh perspectives on his contribution to the field and reveals the value of his thought for a variety of disciplines now increasingly aware of the importance of Goffman's sociology to a range of social phenomena. A fresh perspective on the legacy of one of sociology's most important figures, The Routledge International Handbook of Goffman Studies will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in interactionist and micro-sociological perspectives.
Shows how performative and creative research can have a real impact on community engagement with academic research Shows the aesthetics and use of arts-based research approaches in practice Expands the rapidly-emerging field of collaborative research
Shows how performative and creative research can have a real impact on community engagement with academic research Shows the aesthetics and use of arts-based research approaches in practice Expands the rapidly-emerging field of collaborative research
While there have been many sociological and psychological studies of humor, few can claim to be funny. Humor may be regarded as a legitimate topic for social scientists, but in general, they present their research rather seriously. In academia, humor tends to be trivialized and dismissed. This is more than just a missed opportunity for otherwise fun-loving academics. In literature, it is readily accepted that comedy is integral to the human condition. To ignore humor is to reject a potentially insightful methodological approach, as the humorous worldview presents unique opportunities for investigating the social. This book constitutes a unique resource, presenting chapters on irony, satire and parody as tools for analysis and means of representation, as well as considering humor in the conduct of research, and offering guidance on getting published. Through presenting examples from across the social sciences, the book seeks to persuade and inspire rather than to prescribe an approach - a closure which would (ironically) be inimical to the multiplicity and ambiguity which characterizes humorous research and lends it its distinctive edge.
Reimagining Narrative Therapy Through Practice Stories and Autoethnography takes a new pedagogical approach to teaching and learning in contemporary narrative therapy, based in autoethnography and storytelling. The individual client stories aim to paint each therapeutic meeting in such detail that the reader will come to feel as though they actually know the two or more people in the room. This approach moves beyond the standard narrative practice of teaching by transcripts and steps into teaching narrative therapy through autoethnography. The intention of these 'teaching tales' is to offer the reader an opportunity to enter into the very 'heart and soul' of narrative therapy practice, much like reading a novel has you enter into the lives of the characters that inhabit it. This work has been used by the authors in MA and PhD level classrooms, workshops, week-long intensive courses, and conferences around the world, where it has received commendations from both newcomer and veteran narrative therapists. The aim of this book is to introduce narrative therapy and the value of integrating autoethnographic methods to students and new clinicians. It can also serve as a useful tool for advanced teachers of narrative practices. In addition, it will appeal to established clinicians who are curious about narrative therapy (who may be looking to add it to their practice), as well as students and scholars of autoethnography and qualitative inquiry and methods.
This book offers first-person accounts of the experience of psychosis from the inside and the outside, through the eyes of two doctors, one of whom has experienced psychosis and both of whom have worked for decades in the field of psychiatry. Underpinned by rigorous academic analysis using an evocative duo-ethnographic approach, the book explores the cultural and subcultural influences from childhood onwards - both traumatic and resilience-building - that have shaped their lives. Both authors reflect on strategies they learned early in life for dealing with challenges, each managing to function at a high level while avoiding awareness of their vulnerability. They reflect on the potential dangers of using their expertise and position of power in psychiatry simply to diagnose mental illness and prescribe medication. The differences and similarities in the authors' stories provide a productive tension highlighting the complexities of this paradigm shift that is happening in psychiatry. Written in the form of two interacting memoirs, this book is of great interest to researchers, clinicians, and practicing psychologists, as well as a general audience with interest in psychosis. |
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